Dixie Roberts

After one performance in 1946, Roberts had a surprise visit from Gene Kelly, who made his way backstage to tell her what a good dancer he thought she was. They went out to Armando's in New York, afterwards, and he tried to convince her to go to Hollywood, but she stayed on the East Coast.

Roberts was a specialty performer in the 1944 Broadway show, Dream with Music, in which she danced with Vera Zorina, wife of George Balanchine, the ballet choreographer for the show; and worked with Henry LeTang, the show's tap choreographer.

Roberts was also a prizewinning athlete, New York State Cue Champion, and expert riflewoman. An A.A.U. swimming champ, Roberts was invited to train for the Olympic swim team, an offer her father did not let her accept. In 1943, Physical Culture magazine reported that, as a youngster in upstate New York, Roberts was "the best feminine baseball player in the county, and was hard to beat at tennis, basketball and swimming". Similarly, the Sunday Mirror reported that 22-year-old Roberts, "once had a run of 93 in three cushion billiards, bowls a neat 200 and finished last season batting .405 ... and has the trophies to prove it ... She has won 11 plaques for excellence in sports since she's been in show business, and her accomplishments range from swimming and track to stud poker. There's a popular belief that men don't like athletic girls, but Dixie belies it. She's probably the most popular dame in the show, in a cast of 50 expensive stunners."

Roberts was a specialist tap dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943, at the Winter Garden Theater, in which she partnered with Milton Berle in one of her dance numbers. She and Berle played pool after matinees and later she was a guest on his NBC Television show.

In 1939, at age 20, Roberts taught and performed on weekends at Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel, which was the inspiration for "Kellerman's Resort" in the movie Dirty Dancing.

Roberts was on Showboat on NBC Television, in 1939.

A professional dancer at age 16, Roberts' first job was at the Paramount Theatre in New York, dancing with the Tommy Dorsey Band in 1935. She and her partner were one of the five acts on the bill with the band. She danced with Horace Nichols, with whom she had earlier won the title, "King and Queen of Shag" at the Paramount Theatre, N.Y.

Dixie Roberts (1919-2010) was a vaudeville tap and specialty dancer, who also danced in chorus lines and performed musical comedy. A featured dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, she was often billed as the dancer who "taps with a Southern accent", although she was born in Elmhurst, New York. She explained her moniker, saying that she was conceived in her mother's hometown of Atlanta. Roberts grew up on Long Island and also in upstate New York, where she learned to dance and became an accomplished athlete before her years of touring the U.S. as an entertainer.