The actress and dancer Cyd Charrise, who was famous for her
roles in MGM musicals, died in LA at the Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center on Monday. Her publicist
said that, apparently, the cause of death was a hear attack.
Cyd Charris was 86 and she has just celebrated her 60th
wedding anniversary with her second husband, singer Tony Martin.
Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922,
in Amarillo, Texas. Hollywood's
greatest dancer of all times first studied classical dancing. She was in the
Russian Ballet in Monte-Carlo and worked with David Lichine and Leonid Massine,
using the names Felia Sidorova and Maria Istomina.
She married her ex-dance teacher, Nico Charisse, in 1939. In
1943, David Lichine asked her to appear in her first movie ballet, in
"Something to shout about" and during the same year, she played a
Bolchoï dancer in "Mission to Moscow", by Michael
Curtiz.
Bur her real fame came in 1952, with her appearance in the
Broadway Melody Ballet scene, with Gene Kelly, in the most famous musical ever "Singin'
in the rain".
In 1952 she already had a $5-million insurance policy
accepted on her legs.
Shortly after, she joined Fred Astaire in the 1953 film “The
Band Wagon”, directed by Vincente Minnelli. Later in his memoir, Fred Astaire described
Cyd Charisse as a "beautiful dynamite."
After another two movies with Gene Kelly “Brigadoon” and
“It’s Always Fair Weather”, Cyd Charisse joined Fred Astaire in 1957 for the
musical classic “Silk Stockings”
“I never thought of myself as a ‘Star’, not even after I
made my biggest films,” said once Cyd.
“Perhaps that’s because I am basically an introvert. I knew that I loved working,
performing. What the public made of it was their business. I hoped that they
liked me and admired my work, of course, but that pedestal they stuck me up on
was insignificant in my view.”
In 2006, President George W. Bush presented Cyd Charisse
with the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities, the highest official U.S. honor for
arts and humanities.
She is survived by her husband, Tony Martin, to whom she
married in 1948.
