Written and copyright by Harri Heinila
I republish this article on my authenticjazzdance blog. It was published on OSFHome (OSF preprints) on February 11, 2023.
This article is a continuation of my article on the subject: The Beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball and the Myth of the Harlem Riot in 1935 as the Reason for It that was published in OSF Preprints on February 13, 2018 (see https://osf.io/mr5ab ). The new article will be part of my upcoming study of Harlem-related jazz dance between 1935 and 1959.
In 1935, the Daily News attributed the beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball contest to its editorial team: Miss Mary King, a Daily News editor, who originated the idea of the contest; Richard Clarke, the News Sunday editor, who named the contest; and William F. Fritzinger, an editorial promotion manager of the News, who put the idea into action. Later statements from the Daily News-related sources supported King and Fritzinger’s roles in creating the Harvest Moon Ball contest. In 1939, Ed Sullivan, a Daily News columnist and a Harvest Moon Ball MC, pointed out that it was Mary King, not him, who originated the Harvest Moon Ball. In 1959, the Daily News’ article about the history of the Harvest Moon Ball contest recognized Fritzinger’s role in organizing the first contest. Similarly, in 1961, John Chapman’s book of the informal history of the Daily News pointed to King and Fritzinger’s aforementioned roles, and in 1975, when the Daily News-related sponsorship of the Harvest Moon Ball was over, The New York Times mentioned Mary King Patterson in her obituary as the originator of the contest.[i]
Historians Robert P. Crease in 1987 and Joel Dinerstein in 2003 have brought out the fact that the Lindy Hop was “a late addition to the Harvest Moon Ball.” The Lindy was added to the dances of the contest, “[t]he [W]altz, the [T]ango, the [R]humba and the [F]ox-trot,” after the contest was already originated.[ii] The Daily News stated in July 1935, weeks before the finals of the first Harvest Moon Ball contest, that it was James V. Mulholland, “Supervisor of Recreation for the Park Department,” who asked the Daily News to add the Lindy to the contest. Mulholland, who had seen Harlemites doing the Lindy Hop in a dancing party in Colonial Park a few days earlier, explained that the Harlemites’ dancing was so good that the Lindy deserved to be included in the contest, and the Daily News was obligated to add it as the paper reported at that time.[iii] The Daily News advertisements confirm that the Lindy Hop was not among the dances of the contest at the very beginning. From the probable first entry blank of the Harvest Moon Ball contest in the Daily News on July 7, 1935 to the entry blank in the July 12 issue of the Daily News, only the Tango, the Waltz, the Fox Trot, and the Rhumba were mentioned as the dances of the contest. Starting from July 13, the Lindy Hop was added to the entry blank of the contest.[iv]
Norma Miller, who with other Savoy dancers represented Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom and competed in the Harvest Moon Ball, claimed that the Harlem riot in March 1935 was the reason for the contest. According to Miller, the Harvest Moon Ball was made for alleviating the dispiriting effects of the riot. In her three books between 1996 and 2009, she attributed the original idea of the contest variably either to the Daily News or to Fiorello La Guardia, the Mayor of New York. In the first and second book, Miller claimed that the Daily News made the contest a morale booster either for Harlem or for the city, overall, because of the 1935 riot. In the third book, she claimed that Mayor La Guardia “called for a contest” that included “dancers from each of New York’s five boroughs” and a final at the Madison Square Garden for the winners from the separate contests in the ballrooms those dancers were connected to. That was for redirecting “the energy of the community’s outraged citizens.”[v] The community was likely Harlem, although Miller did not specify it in the third book.
Norma Miller’s claims of the beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball were noticed. Musicologist Christopher J. Wells dedicated one chapter in his doctoral dissertation in 2014 to “The Riots of 1935: Racial Anger and the Harvest Moon Ball as “Social Insurance”“ as goes the chapter heading in his dissertation. Wells claimed that “Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and his staff leveraged the “social insurance”” for decreasing “escalating rhetoric and frustration” that existed in the months after the 1935 riot, and that was the reason why La Guardia “worked with the New York Daily News to engineer” the Harvest Moon Ball. Later, in 2021, Christi Jay Wells repeated the claim of Mayor “Fiorello La Guardia and his staff” working “with the Daily News to create the Harvest Moon Ball.” Also, in 2014, Delaney Moran in an article about the race relations at the Savoy Ballroom referred to the idea of the Daily News organized the Harvest Moon Ball because of “the prevailing social unrest.” Moran and obviously also Wells’ claims stemmed exclusively from Norma Miller’s Harvest Moon Ball statements that Miller made in her books.[vi]
Therefore, the common denominator in Moran and Wells’ claims of the beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball is that they did not provide any other evidence of Mayor La Guardia or the Harlem riot as the reason or the impetus for the Harvest Moon Ball, but Norma Miller’s statements. The Daily News never referred to La Guardia as an instigator who devised the contest, and the paper did not claim any connection between the Harlem riot and the Harvest Moon Ball contest. Also La Guardia in public did not claim any responsibility for the contest. Thus, it is astounding that Wells and Moran obviously took what Miller said as such without scrutinizing Miller’s statements and comparing them with other available sources. On the other hand, both Wells and Moran ignored the previously mentioned Joel Dinerstein and Robert P. Crease’s conclusions of the Lindy Hop was not originally included in the Harvest Moon Ball.[vii]
That is an unfortunate omission, in particular, because Wells claimed in their 2021 study that “the Savoy management’s strategy” was to utilize the Harvest Moon Ball “principally as a platform to feature the exceptional skill of its lindy hop dancers.”[viii] Because the Lindy Hop obviously played no part in creating the Harvest Moon Ball contest, therefore it can be concluded that the Savoy Ballroom management’s idea of presenting the “lindy hop dancers” in the Harvest Moon Ball either did not exist when the contest was originated or the Daily News ignored / was not aware of the idea at the very beginning.
The present writer criticized the claim of the Harlem riot as the reason for the Harvest Moon Ball both in his doctoral dissertation and in an article on the beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball, which were published years before 2021 when Wells restated the claim of Mayor La Guardia and his staff working “with the New York Daily News to create the Harvest Moon Ball” because of “growing racial tensions.” The criticism should not have been unknown to Wells because they otherwise used the present writer’s doctoral dissertation in their 2021 study. However, Wells and also Moran did not question Miller’s statements about the Harvest Moon Ball, probably, because they ignored earlier research on the issue, they concluded from insufficient sources without any source criticism even so that Wells made a clearly unsubstantiated claim about Mayor La Guardia and his staff’s connection with the Daily News to originate the contest.[ix]
Racially mixed contests were nothing new in Harlem when the Harvest Moon Ball started in 1935. The Manhattan Casino in Harlem had the Charleston contests in the middle of the 1920s, which were interracial, at least, regarding judges in one of the contests and probably regarding also others who were involved in them, and Harlem’s Apollo Theatre organized the Lindy Hop contests frequently with both African American and white participants between September 1934 and August 1935.[x] If the Harvest Moon Ball contest was made for decreasing the tension between African Americans and whites by allowing them to compete with each other in dancing, similar contests could not prevent the Harlem riot in March 1935 as the interracial Lindy Hop contests in the Apollo Theatre prior to the first Harvest Moon Ball contest in August 1935 clearly prove. Because the concept did not work earlier, it had been odd to try to better race relations with the Harvest Moon Ball soon after the Harlem riot.
As Joel Dinerstein has remarked, it was possible that “community and municipal leaders” could have had an idea of the Harvest Moon Ball as a leisure time activity for young African Americans,[xi] instead of those youngsters roaming the streets. If the leaders really thought about the Harvest Moon Ball that way, it did not transmit to newspapers[xii]. However, the Daily News stated on July 8, only one day after the probable first entry blank of the Harvest Moon Ball, that Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom was the “best known colored dancing center in the country” and one of the “leading ballrooms in the [New York] Metropolitan area.”[xiii] These statements could explain why the Daily News had included the Savoy Ballroom in the ballrooms for the Harvest Moon Ball at the very beginning. The Harvest Moon Ball advertisement on July 7, which might have been the first Harvest Moon Ball advertisement in the Daily News, mentioned only the News building on 42nd Street in Manhattan as the registration place where the entry blank should be brought to. The Daily News article on July 8 mentioned the places where the “elimination tournaments” (preliminaries) for the Harvest Moon Ball finals were planned to take place, and the Savoy Ballroom was one of those places[xiv].
The Daily News statements suggests that the Savoy was sufficiently famous to be included in their contest which was interracial as the paper stated that there were no barriers or stipulations regarding the “race or color” of the contestants. The Daily News argued that they only wanted to find the best amateur dancers in New York and the surrounding area. Thus, the paper stated that there was no need to bar anyone else from entering the contest, but “professionals, persons under 18 [in 1935], and employees of The News.”[xv] The Daily News had a longer history in egalitarianism than that because it had published interracial pictures at the end of the 1920s when it depicted a dance marathon in Harlem[xvi], which speaks for the Daily News’ support for racial equality.
However, having the Savoy Ballroom in the contest first before adding the Lindy Hop to the dances of the contest almost one week later after the first known advertisement of the Harvest Moon Ball is running contrary to the fact that the Daily News recognized the importance of the Lindy Hop at the Savoy Ballroom in its July 10 issue[xvii], which was only one day prior to James V. Mulholland from the Park Department saw the Lindy Hop dancers in Harlem on July 11 and consequently suggested the Lindy Hop to be added to the contest[xviii].
On July 10 and 14, the Daily News published two pictures of the Savoy Ballroom dancers on the dance floor. The labels of the pictures asserted that the dancers’ favorite was the Lindy Hop, but the couples in the pictures were depicted dancing in a very closed position except for one couple whose female partner’s position suggests that she could have been doing a ‘swing out’ pattern or the couple just posed for the camera because the male partner of the couple looked straight at the camera.[xix] Thus, the two pictures rather conveyed partnered dancing in a closed position than the Lindy Hop with open patterns like swing outs[xx]. Therefore, although the Daily News recognized that the Lindy was important to the Savoy dancers when it published the July 10 picture with the message of the popularity of the Lindy Hop at the Savoy, which took place a few days prior to Mulholland’s request was reported, the contradictory messages of what was the Lindy Hop, which emanate from the discrepancy between the labels of the two pictures and the pictures, suggest that those who were responsible for publishing the two Harvest Moon Ball pictures in the Daily News had not fully comprehended what was actually the Lindy Hop.
When taking into account the facts that the Daily News added the Lindy Hop to the entry blank on July 13, reported the addition of the Lindy Hop in its article on July 14, and had noticed the importance of the Lindy Hop to the Savoy dancers by July 10 as the label of the picture on that date suggests, it is possible that there were negotiations between the Daily News and the Savoy Ballroom management already before Mulholland saw the Harlem Lindy Hoppers on July 11, at the very least, negotiations regarding the Savoy Ballroom participation in the contest, but also regarding whether the Lindy Hop should be included in the dances of the contest, as Norma Miller claimed[xxi].
Savoy Lindy Hopper Al Minns recalled decades later that Herbert White, whose dancers represented the Savoy Ballroom, and the Savoy Ballroom manager Charles Buchanan went to the Daily News’ office to ask to add the Lindy to the contest because the Daily News had omitted the Lindy Hop from the Harvest Moon Ball applications. According to Minns, the Daily News did not know that the Lindy Hop existed,[xxii] which might be true regarding some of the Daily News staff, but, as previously mentioned, the Daily News had an idea of the importance of the Lindy Hop at the Savoy by July 10, although they might not have really understood what was the Lindy Hop. Unlike Miller, Minns was not a Savoy Ballroom dancer yet in 1935 and did not participate in the first Harvest Moon Ball contest[xxiii], so Minns’ statement was based on hearsay. In spite of that, he referred correctly to the aforementioned omission of the Lindy Hop in the entry blanks. On the other hand, the July 10 picture was headlined “ “Lindy Hop” for Harlem,”[xxiv] which would also support Minns’ statement if the idea of the headline of the picture was to suggest to the Daily News readers that the Lindy Hop could be included in the dances of the contest. In other words, if the headline was related to the alleged negotiations between the Daily News and the Savoy Ballroom management regarding the inclusion of the Lindy Hop in the contest.
However, whatever were the negotiations regarding the Savoy Ballroom and its participation in the contest, the Harvest Moon Ball did not have the Lindy Hop at the very beginning. It was omitted from the entry blanks for six days between July 7 and July 12 and reported later to be an addition to the original dances of the contest, which does not make sense if the Lindy Hop was intended to be part of the contest at the very beginning. Thus, it is very clear that the Harvest Moon Ball did not originate from an idea of the Lindy Hop in the contest as a release valve for the frustration and other pressure in Harlem. It cannot be ruled out that the Savoy Ballroom was included in the contest because of the riot, but if it was included for that reason, the riot as the reason was not mentioned in the press at the time when the contest began as far as the public is concerned[xxv]. Anyway, the Savoy dancers were originally intended to participate in the Fox Trot, the Tango, the Waltz, and the Rhumba, which was not in tune with the centrality of the Lindy Hop to the Savoy Ballroom[xxvi].
Furthermore, although Mayor La Guardia did not instigate or devise the Harvest Moon Ball for Harlem, as the lack of evidence strongly suggests, instead, he visualized a “recreation program” for New Yorkers, which included the Colonial Park redevelopment project. On August 8, 1935, he gave a speech about the project to “about 10,000” Harlemites who had gathered in Colonial Park to dance and listen to him. La Guardia explained that “the officials of the City of New York had intensively studied conditions in Harlem for months” and based on that they gave Harlem a present: a recreation center “with a swimming pool, playgrounds,” “a mall for dancing and concerts,” and “a modern gymnasium.” The park was the right place for it, he noted. La Guardia did not refer to the Harvest Moon Ball finals that were going to take place only one week later on August 15 or to any other dance contest.[xxvii] Surely, he had informed Harlemites in the park if the Harvest Moon Ball had been part of their present for Harlemites.
The Billboard stated in its article at the end of August 1935 that the Harvest Moon Ball contest was “a promotion stunt by The [Daily] News.” This claim was repeated later in magazines, particularly in Variety, and newspapers throughout the decades.[xxviii] Also John Chapman’s aforementioned informal history of the Daily News recognized the Harvest Moon Ball as one of the three most successful promotion stunts the Daily News had organized at the Madison Square Garden by the beginning of the 1960s when the Chapman’s book was published.[xxix] Also a picture in the Daily News article in 1948 supports the idea of the promotion stunt. In the picture, it is depicted a board on a wall that displayed the departments of the Daily News in its office building. The board mentions first ”The News – Promotion Department – The News Welfare Association Inc.,” and below that it mentions the contests of the News like the ”Harvest Moon Ball.”[xxx] This is confirmed by an earlier Daily News article in July 1935, in which it was brought out that the Harvest Moon Ball was “a worthy member” of the “grand family” of those Daily News contests[xxxi]. The Harvest Moon Ball contest was thus clearly connected with the promotion department.
If the Harlem riot in 1935 or any other riot really was the reason for the Harvest Moon Ball contest, the riots as the reason was perfectly concealed from the public in the press without leaving any trace whatsoever of the riots as the reason until in 1996 when Savoy Lindy Hopper Norma Miller made in her book an unsubstantiated claim about the Harlem riot in 1935 as the reason for the contest.[xxxii] Therefore, based on the aforementioned statements and evidence, it is logical to conclude that the Harvest Moon Ball was most likely a promotion stunt by the Daily News as it was reported in the press through the years. According to John Chapman, the paper had more than 114 contests between 1919 and the beginning of the 1940s. Those Daily News contests were commonplace until the 1940s when the paper felt that it had succeeded well enough to be able to continue without new contests, although some of those contests like the Harvest Moon Ball survived probably because of their success.[xxxiii]
Endnotes:
[i] Harri M. J. Heinilä, “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality – The Recognition of the Harlem-Based African-American Jazz Dance Between 1921 and 1943,” doctoral dissertation, (Helsinki: Unigrafia, 2015), 189, 189n725. Ed Sullivan. “Hollywood Visits New York,” Daily News, September 6, 1939. Jack Smith, “Harvest Moon Ball: The ‘Contest That Flopped’: Too Many People Came to See It,” Daily News, September 14, 1959. John Chapman, Tell It to Sweeney: The Informal History of the New York Daily News(Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961), 250. “Mary Patterson, Ex-News Editor: Widow of Paper’s Former Publisher Dies at 90,” The New York Times, December 28, 1975. Gerald Nachman, Right Here on Our Stage Tonight: Ed Sullivan’s America (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2009), 52-53.
[ii] Robert P. Crease, “Last of the Lindy Hoppers,” The Village Voice, August 25, 1987, 28-29. Dinerstein, Swinging The Machine, 270-271.
[iii] Robin Harris. “Contest O.K.’s Harlem Step,” Daily News, July 14, 1935. Joel Dinerstein, Swinging The Machine – Modernity, Technology, And African American Culture Between The World Wars (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 271. Heinilä, “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality,” 190, 200-201.
[iv] “The News request the pleasure of your company at the Harvest Moon Ball,” the Daily News, July 7, 1935. “The News Harvest Moon Ball – Entry Blank,” the Daily News, July 8, 1935. “The News Harvest Moon Ball – Entry Blank,” the Daily News, July 9, 1935. “The News Harvest Moon Ball – Entry Blank,” the Daily News, July 10, 1935. “The News Harvest Moon Ball – Entry Blank,” the Daily News, July 11, 1935. “The News Harvest Moon Ball – Entry Blank,” the Daily News, July 12, 1935. “The News Harvest Moon Ball – Entry Blank,” the Daily News, July 13, 1935. The present writer has not found any earlier Harvest Moon Ball entry blank than the July 7 entry blank. Even if there would exist earlier entry blank(s), the Lindy Hop was not included in those entry blanks for a significant period (at least for six days), which unlikely happened accidentally.
[v] Norma Miller and Yvette Jensen, Swingin’ at The Savoy – The Memoir of A Jazz Dancer (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 54-56. Alan Govenar, collected and edited by, Martin French, illustrated by, Stompin’ at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2006), 20-21. Norma Miller, Swing, Baby, Swing! When Harlem Was King…And The Music Was Swing! (Blurb Inc., 2009), 9.
[vi] Christopher J. Wells, “ “Go Harlem!” Chick Webb and His Dancing Audience During the Great Depression,“ PhD diss., (University of North Carolina, 2014), 95, 99. Christi Jay Wells, Between Beats: The Jazz Tradition and Black Vernacular Dance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 85-86, Kindle edition. Delaney Moran, “ “Never Looking at Your Face, Only at Your Feet:” Race Relations at the Savoy Ballroom: 1926-1958,” The Concord Review 24, no. 3 (Spring 2014): 21-23. See also footnote v. Harri Heinilä. “The Beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball and the Myth of the Harlem Riot in 1935 as the Reason for It.” OSFHOME. February 12, 2018. https://osf.io/mr5ab .
[vii] See footnote vi. The present writer has not found any evidence of the Daily News or any other newspaper had claimed that Mayor La Guardia instigated the Harvest Moon Ball contest because of the Harlem riot, or any evidence of Mayor La Guardia had claimed to have devised the contest.
[viii] Wells, Between Beats, 88.
[ix] Harri Heinilä, “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality,” 190. Wells, Between Beats, 85-86, 108n46, 108n57. See also footnote vi.
[x] Heinilä, “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality,” 103-104, 191-193.
[xi] Dinerstein, Swinging The Machine, 270.
[xii] The present writer has found no mention of those leaders suggesting the Harvest Moon Ball as a leisure time activity for African American youngsters, which could prevent them from roaming the streets.
[xiii] “Do You Dance? Then Win Both Fame, Riches,” the Daily News, July 8, 1935.
[xiv] “The News request the pleasure of your company at the Harvest Moon Ball,” the Daily News, July 7, 1935. See also footnote iv.
[xv] ”Do You Dance? Then Win Both Fame, Riches,” Daily News, July 8, 1935. Robin Harris, “Like to Dance? Make Fun Pay In News Contest,” Daily News, July 9, 1935. Robin Harris, “Dancers! You Have Time to Join Contest,” Daily News, July 20, 1935. The Daily News repeated later its statement of “no barriers or stipulations” regarding “race, creed or color.” See for example William Murtha, “Dancers, Here’s Opportunity Again at Harvest Moon Ball,” Daily News, July 14, 1941.
[xvi] Heinilä, “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality,” 153-157.
[xvii] This is explained in the following paragraph.
[xviii] Heinilä, “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality,” 190.
[xix] “ “Lindy Hop” for Harlem,“ Daily News, July 10, 1935. “Harlem Likes Lindy Hop,” Daily News, July 14, 1935.
[xx] The swing out has been the basic pattern of the Lindy Hop. See Heinilä, “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality,” 143-144.
[xxi] See footnote v.
[xxii] Albert ‘Al’ Minns, interview by Swedish Swing Society (Lennart Westerlund, Henning Sörensen and Anders Lind), New York, between the end of May and the beginning of June, 1984. Robert P. Crease made a similar claim as Al Minns regarding Herbert ‘Whitey’ White and Charles Buchanan’s role in getting the Lindy Hop to be included in the Harvest Moon Ball. See Robert P. Crease, “Last of the Lindy Hoppers,” The Village Voice, August 25, 1987, 28-29. Because Robert P. Crease knew Al Minns, it is possible that he got the claim directly from Al Minns.
[xxiii] Terry Monaghan, “AL MINNS: The Incorrigible Lindy Hopper, 1920-1985 by Terry Monaghan.” Authenticjazzdance. January 1, 2020. https://authenticjazzdance.wordpress.com/2020/01/01/al-minns-the-incorrigible-lindy-hopper-1920-1985-by-terry-monaghan/ . Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 326.
[xxiv] “ “Lindy Hop” for Harlem,“ Daily News, July 10, 1935.
[xxv] The present writer has not found anything in newspapers that had referred to a connection between the beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball and the Harlem riot.
[xxvi] The Lindy Hop at the Savoy Ballroom is discussed, in particular, in Terry Monaghan, ” ”Stompin’ At the Savoy – Remembering, Researching and Re- enacting the Lindy Hop’s relationship to Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom,” in Dancing at the Crossroads: African Diasporic Dances in Britain: Conference Proceedings, ed. Terry Monaghan and Eileen Feeney (London: London Metropolitan University, Sir John Cass Dept. of Art, Media, and Design, 2005). See especially pages 31-32.
[xxvii] “The Beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball and the Myth of the Harlem Riot in 1935 as the Reason for It.” OSFHOME. February 12, 2018. https://osf.io/mr5ab . See also “Harlem Gets News Of Big Play Centre,” The New York Times, August 9, 1935. “Harlem to Get Play Center in Colonial Park,” New York Herald Tribune, August 9, 1935. “Good News For Harlem!,” Daily News, August 9, 1935. Joel Dinerstein claims that “[t]he city agreed to build a bandshell for two orchestras at Central Park and to provide a large dance floor” for the first Harvest Moon Ball contest, but the Daily News in July 1935 stated to the contrary that it was the News that erected the dance floor. Dinerstein’s claim possibly was based on a Frankie Manning interview in 1998, which is not available in public and the present writer does not have it. The other sources, which Dinerstein mentions in connection with the claim, do not refer to the origin of the dance floor. See Dinerstein, Swinging The Machine, 270, 385n71. Robin Harris, “Like to Dance? Make Fun Pay in News Contest,” Daily News, July 9, 1935.
[xxviii] ”Big Interest in Ballroom Dancing, Singing, Bands,” The Billboard, August 31, 1935. “N. Y. Harvest Moon Sellout,” Variety, August 31, 1938. “Proser Mollifies N.Y. Daily News Denies Its Harvest Ball Is Scuttled,” Variety, April 30, 1941. “WPIX in Harvest Moon Swap for Edith Piaf To Get Off Extra Pay Nut,” Variety, September 14, 1949. “24th Annual “Harvest Moon”,” Variety, September 24, 1958. “Literati: 29th Harvest Moon Ball,”, Variety, September 25, 1963. Jim Bishop, “The Reporter: Ed Sullivan-Just Plain Folks,” The Courier-News, June 19, 1968. See also Heinilä, “The Beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball and the Myth of the Harlem Riot in 1935 as the Reason for It.” OSFHOME. February 12, 2018. https://osf.io/mr5ab .
[xxix] Chapman, Tell It to Sweeney, 249-250.
[xxx] Jack Smith, ”Brother-Sister Team Sign for Harvest Hop,” Daily News, August 5, 1948.
[xxxi] Robin Harris, “Dancers! You Have Time To Join Contest,” Daily News, July 20, 1935.
[xxxii] This has become clear in this article. See Norma Miller and Yvette Jensen, Swingin’ at The Savoy, 55. See also “The Beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball and the Myth of the Harlem Riot in 1935 as the Reason for It.” OSFHOME. February 12, 2018. https://osf.io/mr5ab .
[xxxiii] Chapman, Tell It to Sweeney, 165-166, 249.
Sources
Bibliography
Newspapers & Magazines
Billboard, The, Cincinnati / New York, 1935.
Courier-News, The, Bridgewater, New Jersey, 1968.
Daily News, New York, New York, 1935, 1939, 1941, 1948, 1959.
New York Herald Tribune, New York, New York, 1935.
New York Times, The, New York, New York, 1935, 1975.
Variety, Los Angeles, 1938, 1941, 1949, 1958, 1963.
Village Voice, The, New York, New York, 1987.
Literature
Chapman, John, Tell It to Sweeney: The Informal History of the New York Daily News (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961).
Dinerstein, Joel, Swinging The Machine – Modernity, Technology, And African American Culture Between The World Wars (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003).
Govenar, Alan, collected and edited by, Martin French, illustrated by, Stompin’ at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2006).
Heinilä, Harri. “The Beginning of the Harvest Moon Ball and the Myth of the Harlem Riot in 1935 as the Reason for It.” OSFHOME. February 12, 2018. https://osf.io/mr5ab .
Heinilä, Harri M. J., “An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality – The Recognition of the Harlem-Based African-American Jazz Dance Between 1921 and 1943,” doctoral dissertation, (Helsinki: Unigrafia, 2015).
Miller, Norma, Swing, Baby, Swing! When Harlem Was King…And The Music Was Swing! (Blurb Inc., 2009).
Miller, Norma, and Yvette Jensen, Swingin’ at The Savoy – The Memoir of A Jazz Dancer (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).
Monaghan, Terry, “AL MINNS: The Incorrigible Lindy Hopper, 1920-1985 by Terry Monaghan.” Authenticjazzdance. January 1, 2020. https://authenticjazzdance.wordpress.com/2020/01/01/al-minns-the-incorrigible-lindy-hopper-1920-1985-by-terry-monaghan/ .
Monaghan, Terry, ” ”Stompin’ At the Savoy – Remembering, Researching and Re- enacting the Lindy Hop’s relationship to Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom,” in Dancing at the Crossroads: African Diasporic Dances in Britain: Conference Proceedings, ed. Terry Monaghan and Eileen Feeney (London: London Metropolitan University, Sir John Cass Dept. of Art, Media, and Design, 2005).
Moran, Delaney, “ “Never Looking at Your Face, Only at Your Feet:” Race Relations at the Savoy Ballroom: 1926-1958,” The Concord Review 24, no. 3 (Spring 2014).
Nachman, Gerald, Right Here on Our Stage Tonight: Ed Sullivan’s America (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2009).
Stearns, Marshall and Jean, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994).
Wells, Christi Jay, Between Beats: The Jazz Tradition and Black Vernacular Dance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). Kindle edition.
Wells, Christopher J., “ “Go Harlem!” Chick Webb and His Dancing Audience During the Great Depression,“ PhD diss., (University of North Carolina, 2014).
Interviews
Albert ‘Al’ Minns, interview by Swedish Swing Society (Lennart Westerlund, Henning Sörensen and Anders Lind), New York, between the end of May and the beginning of June, 1984. The present writer has a copy of it.
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