CYD CHARISSE
(March 8, 1922-June 17, 2008)
By Nigel Lythgoe
By her own words, Cyd Charisse wasn't a great actress. She also didn't sing well and was usually dubbed. She was, however, one of the most elegant dancers to perform in movies, from her big break in Singin' in the Rain (1952) to The Band Wagon (1953) to Silk Stockings (1957).
Her high heels gave her a statuesque quality that belied the fact that she was only 5 feet 6 inches. Her beauty and jet-black hair contributed to the impression of perfection that Fred Astaire described as ''beautiful dynamite'' — a fact I was unaware of when she exploded at me, then an 18-year-old dancer, for lifting her badly whilst filming a TV show in 1969. ''Not so tight, you'll leave marks,'' she admonished as my hand roughly grabbed under her armpit. When asked about dancing with her more famous partners, she once commented, ''If I was black and blue, it was Gene. And if it was Fred, I didn't have a scratch.'' I guess I was more Gene.
Charisse, 86, died of a heart attack in L.A.
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