Show Has Nicholas Brothers on Tap : Television: In a program on KOCE tonight, the pair talk about their unique dance style--and film clips let you see them in action.

“Showstoppers” isn’t a figure of speech when talk turns to the tapping Nicholas Brothers.

Take “Down Argentine Way,” one of several 1930s and ‘40s movie musicals in which Fayard Nicholas and his younger brother, Harold, danced their way to fame. Projectionists had to rewind the film to replay the pair’s dazzling acrobatic routine for whistling, foot-stamping fans clamoring for another view.

“At some theaters, they had to do it twice,” Fayard says. “Right after that, 20th-Century Fox gave us a five-year contract.”

Now a spry 80, Fayard makes the comment in “Straight Up: The Nicholas Brothers,” a 30-minute program airing tonight at 9 on KOCE Channel 50 for Black History Month.

Much of the show, produced in 1993 by Howard University Public Television, is an intimate interview with the swingin’ siblings.

There’s also enough vintage footage from their films to clearly illustrate their idiosyncratic tap style--which mixed balletic grace, leaps and turns with intricate footwork and flashy acrobatics--and to indicate what drove fans wild.

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In a scene from “Stormy Weather” (1943), the brothers exuberantly leapfrog down a series of big steps, jumping high above each other’s head in a full split and landing in a full split. They dance back to the top of the steps, then slide down separate ramps, again in the splits, their trademark move.

The program also includes their dance routines from “Down Argentine Way,” made in 1940, and “The Great American Broadcast” and “Sun Valley Serenade,” both from 1941 and which starred Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda, Cesar Romero, Sonja Henie and others.

Fayard taught himself to dance by watching such famed ‘20s entertainers as Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, first in vaudeville, where his parents were pit-band musicians, then in films.

“Never had a lesson. Saved a lot of money, didn’t I?” he says with characteristic glee in “Straight Up.”

In “Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories, 1900-1955,” author Rusty E. Frank quotes Fayard on his boyhood attraction to show-biz:

“I used to say, ‘My, they’re having fun up there! I would like to be doing something like that.’ There was a guy--his name was Jack Wiggins--and he . . . did a split--goin’ down and comin’ up. So I tried that. I did it the first time, and it worked out all right. I was a limber little guy! Do you know, I was doing splits before I became a professional. I used to just walk down the street and jump over a fireplug or something into a split.”

After Fayard taught Harold, six years his junior, to dance, the two began performing professionally in Philadelphia when Fayard was about 11.

Three years later, the brothers had their first gig at Harlem’s renowned Cotton Club. There, they were first called “showstoppers” and had an early, up-close encounter with racism.

Leading black entertainers exclusively took the club’s stage, but with rare exception, only whites were allowed in the audience. That changed when in 1936 the club moved to downtown New York City and all were permitted inside.

The brothers say black artists, particularly those widely recognized from films, suffered less from racism than blacks outside of the industry. Still, says Harold, 74, in Hollywood, “there were things you couldn’t do or they wouldn’t let you.”

Fayard adds that white actors “would do a whole script--all the talking, all the singing. They weren’t writing dialogue for blacks unless they were chauffeurs or maids. . . . We never had any (major or starring) speaking parts in motion pictures, and we wanted to act like everybody else.”

In a recent phone interview from his Woodland Hills home, Fayard said that had the Nicholas Brothers been white dancers with enough appeal to literally stop the show, a la “Down Argentine Way,” the studio would have “had us starring in films. They would have said, ‘Sure, make stars of these two fellows.’ ”

Still, “I’ve always said ever since I started in show business that it shouldn’t be this thing about black and white,” he said. “My brother and I, we never thought that way, and when we were on the stage and people were looking at us, they were looking at the talent of the Nicholas Brothers, not the black Nicholas Brothers or the white Nicholas Brothers.

“Today’s it’s different,” Fayard added. “You have many black people starring in everything you can think of. . . . The Nicholas Brothers and other black artists of that time were the pioneers; we made it possible for black people today to do what they’re doing, and I’m proud of what’s happening.”

Both still perform on stage now and then, despite Fayard’s surgery in 1985 to replace both of his arthritic hips.

“I was just going to give up, because I couldn’t walk, let alone perform,” he said. “It was frustrating. But I kept my faith, and you should see me now, you won’t believe--at this age, with all this energy.”

* “Straight Up: The Nicholas Brothers” airs tonight at 9 on KOCE Channel 50.