From sickly to stunning! The polio survivor
Cyd Charisse: The Body That Could Sing
Born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, Texas, in 1922,
Cyd Charisse overcame childhood polio through ballet—a therapy that became her destiny.
Her brother’s lisped “Sis” gave her the name “Cyd,” marking her transformation from frail child to Hollywood dancer.
Ballet gave her “grace, discipline, and escape.” By her teens she trained in Los Angeles,
blending classical precision with quiet sensuality.
MGM signed her in the 1940s, and soon “movies found her through movement, not dialogue.”
Her breakthrough came in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), where “she didn’t utter a line—she didn’t need to.”
Charisse matched both Gene Kelly’s strength and Fred Astaire’s lyricism.
Their duet “Dancing in the Dark” remains “one of cinema’s purest expressions of love.”
Offscreen she was calm and devoted, saying of her 60-year marriage, “We never tried to outshine each other.”
Honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2006, she died in 2008 at 86.
Fred Astaire once said dancing with her was like “floating with a goddess.”
