Concert Dancer: Maxwell Robinson - Essay Example

To become a show headliner, some of his gimmicks planned together with his manager Marty Forkin include setting a world's record in the backward 75-yard dash (in 8.2 seconds) beating athletes, and won sports world attention. He was offered Broadway shows and was able to enrapture the audience with his performance. Such kind of performance even made its way to New York's 1939 World's Fair. His entertainment skills also provided him the means to invade the film industry with the movie phenomenon, Shirley Temple.

Having grown in poor conditions but managed to live decently, Robinson was able to earn his living using his talents of entertainment, a skill he learned in his childhood. Having known poverty, he was kind-hearted and had lived generously both in spending, gambling, and in charity works. He was known to donate in kind and in deeds to several organizations and foundations and also in Richmond. His gambling addiction and unsystematic charity works were said to drain his wealth such that he died poor despite his million dollars earnings during his more than fifty-year show business career.

His interests in these lavish spending and gambling episodes can be traced back to the time when he was just a boy earning his penny and spending his time in the corner streets. Though a compulsive gambler, he did not drink. Robinson's tasteful dressing was also one of the most notable characteristics. In his sixties, Robinson was far from a kid who taps danced to earn pennies; he had achieved wealth and fame in a racist society. Instead of opting for retirement, he continued to perform. He lived a principle of hard work in his performances, "what success I achieved in the theater is due to the fact that I have always worked just as hard when there were ten people in the house as when there were thousands.

Just as hard in Springfield, Illinois, as on Broadway" to quote him. The circumstance in which he was forced into retirement even culminates in his major benefit for the American Heart Association, held at the Copacabana, in New York City, a month before his seventieth birthday. After doing extra, more vigorous steps than the standard routine, he suffered a massive heart attack backstage.