Singin' in the Rain star Cyd Charisse dies age 86

Los Angeles: Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died on Tuesday. She was 86.

Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.

She appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.

Classically trained, she could dance anything, and also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on television and in nightclub appearances with her husband, singer Tony Martin.

Charisse arrived at MGM as the studio was establishing itself as the king of musicals. MGM were reputed to have insured her legs for a million dollars each but she later revealed that that had been a publicity stunt by the studio.

Astaire, who danced with her in The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings, said of Charisse in a 1983 interview, "She wasn't a tap dancer, she's just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did. When we were dancing, we didn't know what time it was."

She first gained notice as a member of the famed Ballet Russe, and got her start in Hollywood when star David Lichine was hired by Columbia Pictures for a ballet sequence in a 1943 Don Ameche-Janet Blair musical, Something to Shout About.

The 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain marked a breakthrough. When the director was dissatisfied with another dancer who had been cast, Charisse inherited the role and danced with Kelly in the Broadway Melody number that climaxed the movie.

Charisse also danced with Kelly in Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather and Invitation to the Dance.

Her name was Tula Ellice Finklea when she was born in Amarillo, Texas, on March 8, 1922. From her earliest years she was called Sid, because her older brother couldn't say "sister." She started dancing lessons as a girl to build up her strength after a bout of polio.