Fayard Nicholas, who died Tuesday at 91, was the older half of an athletic tap dance team, known as the Nicholas Brothers, that appeared in dozens of Hollywood movies and inspired generations of dancers, from Gregory and Maurice Hines to Savion Glover.

From their early days performing at the Cotton Club, the brothers were known for developing a new kind of tap dance that featured flips and jumps and other full-body movement. One of their signature moves entailed Fayard vaulting over his brother, Harold, landing in a full split, and then rising to his feet without using his hands.

So uproarious was audience response to their performance in the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1936,” that the show’s headliner, Fanny Brice, routinely asked audiences, “Is it all right to speak now?”

Perhaps their most storied routine was “Jumpin’ Jive,” from a 1943 film titled “Stormy Weather,” in which they dance up a white staircase, traipse across bandstands and Cab Calloway’s piano, and skitter down banisters, leap-frogging and doing splits. Incredibly, it was shot in a single take. Fred Astaire once told Fayard that it was the best musical number he had ever seen. Gregory Hines once wrote that if a film version of their lives were made, “the dance numbers would have to be computer-generated.”

The Nicholas Brothers were completely self-trained, but they had the best conceivable classroom because their parents were musicians who brought them up on the road. By the late 1920s, their parents had taken long-term positions as orchestra managers at the Philadelphia’s Standard Theater, where Bill Robinson was among the regular performers. Remembered by later generations as “Mr. Bojangles,” Robinson inspired Fayard. “His taps were so very clear,” Nicholas told the Chicago Tribune in 1991. “And man, he had personality. He could do a little step like dah-dah, dah-dah-dah, and get a big hand for it. And when somebody else did exactly the same step, it didn’t mean anything.”

Fayard first taught himself, and trained Harold, and the two worked up a routine that was an immediate hit in Philadelphia theaters. Impressed, their parents moved the family to Harlem and set about making the boys into stars. In 1932, they had a regular spot at the Lafayette Theater, and they also made their screen debut, in a short subject called “Pie, Pie Blackbird,” alongside the Eubie Blake Orchestra. Later that year, they landed a long-term job at the Cotton Club, with music provided by Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. The performers were black, but the audiences were white only. The brothers soon became favorites of the show business elite who attended. Tallulah Bankhead gave Harold a bicycle; Samuel Goldwyn recruited them for films.

Their feature film debut came in the Eddie Cantor musical “Kid Millions.” (1934). They also appeared in “The Big Broadcast of 1936,” “Calling All Stars” (1937), and “Down Argentine Way” (1940) in which they were so popular 20th Century Fox inked them to a five-year deal. Most of the brothers’ film appearances were virtual non sequiturs, nonspeaking set pieces that had nothing to do with the plot. They were also easy to remove when films were screened for Southern audiences.

Acerbic comment on such film appearances came from “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk,” the Tony Award-winning dance show that sparked a tap revival in 1996.The show had a segment on two dancers called “Grin and Flash,” obviously modeled on the Nicholas Brothers, who were portrayed as the grinning dupes of white men. Fayard Nicholas disagreed. “What the hell were they talking about?” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It was like they were saying we and Bill Robinson were Uncle Toms. Well, we worked with what we had. They should be thanking us. We were pioneers.”

Nor was Fayard much of a fan of Mr. Glover on stage. “We were class, well dressed, elegant,” he said. Today they don’t even comb their hair. And we danced with our whole bodies, not just the feet. When I saw [‘Da Funk],I closed my eyes, and the taps were great, brilliant, really beautiful, but then I’d open my eyes and wish I hadn’t.”

The Nicholas Brothers final film appearance came in the Gene Kelly musical “The Pirate” (1948). At least in that one they got to dance with the star, in the bravura “Be a Clown” number.

As the popularity of tap waned in the 1950s, the brothers worked more often in Europe. Fayard developed a solo act that he took on the road in America and Mexico. The brothers reunited in the mid-1960s, and continued to tour while making occasional television variety show appearances. Harold’s specialty had always been splits; Fayard’s was knee-drops. The knee-drops were apparently more physically taxing, and by the early 1980s he was forced to stop performing. Eventually, he had both hips replaced.

Fayard appeared in a dramatic role in the film “The Liberation of L.B. Jones” (1970), and in 1989 he won a Tony for his work choreographing the show “Black and Blue.”

The brothers were subjects of a 1992 documentary, “We Sing and We Dance,” and received many awards in the 1990s, including the Kennedy Center Honors and the Dance Magazine Award. A 1998 event at Carnegie Hall was titled “From Harlem to Hollywood: A Tribute to Nicholas Brothers.”

All the appreciation didn’t make up for the residuals Fayard was not receiving for his movie work – those didn’t kick in until the 1960s – and he lived in Los Angeles in near poverty in recent years, having his electricity turned off while facing high medical bills. Well-wishers helped pay his bills with benefit concerts.

He remained on good terms with his first wife, Geraldine, and was for many years happily married to the late Barbara January. His last years were brightened by Katherine Hopkins, a former dancer he married in 2000.

Fayard Antonio Nicholas
Born October 20, 1914, in Mobile, Ala.; died January 24 at his home in Los Angeles of pneumonia; survived by his wife, Katherine Hopkins, and a son, Tony.