Born in 1913 as John LeRoy Schotte and later renamed Hal Leroy, was one of only a very few white's dancers who visited the Hoofers Club and only because he was taken there the great Bill Robinson. It is doubtful whether some one successful and white would ever venture into such a place with out an invite.

He experienced a short period fame in the thirties with his unorthodox lego-mania Tap Dancing style at the height of Tap Dancing popularity that was dominating the stage and screen of that time. Hal Leroy was also a very competent straight Tap dancer, but there were many of them around at the time so he emphasised his lego-mainia abilities, as it was some thing very peculiar and original on screen.

Leroy appeared in many movie shorts and also in a small number of major productions, which came along much later in his career. He was one of the few if not the only dancer that found fame with a very unconventional style of Tap Dancing.

He appeared in the stage performance of the Ziegfeld Follies in the early 1930's before it hit the big screen, although he did not appear in the film version. Hal Leroy mostly appeared as him self in the movie shorts, which was a little unusual, but must have had some thing to do with his screen persona.

Hal Leroy struck up a friendship with Bill Robinson as they worked together in the same theatre circuits and at the some of the same movie companies where Leroy made his numerous movie shorts. Although, they never got the opportunity to appeared together in the same film. It was very rare for black and white big named performers to appear together in the same production unless the black artist was playing a lesser part and only under certain conditions were both black and white dancers featured in the same movie.