Juanita Pitts

Biography

Juanita Pitts was an African-American tap dancer. During performances, she was known to wear a tuxedo and Oxford shoes, which was common attire for male tap dancers at the time. However, during her life she "danced in relative obscurity". Pitts was from Philadelphia and performed on stage and in clubs as a headliner, mainly in the 1930s and 1940s. She danced an act titled "Pitts and Pitts" and performed with her husband, Leroy, until he became ill. Pitts wore men's suits while performing, including a white three-piece suit, and she "had a style of close-to-the-floor rhythm tapping". In 1945, she appeared in the short film It Happened in Harlem, credited on movie posters as "Pitter-Patter" Pitts. Her dancing career continued on into the mid-1950s, and she performed at the Howard Theatre in the 1950s as well as at smaller clubs and the Apollo in New York City.

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