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Pan was born Hermes Panagiotopoulos in 1910 in Nashville, Tennessee, of Greek and Irish extraction. His father was from Aigio in Peloponnese where his family had opened the first theatre; he was sent to Memphis, Tennessee as the Greek consul - never to return to Greece. Following the death of his father, his uncle held them at gun point and burnt all their shares and money on the grounds that if he could not have them, no one would. Hermes and his sister Vasso were eventually raised Catholic by his mother, the former Mary Huston. They moved penniless to the poorest area of New York where Hermes learnt his first tap dancing steps on the streets from local black children. At their lowest ebb, the family had only some potatoes and coffee for their meal; since that day they vowed to commemorate it and evey year, on the same day, shared the same frugal meal. Eventually, he headed with his sister West to Los Angeles, California. His career began with an appearance as a chorus boy in 1928 in the Marx Brothers Broadway production of Animal Crackers, and he also performed in a dance partnership with his sister Vasso, who subsequently appeared in the chorus of many of the Astaire-Rogers pictures. He first met Ginger Rogers in 1930, when he appeared as a chorus singer in the Broadway musical Top Speed.
He met Fred Astaire, whom he physically resembled, on the set of Flying Down to Rio (1933), in which he worked as an assistant to dance director Dave Gould. While Astaire was trying to work out a series of steps for "The Carioca" number, it was suggested to him that Pan had a few ideas and Pan was invited over. Hermes Pan demonstrated a brief break he had picked up from his street days in New York and from then on the two began a lifelong professional collaboration and friendship which included all the RKO Astaire pictures, including A Damsel in Distress (1937) in which Ginger Rogers did not appear, and for which he was awarded the 1937 Academy Award for Best Dance Direction. He had previously received Academy Award nominations for the "Top Hat" and "The Piccolino" numbers from Top Hat (1935) and for the "Bojangles of Harlem"` number from Swing Time (1936).
The Astaire-Pan collaboration, involving 17 out of Astaire`s 31 musical films and three of his four television specials, is widely accepted as one of the most important forces in dance choreography of 20th century film and television musicals. Astaire called Pan his "ideas man", and while he generally choreographed his own routines, and sometimes worked with other choreographers, he greatly valued the assistance of Pan not just as a source and critic of ideas, but also as a rehearsal partner for the purposes of fine-tuning a routine.
Given Astaire`s obsessive rehearsal habits, this was no mean task. Pan also performed the essential function of rehearsing Ginger Rogers, whose many other commitments during the filming of the Astaire-Rogers musicals often conflicted with Astaire`s rehearsal schedule. In addition, he recorded Ginger`s taps in post production.
For the spectacular staging of Cleopatra in 1963 starring Elizabeth Taylor, he asked what budget he should work to, he was told to just get on with it and not worry about the money. The result was one of the most spectacular sets in film history.
Pan continued to collaborate with Astaire right up until the latter`s last musical picture, Finian`s Rainbow (1968), which was a disaster on a number of fronts, not le
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