Hermes Pan worked on nearly two dozen films and TV shows with Astaire.
35 Facts About Hermes Pan
2.
Hermes Pan won both an Oscar and an Emmy for his dance direction.
3.
Hermes Pan was first paid to dance at age 19 and worked in several Broadway productions.
4.
Hermes Pan's father was a confectioner by trade, and from a prominent family in Aigio, Greece.
5.
Hermes Pan's family had opened the first theater in the city.
6.
Hermes Pan's family had roots in the South dating to colonial times.
7.
Hermes Pan, their second son and last child, was born in Memphis in 1909.
8.
Hermes Pan was interested in music and dance from an early age.
9.
Hermes Pan befriended Aunt Betty's son, Sam Clark, who worked for his family.
10.
Sam, a talented dancer, taught the boy many of the era's popular dances, and Hermes Pan practiced on his own.
11.
Hermes Pan's father died of tuberculosis in 1922 in San Antonio.
12.
Hermes Pan burned all their shares and money, saying that if he could not have them, no one would.
13.
In 1923 Mary shortened the family name to Hermes Pan and took her family to New York City, accompanied by Sam Clark.
14.
Hermes Pan first met Ginger Rogers in 1930, when he appeared as a chorus singer in the Broadway musical Top Speed.
15.
Vasso Hermes Pan performed in the chorus of many of the Astaire-Rogers pictures.
16.
Hermes Pan had retained links with his father's relatives in Greece.
17.
Hermes Pan was a devout Roman Catholic and took spiritual meaning from his dancing.
18.
Hermes Pan was known as a homosexual in his circles, but was very private.
19.
Hermes Pan met Fred Astaire on the set of Flying Down to Rio, in which he worked as an assistant to dance director Dave Gould.
20.
Hermes Pan demonstrated a brief break he had picked up from his street days in New York.
21.
The Astaire-Hermes Pan collaboration, involving 17 of Astaire's 31 musical films and three of his four television specials, is widely accepted as one of the most important forces in dance choreography of 20th-century film and television musicals.
22.
Hermes Pan performed the essential function of teaching and rehearsing Ginger Rogers, whose many other commitments during the filming of the Astaire-Rogers musicals often conflicted with Astaire's rehearsal schedule.
23.
Hermes Pan continued to collaborate with Astaire until the latter's last musical picture, Finian's Rainbow, which was a disaster on a number of fronts.
24.
Hermes Pan dressed as The Ghost in the deleted Astaire-Pan routine, "Me and the Ghost Upstairs," from that same film.
25.
Hermes Pan appeared with Betty Grable in Moon Over Miami and Coney Island.
26.
Hermes Pan's longest filmed dance routine is a complex tap duet with Grable in Footlight Serenade, which reflects his work with Astaire and Rogers.
27.
Hermes Pan appeared with Rita Hayworth in My Gal Sal and with Betty Grable again in Pin Up Girl.
28.
Hermes Pan choreographed Lovely to Look At and Kiss Me Kate.
29.
Hermes Pan's friendships were wide in and outside the world of Hollywood.
30.
Hermes Pan became friends with the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who invited him to the country's 2,500 year celebration of Iran's monarchy at Persepolis.
31.
Hermes Pan was close to painter Diego Rivera, who painted his full portrait.
32.
Hermes Pan was very close friends with Rita Hayworth, and was a pallbearer at her funeral.
33.
Hermes Pan spent time especially in his father's city of Aigio, where he visited the family's mansion and met many relatives.
34.
Hermes Pan died in Beverly Hills, California, on September 19,1990, aged 80, from undisclosed causes.
35.
Hermes Pan was survived by his sister Vasso Pan, niece Michelene Laski, and several other nieces and nephews.