Page 9 - Litteratteur Redefining World December issue

Litterateur redefining world December 2020

Jack Foley's Father
John Harold Aloysius
("Jack") Foley: 1895-1967.
FATHER

Jack Foley about his father

Once, in the hospital:

There were several Foley children in my
"I got all charged up father's family. "We were fairmers" -
farmers -my father told me. They were
and danced up the hill living in Elmira, NY. He was, I believe,
the youngest, "the baby of the family,"
and fell on the ice-- his sister said. His brother, Wayne,
somehow learned to tap dance. He
that's what got me here" taught the art to my father and helped
him to enter the dazzling world of show
he found it funny business. My father performed in
vaudeville as well as in one of the last
that the very things minstrel companies, presided over by

George "Honeyboy" Evans. He
in which he delighted most appeared primarily in shows produced

by his mentor, George M. Cohan, the
drink and dance producer of the "Honeyboy" Evans

show. My father's sister Goldie was
(he was Irish after all) part of that world too. She was a
Ziegfeld Follies girl, a spectacular
laid him low beauty (my father would say, "a swell-
lookin' dame"), and perhaps in some
he was the moving glamorous shadow sense the love of my father's life. "We'd
go everywhere together," he told me,
that stayed in the spotlight reminiscing. "Everybody thought we

were sweethearts." Pause. "But we
of my childhood weren't." He was hardly a sophisticate.

He used to tell the story of being in the
and moves in me still subway as a young man and seeing a
sign saying "Smoking Prohibited." He
as I sing was with a friend who wanted to

smoke. My father told his friend the
as I dance sign meant

as I sing

as I dance

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