Posted on 06/17/2008 2:48:47 PM PDT by lunarbicep
Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died Tuesday. She was 86.
Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.
She appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.
Classically trained, she could dance anything, from a pas de deux in 1946's "Ziegfeld Follies" to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1956's "The Band Wagon" (with Astaire).
She also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on television and in nightclub appearances with her husband, singer Tony Martin.
Her height was 5 feet, 6 inches, but in high heels and full-length stockings, she seemed serenely tall, and she moved with extraordinary grace. Her flawless beauty and jet-black hair contributed to an aura of perfection that Astaire described in his 1959 memoir, "Steps in Time," as "beautiful dynamite."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Classy lady. RIP!
this thread needs pictures - she was a babe
Now she was strikely beautiful in “Singing in the Rain”.
I fell in love with her in Brigadoon
texas-women.
Now, THOSE are a nice set of gams!
A hug talent....I think she was Astaires best partner by far; and the only female partner to push him ability wise (my apologies to Ginger fans).
I want this woman when I get to heaven.
She may have had great legs, but it's your Freudian slip that's showing....#8-)
RIP
Another Hollywood legend passes into history. Rest in peace, Miss Charisse.
Can anybody post that photo of her from “Singing in the Rain” where she is in the foreground and Kelly is in the background.
(I don’t know how to post photos)
Pictures like these help us in our own mortality ... I’ve always wondered what I’d age to ... what I’d look like at 65.
It be interesting to see a photo of her from her broadway stint when she was in her seventies.
Farewell to a beautiful, classy lady...a long life, well lived. We dare not ask for more than that.
RIP, Cyd.
“She’s got legs, and she knows how to use them.”
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