Amarillo’s Cyd Charisse took part in some of the most astonishing scenes in cinema history. The long, lithe ballet dancer turned Hollywood leading lady whirled her way into the hearts of millions of moviegoers in musicals like Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953) and Brigadoon (1954). She partnered on several occasions with two of the biggest names in movie musical history: Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. Through a long and varied career, Charisse spoke fondly of her hometown, citing the formative experiences of her Amarillo childhood that helped forge a strikingly resilient person and performer.
Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea during an Amarillo snowstorm on March 8, 1922. She was the younger child of Ernest Enos “E.E.” and Lela (Norwood) Finklea. Tula’s older brother, E.E. Jr., tried calling her “sis” but it came out as “Sid” and the nickname stuck.
The Finkleas were quiet and civically minded. They attended First Methodist Church and involved themselves in several local charities. Lela served as treasurer of the Potter County Tuberculosis Association for decades.
E.E. was a prominent jeweler, operating E.E. Finklea Jewelers at 410 S. Polk St. before moving down the block to 508 S. Polk St.
Billed as the “Jewelry Store of the Panhandle,” Finklea Jewelers was the region’s exclusive dealer for several prominent brands, selling everything from wristwatches to diamonds to fine china and glassware. Its Christmas 1921 advertisements included items as inexpensive as 98 cent pairs of gold cufflinks (roughly $17 in 2026 dollars) to diamonds priced at $921 (roughly $15,700 today).
Despite the family’s affluence, they resided in a relatively modest home at 1616 S. Tyler St. The VanShaws, relatives from her mother’s side of the family, lived a block away. Sid remained close to her cousins Martha Lee and Gaynor VanShaw for the rest of her life.
Sid wasn’t well for much of her childhood, battling polio as a toddler. She had difficulty standing for long periods of time, so her doctor recommended dance lessons to improve strength and balance. The Finkleas enrolled 6-year-old Sid in ballet lessons with Constance Ferguson, an accomplished ballerina who had studied in Los Angeles with a veteran of the Bolshoi Ballet.
“Up on the very top floor of a great old hotel, there was a big room that looked out over the city, and [Ferguson] turned that into her studio,” Charisse told Texas Monthly in 1991. “I remember that first lesson like it was yesterday. I was 6 years old, and I fell in love with music,” she continued.
Sid would later study at the Amarillo College of Music with Rosalie Raymond, another skilled dance instructor.
There was more to young Sid’s life than dance. She took piano lessons from Grace Hamilton, one of her neighbors and cofounder of the Amarillo Symphony, starting at age 6. The name “Sid Finklea” appeared quarterly in the list of Honor Roll students at the Tyler School, and she participated in a Girl Scout troop based at First Presbyterian Church.
By the time she reached adolescence, Sid’s dance instructors conceded they had little more they could teach her. At 12, she started traveling regularly with her mother to Los Angeles to study ballet in the studio of Adolph Bolm, who had once starred in the Russian Imperial Ballet alongside Anna Pavlova. Her primary instructor was a Greek ballet dancer named Nico Charisse. Fourteen-year-old Sid auditioned at Bolm’s studio for Colonel Wassily de Basil and David Lichine, directors of the world-renowned Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. They were so impressed by her movement and expressiveness as a performer that they offered her the position of prima ballerina with the dance troop.
Even before she became a prima ballerina, Amarillo’s newspapers covered Sid’s dance career closely. They highlighted public performances on the West Coast, her subsequent tours with the Ballet Russe, and any visit she made to the Panhandle.
Between 1935 and 1939, Sid performed in a series of dance recitals across the Panhandle, often at the Amarillo College of Music or an area high school. A 1935 performance at Amarillo High School drew more than 1,000 spectators who paid 75 cents a seat to watch her perform selections from Carmen and La Traviata.
These performances were the closest her father got to seeing her as a star.
On March 1, 1938, E.E. suffered a stroke at his jewelry store. He died at home in April surrounded by his immediate family. Sid came home from Ballet Russe’s east coast tour when she learned of her father’s condition. She spent much of 1938 back in Amarillo with her family. The Finkleas closed the jewelry store in 1941.
War, Marriage & Hollywood
Sid returned to the Ballet Russe in 1939. She toured Europe with the company, performing in Aurora and The Prodigal Son. During the 1939 European tour, 17-year-old Sid became reacquainted with Nico Charisse, who was also performing with the company. She eloped with her 32-year-old teacher in France in August 1939. Their honeymoon in Monte Carlo was cut short by Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, which led to declarations of war by France and Great Britain. As war enveloped Europe, the newly married couple headed for America in September 1939, settling in Los Angeles. They opened a dance studio in Hollywood as ballets shut down during World War II. Sid gave birth to a son, Nico Jr., or “Nicky,” in May 1942.
During the early 1940s, Sid tried her hand at the movies, turning auditions into small roles that showcased her dancing skills. Her film career started slowly. She appeared as an uncredited dancer in several pictures, typically shorts that were shown before feature-length films. Her long, lithe look, dancing skill and graceful presentation brought her to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the undisputed kings of the movie musical. In 1946, she signed a long-term contract with the studio, and would spend the next decade making some of the most celebrated musicals in history under the auspices of producer Arthur Freed.
It was Freed who changed the spelling of her first name to “Cyd,” which he thought sounded mysterious and elided nicely with the last name “Charisse.” The name “Charisse” stuck but her husband Nico didn’t. The couple divorced in 1947.
The Golden Age of Movie Musicals
Cyd made her first on-screen appearance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies (1945) as one of the stage revue’s top dancers. Her first speaking part came in the Judy Garland musical The Harvey Girls (1946). She then played supporting roles in a string of MGM hits, including Fiesta (1947), Words and Music (1948), and East Side, West Side (1949). In each picture, her dancing skills were the focus of her screen time.
The press took great notice of Cyd’s figure, particularly her shapely legs. “I’m awfully lucky I have long legs and long muscles. That helps. And besides, I have good training. Only girls who were overworked develop large muscular legs,” Charisse told the Amarillo Daily News in 1947. Years later, MGM garnered headlines by taking out a $5 million insurance policy on Charisse’s legs.
In November 1947, several members of the Hollywood press followed Cyd to Amarillo. She was returning home to be a bridesmaid at her cousin Gaynor VanShaw’s wedding. Cyd left Los Angeles with ample time, but the flight was waylaid in Albuquerque due to engine trouble. She arrived in Amarillo an hour before the ceremony. Before heading to the First Methodist Church, Cyd was escorted at top speed by the Amarillo Police Department to White & Kirk’s department store. The forest green velvet dresses which her cousin had selected for the wedding had never arrived. They had been sent by air mail from New York and arrived mistakenly (and ironically) in Albuquerque. Cyd, the other bridesmaids, and the maid of honor, her cousin Martha Lee VanShaw, were fitted in forest green moire taffeta dresses, arriving at the church with minutes to spare before the ceremony.
While the Amarillo newspapers marveled at Cyd’s whirlwind travel day, the Hollywood reporters were fixated on the divorcee’s recent love life. At the time of the wedding, several stories linked her to Howard Hughes, which she denied throughout a week-long visit in Amarillo. Cyd had another performer on her mind.
While working on Fiesta, she met fellow MGM star Tony Martin and fell in love. The couple wed in 1948. In 1950, Cyd gave birth to their son, Tony Martin Jr.
The remarried Cyd impressed in a dramatic role in the Wild North (1952), a story about the Canadian Mounted Police starring Stewart Granger.
While Wild North was a hit, it was nothing compared to Cyd’s next performance in a musical. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) a moderate hit when it was released, later growing in critical estimation and now considered one of the greatest musicals ever made. Cyd dances with leading man Gene Kelly in “Broadway Melody,” a showstopping performance which made Charisse a major star. Her sensuous and graceful performance was unlike the toe-tapping, chipper routines that filmgoers saw in other musicals. The characterization that Charisse created on screen was seductive art that seemed all the more titillating considering the widespread censorship of suggestive content in 1950s Hollywood.
Charisse followed up Singin’ in the Rain with another major musical, The Band Wagon (1953), which reunited her with Fred Astaire. The pairing of Charisse and Astaire in numbers like “Dancing in the Dark” and “The Girl Hunt Ballet” produced some of the sleekest dances ever seen on celluloid.
When asked to compare Astaire and Kelly, Charisse sang both of their praises. She described Kelly as the more inventive choreographer and physically powerful performer but said Astaire had better coordination and rhythm. “It’s like comparing apples and oranges. They’re both delicious,” Charisse wrote in her memoir.
She followed up The Band Wagon with a pair of Gene Kelly pictures, Brigadoon (1954) and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955). In 1957, she co-starred with Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings, which was one of MGM’s last Golden Age musicals.
An Evolving Legacy
When large-scale musicals began falling out of fashion in the late 1950s, Charisse adapted to the times.
Charisse performed dance routines on numerous television variety shows, including several appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.
In 1960, she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1601 Vine Street.
Cyd and Tony toured as a nightclub song-and-dance act during the 1960s and ‘70s. She appeared in touring productions of musicals such as Damn Yankees and No, No Nanette during the same time period. After decades in musical theater, Charisse made her Broadway debut in Grand Hotel in 1991.
The couple stumped frequently for Republican politicians, making appearances on behalf of presidential nominees Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
During the 1970s and ‘80s, Charisse popped up as a guest star on many of the era’s most popular television programs, including The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Hawaii Five-O. Charisse was interviewed frequently in documentaries about Hollywood history.
In 1990, she starred in a home exercise video called Easy Energy Shape-Up. The video was aimed at older adults and incorporated variations on many of the exercises she learned in ballet. That same year, she performed a 30-second dance routine in the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Alright.”
As her schedule slowed during the 1990s, she returned to Amarillo from time to time to visit relatives. In 2006, Charisse received the National Medal of Arts and Humanities Award from President George W. Bush.
A month after she and Tony celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, she passed away after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles on June 17, 2008. She was 86 years old. Martin died in 2012 at age 98.
Throughout her long life, Cyd Charisse defied the odds and remained a grand ambassador for Amarillo. Her simultaneous resilience and charm can be traced back to the experiences and upbringing she had in the Texas Panhandle.
