So I have gone over everything I could find - using a lot of the old copy / paste flim flam - and made a cult siren entry for her. As usual this will not be posted at the actual date I am writing this but at her date of birth.
Ms. Charisse came of age in a sparkling era of Hollywood musicals, and though she had some dramatic film roles, it was in musicals that she achieved her lasting renown. She was a striking presence on film : slender and graceful with jet black hair. She stood 5 feet 6, but in high heels and full length stockings - a familiar costume for her - she seemed even taller.
Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1921 in the dust - bolw town of Amarillo, Texas. Born to be a dancer, she spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13.
Her Baptist jeweler father Ernest, a closet balletomane, encouraged her to begin ballet lessons because she was frail and sickly at the time and had a bout with polio. Dance build up her strength and she took to it quickly.
Unlike many top female dancers in the era of movie musicals, she was trained as a ballerina in the russian tradition. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. Cyd got her start in Hollywood when Ballet Russe star David Lichine was hired by Columbia Pictures for a ballet sequence in the musical Something to Shout About ( 1943 ). Cyd, who was billed as Lily Norwood, appeared in the scene and attracted attention.
Prior to that she appeared in at least six Soundies - short musical films played in the popular television - like jukeboxes of that era. Her actual film debut may have most likely been in the low budget exploitation film Escort Girl ( 1941 ), in which an uncredited dancer looking amazingly like Cyd does a number - very much in Cyd's unique style - in a café sequence.
The same year, she played a russian dancer in Mission to Moscow ( 1943 ),
by Michael Curtiz. In 1945, she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies ( 1945 ), and that uncredited appearance got her a 7 year contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over the next few years, but it was Singin' in the Rain ( 1952 ) with Gene Kelly that made her a star with a 5,000,000 dollar insurance policy accepted on her legs.
The film established her as one of Hollywood’s most glamorous and seductive talents and was quickly followed by her great performance in The Band Wagon (1953). Astaire played a fading Hollywood song - and - dance man hoping to make a comeback on Broadway and who finds himself cast in a show opposite a snooty ballerina ( Ms. Charisse ). The couple do not see eye - to - eye until they take a nighttime carriage ride through a moonlit Central Park and wind up embracing languorously to the strains of " Dancing in the Dark ". One of the most famous sequences from the film, if not in the history of dance on film, is " The Girl Hunt Ballet ", in which Ms. Charisse plays the vamp to Astaire’s private - eye stage character.
In her autobiography, Charisse reflected on her experience with Astaire and Kelly : As one of the handful of girls who worked with both of those dance geniuses ( the others were Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Vera - Ellen, Debbie Reynolds and Leslie Caron ) I can give an honest comparison.
My husband could tell who I had been dancing with that day on an MGM set. If I came home covered with bruises, it was the very demanding Gene Kelly, if not, it was the smooth and agile Fred Astaire. Fred Astaire moved like glass. Physically, it was easy to dance with him. It was not as demanding on me. I didn't need the same vitality and strength. I can watch Astaire anytime. I don't think he ever made a wrong move. He was a perfectionist. He would work on a few bars for hours until it was just the way he wanted it. Gene was the same way. They both wanted perfection, even though they were completely different personalities.
In my opinion, Kelly is the more inventive choreographer. Astaire, with Hermes Pan's help, creates fabulous numbers - for himself and his partner. But Kelly can create an entire number for somebody else.
I think, however, that Astaire's coordination is better than Kelly's, his sense of rhythm is uncanny. Kelly, on the other hand, is the stronger of the two. When he lifts you, he lifts you ! Fred could never do the lifts Gene did and never wanted to. I'd say they were the two greatest dancing personalities who were ever on the screen. Each has a distinctive style.
Each is a joy to work with. But it's like comparing apples and oranges.
Astaire on the other hand referred to Cyd as " beautiful dynamite " and wrote : " That Cyd ! When you've danced with her you stay danced with. "
Cyd was just oozing sex appeal and recalled : The censors were always there when I was on the set. When I was held up, in a lift in Deep in My Heart ( 1954 ), they were up on ladders to see if I was properly covered.
Charisse had a slightly unusual serious acting role in Party Girl ( 1958 ) where she played a showgirl who became involved with gangsters and a crooked lawyer, although it did include two dance routines. It was far more profitable for MGM than her musicals. She then went to Universal Studios to co - star with Rock Hudson in Twilight for the Gods ( 1958 ).
Although she was one of the greatest female dancers in the history of the movie musical, her singing in films was almost always dubbed, most notably by Carol Richards in Brigadoon ( 1954 ) and a young Vikki Carr in The Silencers ( 1966 ). Other fondly remembered roles were the other woman in Marilyn Monroe's last and unfinished film Something's Got to Give ( 1962 ) and a striptease in the Dean Martin spy spoof The Silencers.
She frequently performed dance numbers on TV variety series such as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dean Martin Show, with seven appearances on The Hollywood Palace, a show she also hosted three times. She did Fol - de - Rol in 1968, which was filmed and broadcast in 1972. In the 1970s Charisse guest - starred on shows such as Medical Center, Hawaii Five - O, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy with 80s Power Girl Markie Post, Glitter, Murder, She Wrote, and Crazy Like a Fox. Cyd Charisse was an aunt - by marriage - to Nana Visitor from Star Trek : Deep Space Nine.
Longtime readers know that while Markie Post was practically in everything that was on tv in the 70s and 80s she became one of my ultimate sex phantasies on the show The Fall Guy which every male that was alive in the 80s remembers - and we will get to the reason why.
THERE`S SOMETHING ABOUT HEATHER THOMAS - AND HER BLUE BIKINI
But The Fall Guy didn´t just have 80s Power Girl Markie Post they also put blonde bombshell Heather Thomas in the show right from the beginning.
She played stunt body double ( and what a body it was ) Jody and her job was to keep the male viewers hooked by providing eye candy. She was in all episodes except for an episode in the first season. Yes, fan service is not as new as some people might want you to think and Heather Thomas mainly got the part because of her absolutely amazing bikini figure. OMG !
Like most growing teenagers I watched that show religiously but the biggest part of its appeal for me were sexbombs like Heather Thomas and Markie Post who didn´t appear as often in a bikini as I would have liked.
Well, Heather Thomas did since that was her main purpose on the show but Markie Post´s appearances in bikinis on The Fall Guy were very few.
I AM SUFFERING FROM ( MARKIE ) POST TRAUMATIC SEX SYNDROME !
Markie Post played bail bonds contractor Terri Michaels ( who replaced previous bail bonds contractor Samantha Jack played by Jo Ann Pflug ) beginning with Season 2 and at the beginning she played a minor role.
One of the producers must have realized what a waste it is to have somebody like Markie on the cast without letting her " show off what her Mama gave her " like they say Today and the rest is 80s tv history. Markie Post got more involved in the stories where she stole the scene from Heather Thomas as soon as she donned a bikini ( mainly in Season 3 ).
Coming back to Heather Thomas, thanks to her absolutely stunning 37 ( ! ) - 23 - 32 measurements and the exposure in The Fall Guy she became a famous pin up model with posters on every hormone driven boy's bedroom wall who even managed to replace Raquel Welch on the number one spot !
80s Power Girl Markie Post is probably the best known cult siren on the blog because not only have I done many re - posts of her original post .
I also keep mentioning her in other posts and her original post is in the Top Ten Posts widget that appears on every post. Since I have done so many different versions it is not so tragic that I did not do a re - post last year even though I did the last version of her cult siren entry in 2016 .
Cyd played Atsil, an atlantean high priestess, in Warlords of Atlantis and was in the tv movies Portrait of an Escort ( 1980 ) and Swimsuit ( 1989 ).
Her dark looks initially had her cast as ethnic beauties like in Fiesta ( 1947 ) as the fiancée of Ricardo Montalban with whom she would shoot 5 more movies : the Esther Williams musical On an Island with You ( 1948 ), The Kissing Bandit ( 1948 ), The Mark of the Renegade ( 1951 ), Sombrero ( 1953 ) and Won Ton Ton : The Dog Who Saved Hollywood ( 1976 ).
But Cyd Charisse also had some bad luck and lost out on two of MGM's biggest movie musical roles : she fell and injured her knee during a dance leap on a film, which forced her out of the role of Nadina Hale in Easter Parade ( 1948 ). Ann Miller replaced her. She also had to relinquish the lead female role in An American in Paris ( 1951 ) due to pregnancy. Leslie Caron took over the role and became a star. She was offered the lead role in Funny Face ( 1957 ) but declined. The role was played by Audrey Hepburn.
When casting the film Damn Yankees ( 1958 ), the studio was initially interested in pursuing Cyd as Lola and Cary Grant as Applegate. In the end, Gwen Verdon won the right to recreate her stage role with Ray Walston the devilish Applegate. Cyd was supposedly unavailable but later played the role on the legit stage. In Call Her Mom ( 1972 ), she was originally to have done the role played by Gloria DeHaven, but was replaced by Ann Miller before DeHaven finally took over the role.
As the 1960s dawned, musicals faded from the screen, as did her career. She and husband Tony Martin became a popular song - and - dance couple on television and in nightclubs / cabaret shows after their heyday in film.
Cyd is one of several, if not only, world renowned prima ballerinas to be featured in a popular hip - hop music video : she had a cameo in " Alright " ( 1990 ) by Janet Jackson. She was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame in Austin in March 2002 and was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 2006 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, DC, for her services to dance. Cyd Charisse died at age 87 of a heart attack on June 17, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. Tempus Fugit.
With ten videos already in this post I could end this post right here right now but I can´t help going the extra mile, especially since it gives me the opportunity to post some of the countless videos I have bookmarked. We start with another top 10, this time The Top 10 Movie Dance Scenes Of All Times which sadly does not include Cyd Charisse. It does though list Gene Kelly´s famous dance in the rain from the musical Singing In The Rain.
Finding a comicbook video for this post was more of a challenge but this genre was pretty popular when Cyd Charisse had her greatest success.
We already have two full movies in this post so I am adding a much shorter review about a classic science fiction / horror movie from Cyd´s heyday.
And last but not least we are staying in that particular time period with Mighty Mouse´s subversive version of the old fairy tale The Magic Slipper.
New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best
Civilization has a natural resistance to improving itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment