Cyd Charisse was more than just a dazzling presence in Hollywood’s Golden Age, she was a force of elegance and precision, a dancer whose every movement seemed effortlessly fluid yet impossibly precise.
In the 1950s, she became one of the most sought-after stars of movie musicals, sharing the screen with legends like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon (1953).
But it wasn’t just her skill that made her famous: her legs became almost as iconic as her performances. Long, impossibly sculpted, and the envy of Hollywood, they were insured for an astounding $5 million in 1952, a fortune at the time.
The story of her insured legs became the stuff of legend, adding to the mystique of a woman whose very presence embodied glamour.
Decades later, this remarkable distinction earned her a place in the 2001 Guinness Book of World Records under “Most Valuable Legs“.
Born Tula Ellice Finklea in 1928, Cyd Charisse grew up in Amarillo, Texas, as the daughter of Lela (née Norwood) and Ernest Enos Finklea, a jeweler.
As a child, she battled polio, and to regain her strength, she was encouraged to take up dance. What began as a form of physical therapy soon became a lifelong passion.
By the age of 12, she was training in ballet in Los Angeles, and as a teenager, she toured with the prestigious Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, gaining valuable stage experience.
Her transition to Hollywood began in 1943 when she made her film debut under the name Lily Norwood, performing in a ballet sequence in Something to Shout About.
Her talent quickly caught the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which signed her in 1946 and suggested she adopt the stage name Cyd Charisse, inspired by her childhood nickname, “Sid.”
That same year, she appeared alongside Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls (1946), followed by a role in Words and Music (1948).
It was Singin’ in the Rain (1952) that turned her into a star. Though she had no lines, her brief but mesmerizing dance with Gene Kelly became one of the film’s most memorable moments, showing her elegance, precision, and magnetic screen presence.
Following that success, she starred opposite Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon (1953), where her sultry and dazzling performance earned high praise.
Critic Pauline Kael famously remarked that “when the bespangled Charisse wraps her phenomenal legs around Astaire, she can be forgiven everything, even her three minutes of ‘classical’ ballet and the fact that she reads her lines as if she learned them phonetically.”
While Charisse’s strength was undeniably in dance, her acting abilities were more limited, and as the popularity of movie musicals declined in the 1960s, film roles became scarce.
She reinvented herself alongside her second husband, singer Tony Martin, as part of a nightclub cabaret act, touring internationally from 1963.
In 1976, the couple co-wrote The Two of Us, a joint autobiography reflecting on their careers and marriage.
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On June 16, 2008, Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after suffering a heart attack.
She passed away the following day at the age of 86, leaving behind a legacy as one of Hollywood’s most mesmerizing dancers, remembered for her grace, talent, and the legendary legs that helped define an era of musical cinema.
(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / Britannica / RHP / Flickr).