Cleo Hayes

Short Biography

Born on the Delta in Greenville, Mississippi, Cleo escaped to Chicago and got her first job dancing at the Grand Terrace with Earl Hines. After a stint performing at the World's Fair, she took a bus to New York and started at the newly opened Apollo Theater, as one of the Apollo "Rockettes." When the Cotton Club moved to its elegant new home downtown in Times Square, Cleo joined that company. She then traveled with Bertye Lou dancing throughout South America, and later with the first black USO unit during WWII. Cleo recounts that USO tour: how they had to receive their meals out the back doors of the mess halls in the south, and her own personal insurrection: taking "For Colored Only" signs off the trains they rode. After the war, with theaters wanting to cut expenses and chorus line work drying up, Cleo danced while the work lasted — at Broadway's Café Zanzibar, the 845 Club, on tour with Cab Calloway, and in the film "Stormy Weather." Cleo admits to having been a "lazy" chorus dancer, yet we observe, that after this great grandmother takes a tumble down a flight of subway stairs and breaks her arm and knee, she perseveres through months of rehab til she rejoins the Silver Belles troupe and continues her dancing career.