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Cyd Charisse: Movies
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Cyd Charisse was a terrific dancer whose career as a movie song-and-dance woman was cut short by bad luck. She was denied numerous leading roles opportunities because she worked for MGM while Ann Miller was the studio's top starlet, and as Charisse finally achieved the stardom and recognition her dancing deserved, movie musicals faded from popularity, and she became just another Hollywood actress.
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Cyd Charisse was born in Amarillo and lived there until age fourteen, when she moved to California to study dancing. Her most recent starring role was in Grand Hotel, the Broadway musical created by fellow Texan Tommy Tune.
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In recent years Cyd has been frequently called upon to provide information and comments on the great days of the Hollywood musical. She was a major player in the compilation movies "That's Entertainment", and she has provided interviews for DVDs of both "Silk Stockings" and "Something's Got To Give". It is very much to be hoped she will ... provide interviews for forthcoming DVDs, and that those DVDs will feature as 'extras' routines like "Two Faced Woman" from "The Band Wagon" which were cut from the released movie. (The recently issued Region 1 DVD of "The Band Wagon" does contain the "Two Faced Woman" routine as an 'extra'. However this 'extra' is missing from the DVD in Regions 2 and 4, even though in all other respects they are identical to the Region 1 DVD.)
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During the 1960s, she moved her career to Europe for one last dazzling musical film, Black Tights, and onto television, where Charisse became an Emmy-winning performer, and then onto the stage. Luckily for Charisse, she was a good enough actress to credibly work in straight drama and comedy, and was so striking a physical presence that she kept her career going well into the 1970s, including a successful nightclub act with Tony Martin. She scored a hit in the Australian production of No No Nanette in 1972, and she and Martin authored a joint-autobiography, The Two of Us, in 1976. Charisse published a successful workout book in the early '90s, and remains one of the most beloved performers from the world of Hollywood musicals. In 2000, she received the first Nijinsky Award from Princess Caroline of Monaco for her lifelong contribution to dance. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
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Cyd had one further movie before her MGM contract expired. "Party Girl" was a gangster film with a rather sordid premise in which Cyd played a variation on her usual role. (A scene of graphic violence in "Party Girl" was brazenly plagiarised many years later in the movie "The Untouchables".)As Vicki Gaye, Cyd had two dance numbers which utilised imaginatively her ability to suggest eroticism. Louis Canetto (John Ireland) is sexually intoxicated by Vicki, and takes a girl to the club where Vicki is dancing. At the end of Vicki's incandescent routine, he stares at her with open-mouthed longing, then turns and kisses his girl, but promptly shoves her away in distaste and looks once again at Vicki. It is perhaps the best manifestation of lust ever placed on celluloid, partly because it is done so economically.
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An unforgettable dance performance by Charisse was in the movie Brigadoon (1954), when she did "Deep In My Heart" by Stanley Donen. The musical was directed by Vicente Minnelli, father of Liza Minnelli.
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