Pan Sexual Biography

Born to Greek immigrants in Memphis, Hermes Panagiotopoulos copied dance moves from the black people who worked for his parents and at 14 was already performing at speakeasies in New York. Chopping his surname down to a single syllable, Hermes Pan landed in Hollywood and, at 23, assisted on the dance sequences for Flying Down to Rio. Thus began a lifelong friendship with his lookalike Fred Astaire for whom he sometimes doubled. Among the 80+ other projects he choreographed are Top Hat, Kiss Me Kate, Pal Joey, Porgy & Bess, The Blue Angel, The Pink Panther, Cleopatra, and My Fair Lady. Alas, the freedom and ease of his dancing was wholly missing in his repressed personal life. A devout Roman Catholic, he hated to disappoint his beloved mother, and internalized her disapproval. Invited to an all-male party by Cardinal Spellman, Hermes was shocked by the gay revelry and pushed himself deeper in the closet. Eventually, decades later, he did let himself have a longterm relationship with a dancer named Gino Malerba but they never lived together. Much credit is due to John Franceschina and Oxford University Press for finally incorporating Hermes' gay life in the recent biography Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire [Kindle] -- indeed, even gay Hollywood expert William J. Mann wrongly identified the super secretive Hermes as hetero in Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969. Some critics found the narrative "plodding" or "boring" or "interesting" yet Hermes' star quality shines through. Dance Magazine said, "Pan’s great skill, asserts Franceschina, lay in his dance-transmogrifications of mundane life situations. His vitality, work ethic, and ability to please both chorus girls and studio bosses cemented his career. Handsome and slender, a bizarre doppelganger for Astaire, Pan, a gay man, became an A-list party-goer, the frequent escort of Rita Hayworth." 

Comments

[George Strum]

At least there is a biography written on this dancing genius, boring as it may be. Boring in the sense that it doesn't tell all the sensual details but he gives factual details on how Hermes approached each song, dance by dance and to lay men not into theatre or dance this could be plodding.

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