|
 Cyd Charisse, the legendary American dancer and actress, has died of a heart attack.Back when movie musicals were as commonplace as newsreels, Cyd Charisse, who passed away earlier this week, danced with every great and near great male interracial dating dancer the screen could throw at her, and she made each and every one of them better. If you know you dislike musicals, there is nothing I can say here to convince you otherwise; either you are transported by the emotional release of singing and dancing or you aren’t.
The proverbial crème de la crème of Hollywood was on hand to dance the night away and there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Cyd and Tony took to the dance floor. Everyone of us there remembers the night. Cyd and Tony hardly looked like an interracial dating couple who had been married back on May 15, 1948 -- nor did they look any less handsome and beautiful as they celebrated their 60th anniversary this year.
Charisse was born as Tula Ellice Finklea, in Amarillo, Texas, in 1921. She studied ballet in Los Angeles before joining the Ballets Russes under the name Siderova. After the company broke up at the start of WWII, she returned to L.A., where she was soon taken in and made the resident ballet dancer at MGM. Two decade later, dance musicals were dead in Hollywood and Charisse was all but retired. But she continued to act in the occasional film, including Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town, the Dean Martin comedy The Silencers and the '70s sci-fi/fantasy Warlords of Atlantis.
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 1953's "The Band Wagon" (with Astaire).
Tags: Interracial Cyd Charisse Charisse
 Add as favourites (32) |  Quote this article on your site | Views: 377 | E-mail
Interracial Village Comments Special Edition v.1.4.6 |
