Cyd Charisse

Cyd Charisse, born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, Texas, in 1922, was an American dancer and actress who died in 2008. She began dance lessons at six to rebuild her strength after polio, studied ballet in Los Angeles with Adolph Bolm and Bronislava Nijinska, and as a teenager danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. At MGM she joined the Freed Unit and became the studio's resident ballet dancer, and her film roles usually showcased her dancing, often opposite Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon and Silk Stockings. After she stopped dancing in films in the late 1950s she kept acting in film and television, made her Broadway debut in 1991, discussed the history of the Hollywood musical in documentaries and appeared in That's Entertainment! III. In 2006 she was awarded the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities.