Killer Joe
This is a good photograph
The photograph above is a good one by definition because it is a portait by Richard Avedon, a photographer who was at one time so extraordinarily fashionable as to be the the subject of a very successful movie about his early career called “Funny Face.” This starred Fred Astaire as the fashion photographer “Dick Avery.” Avedon supplied some of the still photographs used in the film, including its most famous single image: an over-exposed close-up of Audrey Hepburn (as the “Face” in question) in which only her famous features – her eyes, her eyebrows, and her mouth – are visible.
The snap above is not – you may have guessed – of Audrey Hepburn. Its subject is instead our subject: Frank “Killer Joe” Piro.
If “Upper Italy” had a series on “Italian-Americans who, by passing as some other nationality, made a major contribution to the popular culture of the USA,” Killer Joe would be right up there with José Greco, the famous flamenco dancer who, as “Costanzo Greco,” came from a small town in the Molise region of Southern Italy.
But these Astaire, Hepburn and José Greco red herrings are merely designed to set the stage.
Killer Joe Piro taught America to dance. He, at one time very famously, tutored the Dalai Lama on how to do the “monkey” and his other students included – but were hardly limited to – the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, President Johnson’s daughter Lucy, Eva Gabor, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Happy Rockefeller and the Aga Khan.
These people came to Killer Joe to learn how to dance the mule, the mambo and the mashed potatoes, not to mention the boogaloo, the watusi, the twist, the pachanga and the cha cha cha. He was the most famous dancing master of his age, which is to say, the U.S. in the ‘50s and early ‘60s.
His story is a quintessentially American one, an interesting mixture of grint, native talent and simple wackiness. Born Frank Piro in New York City in 1910, he got his break during World War II while serving in the U.S. Navy. He won a national jitterbug contest in 1942 and parlayed this into a transfer from active service
to Broadway’s equivalent of the Hollywood Canteen. There he was able to jitterbug with the stars as a way of helping keep morale up on the home front. Joe appears in his combat role here on the left.
You might want to read the nice bio note about him (here).
The “Killer Joe” nickname comes from a supposed ability to wear out one partner after the other on the dance floor. It has been suggested that the John Travolta role in “Saturday Night Fever” owes more than a little to Piro. Certainly, that kind of “challenge” dancing, Terpsichore as Tai-Kwan-Do, fits well with the man and with the aggressive era during which he became famous.
And he was famous. As the author of the bio note we sent you to above points out: “His fame somehow spread far enough to inspire a Filipino guitar band, the Rocky Fellers, to record a tribute tune, ‘Killer Joe,’ for Scepter Records in 1963. The record earned the band, which was enjoying a brief burst of success in the US, a spot on the Top 40 pop charts for a few weeks.”
In the mid ‘60s he appeared regularly on a national television show, “That Was the Week that Was,” to teach the “latest steps” to the public and his doings were closely monitored by Time Magazine, then at the height of its influence. Killer Joe figures here in an excerpt from Time’s somewhat breathless coverage of Jackie Kennedy’s first frivolous outing, ten months after the assassination of her husband:
...The dancing began to Cole Porter records, but that was not what the gang had come for. “The fastest music you’ve got,” ordered Jackie. She shed her sleeveless ermine jacket to reveal a glistening white crepe sheath, did the frug with John Barry Ryan III, the Watusi with Dance Instructor Killer Joe Piro. “All my nieces and nephews do these dances so well,” she said. “I’d like to do them well too.” Said Killer Joe later: “She’s best at the twist. The other dances are new to her”...
That was in October of 1965, but Time had been all over the man for years. This plug, from an article called “Cuba’s Revenge,” about a now forgotten dance craze, appeared in late May 1961:
...The cause of the uproar was a seismic new dance called La Pachanga—Caribbean slang for “wild party” ... a dance whose gyrations suggested a meringue blended with the samba, Charleston and Bunny Hop. Early this year Bandleader José Fajado brought La Pachanga to the Palladium and Dancing Instructor “Killer Joe” Piro began teaching it there. Killer Joe feels that the dance is too complex for definition, but an executive of the Fred Astaire Dance Studios describes it easily as “two basic movements, a swinging from side to side and a style of truckin’ done in half time, with infinite variations”...
It would be easy from that kind of coverage to acquire the idea that the King of Latin Dance Instructors, bop-meister to the beautiful people and social icon, was himself a Cuban. Many people did. When his memory was rescued years later – in 1999 – by the Smithsonian Institution, it honored him among Cuban musicians for their contributions to the evolution of the Mambo and Afro-Cuban jazz, apparently believing it had got him on the right list…
But if Killer Joe deserved his success and fought his way to the top with years of sweat and sore feet, he also managed to achieve overnight obscurity. By 1966, just a year from teaching Jackie to boogaloo, he had vanished from the public eye, his last credit being as choreographer for a film with animated puppets called “Mad Monster Party” – see (here) – released in the Spring of 1967.
This cinema classic merits a brief description before we move on. The plot turns on the decision of a mad scientist, Baron Boris Von Frankenstein, to organize a surprise party for his monster associates with the intention of announcing that he will retire as their leader and pass his powers and special knowledge to a clueless nephew, Felix Flanken, an American drugstore clerk.
Here is some sample dialogue as the Baron discusses progress on the invitations with his sultry secretary, Francesca:
FRANCESCA:
But we did receive a strange letter from a Felix…Flanken. He says he’s anxious to meet all the FUN PEOPLE. Does he mean Dracula and the Werewolf?
BARON BORIS VON FRANKENSTEIN:
Felix Flanken is a mere human. He doesn’t know what kind of friends we have. But I wanted him to come because he is my nephew!
FRANCESCA:
Nephew??
BARON BORIS VON FRANKENSTEIN:
My sister was the WHITE SHEEP of the family. Years ago she ran away from Transylvania to the United States with a traveling medicine man. They’re both dead now, and their son Felix is my only living relative – and heir! I am tired of the horror business. I’m going to retire. Now that I’ve discovered the power to destroy all matter, I want to quit while I’m ahead. Have some coffee.
Time Magazine does not appear to have reviewed the film. There is no reason to believe that Jackie Kennedy, Truman Capote, John Kenneth Galbraith or Gore Vidal, Peter Lawford or Princess Lee Radziwell bothered to come to the opening. Killer Joe was gone, yesterday’s celebrity in the space of a few months time.
Some observers believe he was done in by the sudden rise of discotheques, a new kind of night spot that did not, strictly speaking, require any special knowledge of dancing to go out on the floor. More probably he was blind-sided by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, whose arrival showed in the clearest possible way that the big money was no longer with Latin mambo bands and their conga drums.
Frank Piro, an Italo-American with Cuban professional leanings, died in New York City on February 5, 1989.