Goodbye, Cyd

This entry was posted on June 18, 2008 at 9:25 am and is filed under FILM with tags Cyd Charisse, It's Always Fair Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “Goodbye, Cyd”

Levi Stahl Says:
June 18, 2008 at 11:28 am

Sigh.
stripforme Says:
June 18, 2008 at 11:55 am

I think it was Fred Astaire who said “when you dance with Cyd Charisse, you’ve been danced with.” For me, she was the exclamation point in That’s Entertainment!
David Ehrenstein Says:
June 18, 2008 at 1:49 pm

A truly unique loss. There was no one remotely like her.
dcairns Says:
June 18, 2008 at 5:16 pm

Tula Ellice Finklea. Tula’s a nice name!
‘Her nickname “Sid” was taken from a sibling trying to say “Sis”.’
She was completely wonderful onscreen.
chris schneider Says:
June 18, 2008 at 10:24 pm

“She’s the doll / With a wallop like a baseball bat!”

I love both that song (from “It’s Always Fair Weather”) and the woman who performed it.

Charisse was, is, and ever shall be a marvel. Very much to be missed.

One performance of hers I hadn’t know until recently (via YouTube) was her duet with James Mitchell, the rival lover in “Band Wagon,” of the Romberg song “One Alone” in “Deep In My Heart” …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHnFmFSWk5U&feature=related

Gorgeous, isn’t it? Also too, too Eisenhower-era for words. My fantasy is that it’s actually a clip from an unreleased musicalization of “The Sheltering Sky” …
dcairns Says:
June 18, 2008 at 11:59 pm

That is rather sexy and the camera moves are sublime.

Deleted scene from It’s Always Fair Weather —
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0ePfbiElmo
Not as great as the rest of the film — some of the cutting is flawed — but then, it’s clearly not finished. Weird seeing it with missing lines etc, but it’s a nice insight into the process.
Simon Fraser Says:
June 19, 2008 at 4:42 am

Only some women can walk in heels, Cyd Charisse could fly!

…she was also staggeringly hot
Dan Sallitt Says:
June 20, 2008 at 4:38 am

I just saw an evocative quote from Tony Martin, Charisse’s husband: “With Kelly, Cyd would come home black and blue. With Astaire, nothing.”
dcairns Says:
June 20, 2008 at 10:07 am

That sounds plausible. Fred reduced his dancing partners to tears, though. “Except Ginger. Ginger never cried.”
chris schneider Says:
June 25, 2008 at 12:22 am

You’re right, David, about the camera moves in the “Deep In My Heart” excerpt being sublime. That’s Stanley Donen, of course. Now it’s got me thinking about directors who know dance — Donen and Charles Walters, to name two prominent examples — and how this makes a difference in their use of camera movement.

Something about the camera movement in “2:26” of this Donen/Charisse number, the movement that coincides with the trumpet wobble on the soundtrack, always “gets to me”.

http://lascar370.multiply.com/video/item/121

I could say much the same about the lateral track to the right during “Whatever Lola Wants” when Gwen Verdon begins disrobing … but I figure that “one citing per note” is probably a wise rule
chris schneider Says:
June 25, 2008 at 1:38 am

A bit of qualification for that last “Whatever Lola” reference. I looked at the clip again, and the shot I was thinking of is the one that starts just after Verdon’s “Boop-boop-a-doop!” The chord undernear her is B-flat, and she’s still in the toreodore pants. “4:10,” more or less.
dcairns Says:
June 26, 2008 at 11:41 pm

It IS gorgeous.