‘Killer Joe’ Frank Piro; Dancer, Teacher

Frank Piro, whose dance floor pyrotechnics and seemingly endless endurance earned him the sobriquet “Killer Joe,” died Tuesday of kidney disease in a New York City hospital.

The frenetic dancer was 68 and for years had taught high society figures everything from the cha-cha to the hully-gully.

Piro was a plastics designer when he joined the Coast Guard during World War II. And although he had won several Harvest Moon Ball competitions, he was unknown outside the world of ballroom dances. But thanks to publicity given the wartime USO canteens of New York and Hollywood and subsequent stage and television performances, he began a whirlwind career that ended only with his failing health.

For decades, the short, sinewy dancer taught at his Manhattan studio during the day and then made nightly rounds of parties and clubs. Always a step ahead of fashion, Piro taught the mambo, the cha-cha and the merengue, then the twist, the frug, the frog and the watusi.

His students included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Luci Baines Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson, not to mention such other dancers as Dame Margot Fonteyn and Ray Bolger.

He was called “killer” because of his ability to wear down a series of partners over several hours of dancing.

Piro was born in East Harlem, the son of an Italian tailor. He said he was “skinny and ugly” and in order to meet girls took up dancing at a neighborhood social club.

He dropped out of school after the eighth grade, working at construction jobs and plastics designing. Meanwhile, he kept winning Harlem dance contests, including the 1942 National Jitterbug Championship at the Harvest Moon Ball.

After his discharge from the Coast Guard after World War II, Piro began entering and winning so many dance contests at the Palladium in Manhattan that management there offered him $15 a week to teach dancing--and stop competing.

Piro is a former board member of the Friars Club. Survivors include his wife Lucienne, a daughter, a stepson and two sisters.