Sanding (dance) the box of rosin before matches to improve his grip. Sims' popularity as a tap dancer and career at the Apollo certainly made him one of the most if not the most influential sand-dancer of all time. Sand dancing was also used by the popular comedic vaudeville trio, Wilson, Keppel and Betty. They spread sand over the stage in one of their most well-known numbers, "Sand Dance". In their performance, there was no allusion to African American heritage; rather to the sandy environs of Egypt, a clear inspiration for their number. In spite of this deviation from the African American
20th Century Fox Tierney, which was the highest-grossing Fox film of the 1940s. Fox also produced film versions of Broadway musicals, including the Rodgers and Hammerstein films, beginning with the musical version of "State Fair" (1945), the only work that the partnership wrote especially for films. After the war, and with the advent of television, audiences slowly drifted away. 20th Century-Fox held on to its theaters until a court-mandated "divorce"; they were spun off as Fox National Theaters in 1953. That year, with attendance at half the 1946 level, 20th Century-Fox gambled on an unproven gimmick. Noting that the two film sensations of