"Tula Ellice Finklea was thirteen when she joined the American Ballet Russe company where she met her first husband and ballet instructor, Nico Charisse. Although she made her film debut in 1943 as Lily Norwood, it is as Cyd Charisse that we remember the American cinema's lyrical dancing beauty. A bonus to any film, a compliment to any arm, she blossomed as Fred Astaire's partner in the fifties' musicals The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings, and in several films dancing opposite Gene Kelly, most memorably Singin' in the Rain.

"Before she found her niche in musicals, MGM, where she was under contract for most of her film career, tried to fit her into a variety of roles which kept her career in a rut despite her beauty. This was partly due to an emotional detachment, not uncommon among classically trained dancers but of
limited appeal to the general public. The sensitivity and eloquence of character she projects as a dancer found little echo in her roles as housewife or vamp. It was in the studio's last burst of great musicals that she came into her own and then her remoteness lent added significance to her roles: Galatea thawed out and became real when wooed by Astaire in scenes masterminded by Vincente Minnelli. This mythical transformation elevated her to cult-like status among European admirers, and her popularity was great, if not so pretentious, in America.

HOLLYWOOD COLOR PORTRAITS
by John Kobal (William Morrow, 1981)

"Cyd Charisse has two great claims to cinema immortality: she was the finest female dancer on film and she had the greatest legs ever to grace a movie. It is unfortunate that she arrived near the end of the musical (and studio) era, but while she had the chance she burned up the screen with her dancing."

ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE WORLD'S GREAT MOVIE STARS
by Ken Wlaschin (Harmony, 1979)

"Cyd Charisse had the most eloquent legs in show business. While other actresses struggled with the Method or hack dialogue, Charisse's legs possessed a range of expression and vocabulary that went beyond Funk&Wagnall's dictionary. When teamed with Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon, she rivalled and even surpassed his fluidity and elegance...and [with Gene Kelly] Charisse stole scenes with ease, goading Kelly's musclebound legs with one cool kick of her silk-clad limbs."

LEADING LADIES
by Don MacPherson and Louise Brody (Crescent, 1986)

RICARDO MONTALBAN, CYD'S MOST FREQUENT DANCING PARTNER, ON THEIR DANCE DUETS IN FOUR FILMS:
"I was totally inexperienced as a dancer but Cyd took me by the hand and virtually led me through our numbers. She had infinite patience and understanding and was most generous. When I look at our films today on TV I can't help chuckling a bit because I look like a thorough professional. Actually, it was 95% Cyd and 5% illusion that got me through our numbers."

HOLLYWOOD STUDIO MAGAZINE
Interviewed by Lou Valentino (December, 1983)

GWEN VERDON, SPEAKING OF WHEN, AS CHILDREN, SHE AND CYD TOOK DANCE CLASSES TOGETHER, ALONG WITH MARGE BELCHER (LATER MARGE CHAMPION):
" 'She was always beautiful. I was about seven and Cyd was eight or nine, about a year or two older than the rest of us, and she was gorgeous to look at. She had blue-black hair that was cut straight, Dutch-boy style, and she had on this black page outfit, which means that it was solid down the front and back, with a tie - not like the tutu the rest of us all had to wear. And she didn't have matching bloomers like we did, either. Her underwear was pink.' Verdon claimed that the entire class was 'in awe of her beauty and appalled by her underwear.' Charisse was also a better dancer than Verdon, Belcher, or all the others, said Verdon, so she soon graduated to another school."

DANCING ON THE CEILING: STANLEY DONEN AND HIS MOVIES
by Stephen M. Silverman (Knopf, 1996)

Fred Astaire on The Band Wagon:
"Cyd Charisse is a terrific dancer, a wonderful partner. She has precision plus - beautiful dynamite, I call it."

Fred Astaire on Silk Stockings:
"Stockings was an adaptation of the screen success Ninotchka. Cyd Charisse had no easy task following Garbo in that part but she did it beautifully, carrying a slight accent all through the piece. Her solo dances were outstanding. We had plenty of dances together too, and they did not miss. That Cyd! When you've danced with her, you stay danced with."

STEPS IN TIMES: An Autobiography
by Fred Astaire (Harper & Bros., 1959)

Category: The Best-Looking Human Being Ever to Appear on a Movie Screen
"Were God a mere artisan he would have halted production after finishing Esther Williams - those teeth, that skin, those shoulders, that flesh would have told him that his experimental phase, at least, was over. But God is an artist and so he created Cyd Charisse (with the assistance, to be sure, of the MGM makeup department) - he wanted, you see, to add heavenly grace to the formula..... What Cyd Charisse had that no other dancer had was erotic chic, and this, combined with her obvious taste and talent, is what made her not merely a great performer but an icon..... Charisse wears clothes so staggeringly well that it's a toss-up whether one hopes she will shed the stunning black lace cocktail dress she's wearing [in Meet Me in Las Vegas] or leave it on."

FROM CYD CHARISSE TO PSYCHO: A BOOK OF MOVIE BESTS
by Dale Thomajan (Walker, 1992)

"Cyd Charisse, Ann Miller's dancing contemporary at MGM, has shown similar staying power and has remained one of the world's most beautiful women...... Director Vincente Minnelli used to say that Cyd Charisse was the one movie star who didn't need any trappings. She still doesn't..... The Cyd Charisse image is fragile, seemingly spiritual. But there's iron inside."

THE MGM GIRLS: BEHIND THE VELVET CURTAIN
by Peter Harry Brown and Pamela Ann Brown (St. Martin1s Press, 1983)

"Ballet never gained much of a foothold in the movies. It was, and to a large extent it still is, regarded by the mass public as a somewhat elitist dance form - just a little too classy .... And the only lady, other than Leslie Caron, with a formal ballet background to have become a movie star is Cyd Charisse. Her graceful dancing accounts only partly for her success; she had going for her a sex appeal that was both appealingly dignified and smoldering. It is significant that she was chosen to perform in Silk Stockings, the musical version of Greta Garbo's Ninotchka. The sexual images are similar. Both are ladylike and both could do more with the look in their eyes than many a voluptuous girl could do with a striptease." (Amen, brother. -Cydfan)

THAT'S DANCING
by Tony Thomas (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1984)

"Cyd Charisse. Nobody has ever had an unkind word to say for her. Whether the taste is for Singin' In the Rain (Kelly/Donen, 1952) or for Nicholas Ray's colourful crime masterpiece Party Girl (1958), the presence of Cyd Charisse on the screen is enough to bring a general purr of contentment. It's not just the legs, although they're reason enough; from The Band Wagon (Minnelli, 1953) to Silk Stockings (Mamoulian, 1957), she contrived to be effortlessly elegant and perfectly co-ordinated."

GREAT MOVIE ACTRESSES
by Philip Strick (Beech Tree Books/Morrow, 1982)

PRODUCER ARTHUR FREED SPEAKING OF FRED ASTAIRE AND CYD CHARISSE:
"He liked to dance with Cyd. He thought she was a great dancer. I don't think he ever danced with a better dancer. She was a bit tall, but not too tall .... he loved to dance with Cyd. That's why we reunited them with SILK STOCKINGS."

PEOPLE WILL TALK
by John Kobal (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985)

"Exceptionally tall, austere in features but elegant in the legs, she is perhaps the greatest female movie dancer. Her acting is like the songs in Marx Brothers films .... But the nightclub dance in Party Girl and everything in Silk Stockings are as sensual and moving as most actresses have managed with words."

A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM
by David Thomson (William Morrow & Co., 1975)

"Cyd Charisse will be remembered in the cinema as being the best female dancer that the seventh art has ever known."

BROADS
by Ian and Elisabeth Cameron (Studio Vista [England], 1969)

DEBBIE REYNOLDS ON MGM DANCE CLASSES:
"I started classes first thing in the morning. They began with calisthenics ... and then came ballet with Janet Bennett. I loved it but I couldn't do it .... Cyd did everything perfectly. Her leg went over her head and into the sky. Vera-Ellen, the same way. I would look at their extensions and laugh because I could never do that."

DEBBIE
by Debbie Reynolds (William Morrow & Co., 1988)

DANCER/ACTRESS JENNIFER LOPEZ:
"When you're a dancer, you basically watch every dance movie that ever existed. I saw a lot of Fred Astaire movies and I loved Cyd Charisse. How easy they made it look!"

PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER
January 2005