Who was George Tapps?

We said in an earlier post that Harold Lang was the second Joey Evans (1952 production). This is not quite accurate. While it’s true that Gene Kelly was the first Joey in 1940, it is not widely known that Kelly left a couple of months before the show closed on Broadway at the end of November, 1941. His replacement was an accomplished dancer named George Tapps.

Pal Joey was Tapps’ fifth Broadway show but his first as leading man. Immediately before Pal Joey, in a widely-praised performance, Tapps had appeared in the Rodgers & Hart musical, I’d Rather Be Right, starring George M. Cohan.
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George Tapps was born in Washington Heights, New York, as Mortimer Alfonse Becker in 1911. He began his dance career at age 7, and appeared on Broadway for the first time in 1927 at age 16. He later became famous for his acclaimed interpretation of Ravel’s Bolero, which combined ballet with tap, a revolutionary approach.
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Tapps apparently did well as Joey, playing out the remainder of the Broadway run and then touring with the show. Lorenz Hart, however, never liked Tapps in the part and was forceful in telling director George Abbott how he felt, “How could you do this to the show with this terrible man, this Georgie Tapps? How could you do this to me?”
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Abbott responded, “We could afford him.”
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Below is a video of a nightclub number from the 1937 United Artists film, Vogues of 1938. Tapps appears about halfway through the video clip (at timecode 2:40). The song is Oscar-nominated “That Old Feeling,” sung in the film by Virginia Verrill. It is plain to see why Tapps was chosen to replace Gene Kelly in Pal Joey. His performance in this number is electrifying and displays the same type of graceful athleticism that characterized Kelly’s work.
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