“Crip” Heard: The One-Armed, One-Legged Dancer

Okay, I thought I’d seen everything — or at least I thought I’d seen the upper limit in the line of differently-abled tap dancers in the person of Peg Leg Bates. Uh-uh. The other day I was watching the very cool artifact Boarding House Blues (1948) and comes the scene of the big talent show (to raise money for the rent – -same old story), when, from out of nowhere, the first act in the show is THIS man.

Born in Cuba in 1923, Henry Heard became a professional dancer at around age 13. He lost his right arm and right leg in an automobile and train accident in Memphis, Tennessee in either 1938 or 1941 (I’ve seen both accounts). But he just kept on plugging; so remarkable was the visual impression of his act that he became a headliner in black vaudeville and nightclubs.

Still, Heard seemed a magnet for bad luck. In 1959 he was robbed of a thousand dollars on his way to a gig in Canada. What kind of person robs a man with missing limbs? The following year, he suffered a bad fall as the result of a stroke, breaking several bones. Head retired from show business in 1971, and passed away 20 years later.

Crip Heard’s major day in the sun came in that appearance in Boarding House Blues. The producers made the mistake of putting him on first. Talk about an impossible act to follow.

To find out more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. And please stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.