LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Cyd Charisse: Fred Astaire
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Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse swing and sway to a luscious Cole Porter score in this musical reworking of the 1939 film Ninotchka. Fred's a producer trying to mount a movie set in Paris, and Cyd is a Soviet apparatchik sent to protect the integrity of Russia's finest composer (who's contributing tunes to Fred's film). This Cold War romantic comedy includes the sinuous standard "All of You."
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Cyd Charisse, a dancer and actor who came to prominence by working in classic MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, will receive one of 10 Medals of Arts Awards from President Bush today in a White House ceremony. The medals, administered by the National Endowment for the Arts, are the nation's highest honor for artistic achievement.
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After ten years dancing on screen, Charisse was finally given a leading role in Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon, now widely considered one of the best musicals ever made, dancing alongside Fred Astaire. She starred with Gene Kelly in Brigadoon and It's Always Fair Weather, and re-teamed with Astaire for Silk Stockings. Charisse was finally a star, but as musicals faded she became more an actress than a dancer. In her first non-musical role, she played the dull but faithful girl looking for Richard Basehart in Tension in 1950, and she had her best dramatic role as the titular Party Girl in 1958, luring gang-connected lawyer Robert Taylor toward a noirishly doomed demise. She often worked on television and on stage through the 1990s, and she appeared in advertisements for Coppertone tanning lotion, General tires, Lustre-Creme shampoo, and Lux toilet soap. Her last film was a 1989 Italian drama, Visioni private (Private Screening).
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"When you've danced with Cyd Charisse, you stay danced with." So said Fred Astaire, in tribute to the ability and allure of his last big-screen dancing partner. Cyd Charisse was the last great musical star to come out of MGM, and she barely made it to stardom before the musical genre began its decline. One of the greatest dancers ever to come out of Hollywood, Charisse worked in movies for almost a decade before being allowed to take center stage in a major musical feature; but when she did, she fairly exploded onscreen in The Band Wagon, Vincente Minnelli's greatest musical.
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Charisse is now principally celebrated for her on-screen pairings with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. She first appeared with Astaire in a brief routine in Ziegfeld Follies (produced in 1944, released in 1946). Her next appearance with him was as lead female role in The Band Wagon (1953) where she danced with Astaire in the acclaimed "Dancing in the Dark" and "Girl Hunt Ballet" routines. In 1957, she rejoined Astaire in the film version of Silk Stockings, a musical remake of 1939's Ninotchka, with Charisse taking over Greta Garbo's famous role. In his autobiography, Astaire paid tribute to Charisse, writing: "That Cyd! When you've danced with her you stay danced with."[2][3]
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A ballet prodigy from childhood, Charisse was featured in the Ballet Russe at age 13. She made her film debut in a handful of musical shorts in 1941. By 1945, she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies and that appearance led her to a seven-year contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over the next few years, but it was Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain (1952) that made her a star. That was followed by her great performance in The Band Wagon (1953) and her signature role, Silk Stockings.
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