the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show. Film career After 1932, Black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with White audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances. Early films Robinson's film debut was in the 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which sometimes is cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a white actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that. Shirley Temple The idea for bringing a black dancer to Fox to star with Temple in The Little Colonel was first proposed by Fox head Winfield Sheehan after a discussion with D. W. Griffith. Sheehan set his sights on Robinson but, unsure of his ability as an actor, arranged for a contract that was void if Robinson failed the dramatic test. Robinson passed the test and was brought in to star with Temple and to teach her tap dancing. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later: Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we