Cyd Charisse is gone. She’s best remembered for the Broadway Melody sequence with Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain. Charisse was later featured in a relatively unknown movie called Party Girl, directed by Nicholas Ray, who made Rebel Without A Cause. Charisse, lookin’ great at 36, had a couple of big dance numbers in Party Girl, and you can watch them on the video player.
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3 thoughts on “Cyd Charisse in “Party Girl””
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You know what I think of first when watching those clips from Singin’ in the Rain? Whoever did the video capture screwed up the shape of the image. I just checked the original file and it’s 320×256. The height should be 240 pixels. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a nerdy guy thing. 😉
Here’s Gene and Cyd from “Singin’ in the Rain” where Cyd shows her ballet roots:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rc16m2B2K1g&feature=related
and for Lizzie, here’s the hot number from the same film:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rc16m2B2K1g&feature=related
My GAWD! Those legs go on for miles! An aside: There’s a great line in the award-winning TV-movie about Judy Garland’s life, based on the bio by her daughter Lorna Luft. Judy is doing “The Pirate” with Gene Kelly (a flop). Minnelli is directing, but he’s arguing with her in her dressing room. “Leave me alone! She screams. You give all the sexy costumes to Gene Kelly! Don’t think I don’t notice!”
Also, Gene Kelly was noted from dancing from the waist down, as Astaire used his whole body.
If Cyd Charisse doesn’t mean anything to you (and I don’t mean YOU, Doug, I mean a general “you”), then you either aren’t well acquainted with her work, or don’t know enough to understand and appreciate her great abilities as a dancer.
Fortunately, it’s easy to find, on YouTube, some of Cyd’s most memorable dance numbers. 2 of them are steamy hot: sexy Cyd iln that red dress and long black gloves, dancing with Fred Astaire in “The Band Wagon,” and the other a slightly comedic number where a green-dressed Cyd toys with a hat and Gene Kelly’s nerdy glasses in “Singin’ in the Rain.”
But Cyd could dance equally with great class and grace, being a trained ballet dancer. Her romantic pairing with Fred Astaire for “Dancing in the Dark” in “The Band Wagon” (also on YouTube) looked beautifully effortless from start to smooth finish. As an amateur dancer who trained seriously for about 15 years, I can tell you that very few people are ever able to achieve what Cyd Charisse did so capably.
Good bye, dear Cyd. I will never, ever forget you!!!
Oh! One other comment I forgot to mention. Very often when a star who was famous long ago dies, the public either becomes nostalgic about that star, or discovers his/her body of work for the first time. For those who like Cyd Charisse’s dancing, and would like to see a lot more of her on-screen, I would recommend the movie “Brigadoon,” also starring Gene Kelly. It’s a sweet fantasy of a film, a nice musical with an interesting plot line, that includes (of course) singing and acting as well as dancing, so you’ll get to see a lot of Cyd Charisse’s beauty as well as her dancing abilities.