Cyd Charisse, silky Hollywood dancer

LOS ANGELES - Cyd Charisse, 86, 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 yesterday.

Ms. Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, her publicist, Gene Schwam, said.

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 1953'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."

Astaire, who danced with her in The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings, said of Ms. Charisse in 1983: "She wasn't a tap dancer, she's just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did. When we were dancing, we didn't know what time it was."

She first gained notice as a member of the famed Ballet Russe, and got her start in Hollywood in a ballet sequence in a 1943 Don Ameche-Janet Blair musical, Something to Shout About.

The appearance attracted movie offers for Ms. Charisse, who overcame self-doubt about her acting ability - "I had never acted. So how could I be a movie star?" - to sign a seven-year contract at MGM. She also got a new name, the exotic "Cyd" instead of her lifelong nickname, Sid, to go with her first husband's last name.

The 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain marked a breakthrough. When producer Arthur Freed was dissatisfied with another dancer who had been cast, Ms. Charisse inherited the role and danced with Kelly in the "Broadway Melody" number that climaxed the movie. She stunned critics and audiences with her 25-foot Chinese silk scarf that floated in the air with the aid of a wind machine.

Ms. Charisse also danced with Kelly in Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather, and Invitation to the Dance. Silk Stockings in 1957 marked the end of her dancing career in films, as well as the twilight of the movie musical.

Ms. Charisse continued with dramatic films, several of them made in Europe. She and Martin took their musical act to Las Vegas and elsewhere. In 1992 she made her Broadway debut, taking over the starring role as the unhappy ballerina in the musicalized Grand Hotel.

Her name was Tula Ellice Finklea when she was born in Amarillo, Texas, on March 8, 1922. From her earliest years she was called Sid, because her older brother couldn't say "sister." She was a sickly girl who started dancing lessons to build up her strength after a bout with polio.

At 14 she auditioned for the head of the famed Ballet Russe, and became part of the corps de ballet and toured the United States and Europe. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, a handsome young dancer she had studied with for a time in Los Angeles.

The Ballet Russe disbanded after the war broke out, and the newlyweds returned to Hollywood. In 1942, a son, Nicky, was born.

In 1948, the year after she and Nico divorced, Ms. Charisse married Martin. Her second son, Tony Jr., was born in 1950.

See a Charisse filmography, photographs and more Web links via http://go.philly.com/cyd EndText