Musicals Star And Actress Cyd Charisse Dies At 86

Actress and dancer Cyd Charisse has died in Los Angeles, after suffering a heart attack. She was 87.Her career spanned seven decades and included a stint with the Ballets Russes as a teenager, along with many dramatic films.But it was as a partner to Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly that audiences embraced her.

Charisse had appeared in 16 movies before Singin' In the Rain in 1952, but once audiences saw the long-stemmed beauty with that 40-foot white scarf billowing behind her, they fell as hard for her as Gene Kelly did.That fantasy sequence made her a star — and she was just as well received opposite Fred Astaire a year later in The Band Wagon.

Hollywood musicals were fading by the time she made Silk Stockings with Astaire, four years later, and thereafter her career involved mostly dramatic roles.But as Astaire said in his autobiography: "That Cyd — when you've danced with her, you stay danced with."Charisse got her first movie role in 1942: a bit part as Lily Norwood in "Something to Shout About" which she once said "wasn't anything to shout about." She did not settle on her stage name until MGM studio signed her to a seven-year contract in 1945.

She soon divorced Charisse and had a brief romance with fellow Texan Howard Hughes, who sent limousines to help her get around after she broke her leg in a staircase routine for the film "On an Island With You."