Cyd Charisse

Cyd Charisse, born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922, in Amarillo, Texas, was an American dancer and actress whose career spanned film, television, and Broadway. Her father, Ernest Enos Finklea Sr., worked as a jeweler, and her mother was Lela, née Norwood. The nickname "Sid," later spelled "Cyd" by producer Arthur Freed, originated with her older brother Ernest Jr., who mispronounced "Sis" when attempting to address her.

A bout of polio in childhood led Charisse to begin dance lessons at age six as a means of building physical strength. By twelve she was studying ballet in Los Angeles under Adolph Bolm and Bronislava Nijinska, and at fourteen she auditioned for and joined the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, performing under the stage names "Felia Siderova" and later "Maria Istomina." She received her general education at the Hollywood Professional School. During a European tour with the ballet company, she reconnected with Nico Charisse, a dancer she had previously studied with in Los Angeles. The two married in Paris in 1939 and had a son, Nicky.

The outbreak of World War II brought the ballet company's operations to a close, and upon returning to Los Angeles, Charisse was offered a dancing role by David Lichine in Gregory Ratoff's Something to Shout About (1943) at Columbia. That work brought her to the attention of choreographer Robert Alton, who had also discovered Gene Kelly, and she was subsequently brought into the Freed Unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she became the studio's resident ballet dancer. Her earliest screen appearances had been uncredited, including Escort Girl (1941) and the Warner Bros. short The Gay Parisian (1942), and she continued in uncredited roles at MGM in Mission to Moscow (1943) and Thousands Cheer (1943). She was loaned to Warner Bros. for In Our Time (1944), in which she played a ballerina, and appeared as a ballerina in Ziegfeld Follies, produced in 1944 and released in 1946, dancing alongside Fred Astaire. Her first speaking part came in support of Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls (1946), followed by Three Wise Fools (1946) and Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), in which she danced with Gower Champion to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."

Charisse received second billing in The Unfinished Dance (1947) opposite Margaret O'Brien, though the film underperformed at the box office. Further supporting roles followed in On an Island with You (1948) and Words and Music (1948), and she was borrowed by Universal to take the female lead in The Mark of the Renegade (1951). Her standing at MGM rose considerably with The Wild North (1951), a substantial box office success co-starring Stewart Granger. Because Debbie Reynolds lacked formal dance training, Kelly selected Charisse as his partner for the "Broadway Melody" ballet sequence in Singin' in the Rain (1952), a film widely recognized as one of the greatest musicals ever made.

Her status as a major Hollywood star was cemented by The Band Wagon (1953), directed by Vincente Minnelli, in which she took the lead female role opposite Astaire and performed the celebrated "Dancing in the Dark" and "Girl Hunt Ballet" sequences with him. She co-starred with Kelly in the Scottish-themed Brigadoon (1954), also directed by Minnelli, and again partnered with Kelly in It's Always Fair Weather (1955). Her reunion with Astaire in Silk Stockings (1957), a musical adaptation of the 1939 film Ninotchka in which she assumed the role originated by Greta Garbo, prompted Astaire to describe her in his autobiography as "beautiful dynamite," adding that "when you've danced with her, you stay danced with." In her own autobiography, Charisse offered a detailed comparison of her two most celebrated partners, characterizing Kelly as the more inventive choreographer and Astaire as possessing superior coordination and an uncanny sense of rhythm, while calling both men the greatest dancing personalities ever to appear on screen.

She took a more dramatic turn in Party Girl (1958), playing a showgirl entangled with gangsters and a crooked lawyer, a role that proved more profitable for MGM than her musicals had been. MGM sought to cast her as Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), but Hitchcock chose Eva Marie Saint for the part.

As the Hollywood musical declined in the late 1950s, Charisse stepped back from dancing in films while continuing to work in both film and television. She appeared in Five Golden Hours (1961) and Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town, had a supporting role in the unfinished Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin film Something's Got to Give (1962), and appeared in Assassination in Rome (1965). A striptease number she performed opened the 1966 Dean Martin spy comedy The Silencers, and she played a fashion magazine editor in the 1967 caper film Maroc 7. She was a frequent presence on television variety programming, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Hollywood Palace, which she also hosted on three occasions. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s she guest-starred on series including Medical Center, Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Murder, She Wrote, and Crazy Like a Fox, and appeared in the television movies Portrait of an Escort (1980) and Swimsuit (1989). She also had a cameo in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) and played an Atlantean high priestess in the 1978 fantasy film Warlords of Atlantis.

Charisse made her Broadway debut in 1989, appearing in Grand Hotel. In 1994 she was featured in That's Entertainment! III, contributing to the documentary record of the Hollywood musical. She received the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities in 2006. Cyd Charisse died on June 17, 2008.