Actress And Dancer Cyd Charisse Passes Away
Cyd Charisse was a famous actress and dancer who often partnered up with some of the most famous leading men that included Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in many of the 1950’s musicals. She died Tuesday in the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from a heart attack. She was 86 years old.
Astaire called Ms. Charisse a “beautiful dynamite,” adding, “When you’ve danced with her, you stay danced with.” Their elegant duet of “Dancing in the Dark” in “The Band Wagon” (1953) was a peerless display of romance set to music. In another sequence, she proved dangerous as a barroom seductress in a satire of Mickey Spillane.
Her breakthrough came a year earlier in “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) opposite Kelly. She was not the star of the movie and in fact had no dialogue. But she was a bewitching presence in the “Broadway Melody” finale, playing both a dangerously leggy gun moll in a green flapper dress and the chaste dancer in a white tutu whose long scarf floats in the air with the aid of a wind machine.
The performance elevated the Texas beauty to the front rank of movie musical performers and showcased her ability to portray both sizzling seduction and cold, elusive elegance. Ms. Charisse became Kelly’s co-star in “Brigadoon” (1954) and “It’s Always Fair Weather” (1955) and played a Russian efficiency expert opposite Astaire in “Silk Stockings” (1957), a charmless remake of “Ninotchka” with Ms. Charisse in the Greta Garbo role.
At 5-feet-6-inches - taller in heels - she was the picture of balletic grace, whether her partner was the athletic Kelly or the aristocratic Astaire. Kelly, she told the New York Times, “was more of a physical dancer. He pulled you around and was strong enough to do lifts.” Astaire, she said, “moved like glass. Physically, it was easy to dance with him.”
The admiration was mutual. “She wasn’t a tap dancer, she’s just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did,” Astaire said in a 1983 interview. “When we were dancing, we didn’t know what time it was.”
In addition to her dramatic roles in the post-musical era, Ms. Charisse made TV specials and appeared in a nightclub act with her second husband, singer-actor Tony Martin. Survivors include her husband of 60 years, who continues to perform at 95; a son from her first marriage, Nicky Charisse, and a son from her second marriage, Tony Martin Jr.; and two grandchildren.