Hermes Pan (born Hermes Joseph Panagiotopoulos, December 10, 1909[1] – September 19, 1990) was an American dancer and choreographer, principally remembered as Fred Astaire's choreographic collaborator on the famous 1930s movie musicals starring Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, as the son of a Greek immigrant and an American woman from the South, Pan moved to New York City with his family when he was 14.

[2] In 1895, at the age of twenty-seven, Pantelis Panagiotopoulos was chosen to represent Aigio at the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in Nashville as a "Greek Consul to the South.

"[4] Initially intending to return to Greece, he stayed in Tennessee after meeting Mary Huston of Nashville in 1900.

In 1903, Pantelis became a United States citizen, he and Mary moved to Memphis, and their first son Panos was born.

In 1915 "Aunt Betty" Clark, the children's African-American nanny, took Hermes to her neighborhood, a black enclave of Nashville, to introduce him to jazz music and tap dance.

Sam, a talented dancer, taught the boy many of the era's popular dances, and Hermes practiced on his own.

Pan's dance career began with an appearance at age 19 as a chorus boy in 1928 in the Marx Brothers Broadway production of Animal Crackers.

Pan first met Ginger Rogers in 1930, when he appeared as a chorus singer in the Broadway musical Top Speed.

[12] Pan met Fred Astaire 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", someone told him that Pan had a few ideas, and the dancer was invited over.

In 1937 he received the Academy Award for Best Dance Direction for A Damsel in Distress (1937), in which Joan Fontaine starred with Astaire.

In addition, Pan recorded Ginger's taps in post production on all their movies made after Roberta (1935).

Pan continued to collaborate with Astaire until the latter's last musical picture, Finian's Rainbow (1968), which was a disaster on a number of fronts.

Coppola reintroduced the style of dancing camera of the early 1930s, which Astaire had done so much to banish from the Hollywood musical.

[citation needed] Coppola was embarrassed that Astaire's feet were cropped out on some dance routines when the film was reformatted to 70mm.

[13] Pan's first on-screen appearance is as a clarinetist during the Astaire-Goddard routine, "I Ain't Hep To That Step But I'll Dig It", in Second Chorus (1940).

He became friends with the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who invited him to the country's 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire at Persepolis.