I am almost a year late with this post. Cyd Charisse died in June of last year. Some how, I did not learn of her passing until a couple of months ago. At the time I was deep in tax season, and not updating my blog very frequently. But now I am trying to catch up.
Growing up in the 50′s, movies were our primary form of entertainment in Peoria, IL. As they say, Vaudeville was dead, and we had no ballet, or professional theater companies. So, we went to the movies. While I probably wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, I liked all movies, even the musicals. The early 50′s were the golden years of movie musicals and I love the Astair and Gene Kelly films. In those years, the queen of female dance partners was Cyd Charisse. Cyd danced with both Astaire and Kelly in multiple films. Classically trained as a dancer in the Ballet Russe, Cyd was a beautiful site in films. With her dark hair, she resembled Ava Gardner. I do remember that Cyd was one of my Dad’s favorites. The classic Cyd Charisse dance number, for me, is this one from the 1953 film “The Bandwagon”:
Dancing in the dark is a smple elegant number. There are no tricks, no fancy moves, no extreme costumes, just a well choreographed number that shows Astaire’s grace, and Cyd’s beauty and classic training. While this is my favorite Cyd Charisse dance, it is hardly the only one I like. Other great films include “Silk Stockings” (also with Astaire), check out the Red-blues number. She also danced all over the highlands of Scotland in “Brigadoon” with Gene Kelly. And in “Singing in the Rain”, while Debbie Reynolds was the star, when Gene Kelly filmed the ballet number, Broadway Melody, near the end of the film, he wanted a “real” dancer and brought in Cyd. Check it out:
This isn’t the whole dance, the Broadway Melody number is about 10 minutes long, and Cyd has at least 3 different costumes in the dance. Cyd was offered the opportunity to play opposite Kelly in “American in Paris”, but had to drop out because she was pregnant. That role went to the Paris Opera Ballet dancer Leslie Caron. Cyd Charisse was an American Dancer, and her work is still seen today in movies that are classics, and have stood the test of time. I don’t think we will ever see the likes of her, or Astaire, or Kelly again. They were a period in time in the middle of the 20th century that saw some of the greatest creativity in American music and dance.
