Cyd Charisse Movies

Want to know the best Cyd Charisse movies?  How about the worst Cyd Charisse movies?  Curious about Cyd Charisse box office grosses or which Cyd Charisse movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Cyd Charisse movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Cyd Charisse (1922-2008) was an American dancer and actress.  Charisse gained famed for her many dance routines with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. Her IMDb page shows 56 acting credits from 1941-2008. This page will rank 33 Cyd Charisse movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  Her many television appearances and a few movies not released in North American theaters were not included in the rankings.

Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire in 1954’s The Band Wagon

Cyd Charisse Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Cyd Charisse Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Cyd Charisse films by co-stars of her movies
  • Sort Cyd Charisse films by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Cyd Charisse films by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Cyd Charisse films by how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Cyd Charisse film received.
  • Sort Cyd Charisse films by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in 1952’s Singin’ In The Rain

Possibly Interesting Facts About Cyd Charisse

  1. Tula Ellice Finklea was born in Amarillo, Texas in 1922.

2. Cyd Charisse started dancing lessons at six to build up her strength after a bout of polio. At 12, she studied ballet in Los Angeles with Adolph Bolm and Bronislava Nijinska.

3. Tula Ellice Finklea’s nickname as a child was “Sis”.  Her first professional name was Lily Norwood (she was billed this way in her first movies).  When she married Nico Charisse…she took her family nickname and her husband’s last name come up with Cyd Charisse.

4. Cyd Charisse lost out on two of MGM’s biggest movie musical roles. She fell and injured her knee during a dance leap on a film which forced her out of 1948’s Easter Parade (1948). She also had to relinquish the lead female role in 1951’s An American in Paris due to pregnancy.

5. Cyd Charisse was one of the few actresses to have danced with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in the movies, other actresses that have also done this includes Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Vera-Ellen, Debbie Reynolds and Leslie Caron.

6. Cyd Charisse said her husband could tell who she had been dancing with that day on a MGM set. If she came home covered with bruises on her, it was the very physically-demanding Gene Kelly, if not it was the smooth and agile Fred Astaire.

7. Steve Lensman beat me to the punch.  Check out his most excellent You Tube Cyd Charisse video.

8.  Cyd Charisse was married two times and had two children.

Check out Cyd Charisse’s movie career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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38 thoughts on “Cyd Charisse Movies”

  1. Bob

    I was a bit confused by your reaction to Hirschhorn’s comment–

    “Charisse and Astaire moved with a sensual grace that matched anything in the Astaire and Rogers films.”

    You disagree?

    Reply

    1. HI JOHN

      1 I disagree marginally but it’s a matter of opinion because Cyd was great and I would not argue with anybody who thought she was as good as Ginger as a dancer though I did not think she had Rogers’ star quality. Certainly she never proved the contrary in stand-alone performances..

      2 My main quarrel though was with Joel purporting to speak for everybody in that apparent hyperbolic, condescending style of his. But I suppose that it goes with the territory for professional journalists and critics to be self-opinionated. There not all as modest as our own Work Horse !

      Reply

      1. JOHN:

        Please forgive my spelling as I should have said “They’re not all as modest as our own Work Horse,” though it was worth having an excuse to repeat that line!

        Reply

      2. Bob and Cogerson

        I picked Ginger as my top female star of the 1930’s on Cogerson’s stars of that decade page.

        She was not only a dancer, but a singer (Cyd was I think always dubbed) and a good all-around actress. Cyd just got by as an actress.

        Just comparing them as dancers, they seem very different to me. Ginger and Fred did mainly ballroom dancing, in each other’s arms. Cyd was a ballet dancer and even when dancing with a man, each seemed to be more or less dancing on their own. “Dancing in the Dark” from The Band Wagon might be the exception. To cut to the chase, I can’t imagine Cyd doing a foxtrot with Astaire. Ginger? That was her bag.

        But Cyd was an ornament for MGM musicals and she was certainly a case of the right performer at the right place. She was used in the forties in restricted feature roles, or cameos, which played to her strength as a dancer while not demanding acting chops beyond her range. In 1948 she married Tony Martin (a marriage which lasted 60 years) and she had a baby in 1950 and was off screen for a couple of years. When she returned, she got the cameo in Singin’ in the Rain which moved her into the star class. The Band Wagon and several other starring roles in big musicals followed through Silk Stockings. Party Girl gave her a chance to expand her range. Always a classy, gorgeous, actress with that old time Hollywood glamour.
        Although her movie career faded in the 1960’s, she and Martin remained a popular nightclub act for decades.

        Reply

        1. JOHN

          1 Excellent summing up of Cyd’s status and abilities very professionally expressed.

          2 I know it won’t cut much ice with you but I think the only movie Cyd ever got billed first in was the 1960 French anthology film Black Tights. Even Dan Daily was billed above her in Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) and Dan was decidedly B list when compared with the likes of Astaire and Gene Kelly though he did reach 19th and 21st in 1949 and 1950 respectively in Quigley.

          Reply

          1. Bob

            I think it fair to say of Cyd that when she was dancing she was a star,

            and when she wasn’t, she wasn’t, at least if we are considering the A list.

          2. Hey Bob and John…good conversation between the two of you. Good points by both of you. Seeing you guys playing so well together gets me all choke up….wiping the tears away….lol.

  2. “Lovely Cyd Charisse” That’s how Fred Astaire introduced in the MGM musical compilation ‘That’s Entertainment!’. I’ve been a fan since I saw her in The Band Wagon and Singin’ in the Rain.

    But I’ve only seen 14 of the 32 films listed, less than I expected.

    Good to see my favorite musical Singin in the Rain at the top of the UMR and critics charts, it also did very well in worldwide grosses.

    It’s been ages since I last saw The Harvey Girls, might put it on one of these days. I like the Oscar-winning song from that.

    Enjoyed the trivia and thanks for the link Bruce, much appreciated.

    Another entertaining comment Bob, it did make me snicker (isn’t that the name of a chocolate?)

    An expert movie page Bruce. Vote Up! Have you done one on Ginger yet? [Bruce growls]

    Reply

    1. STEVE
      1 Yes Snicker is a chocolate bar but it is an amazing coincidence that you should mention the matter now. I have said before that I have a brother in Australia who is also a film buff and who shares some of my own tastes in movies and their stars. We discuss films from time to time on the phone and I often recount to him the doings of The Work Horse, John, Flora and indeed yourself.

      2 The following is an as far as I can possibly remember verbatim account of a chat we had on Thursday and I was actually saving the story for telling on this site on another appropriate occasion:

      ME: David, Cogerson is in a lather of excitement at the moment about a guy called Hirschhorn who seems to think our idols Duke and MB are a couple of jokes.
      DAVID: Joel Hirschhorn! Surely Cogerson isn’t paying any heed to HIM.

      ME [Greatly surprised] I’m astonished you’ve heard of Hirschhorn David as the first I knew of him was when Bruce started to wax lyrical about him recently on the Cogerson site.
      DAVID Yeah I’ve vaguely known him for some time and in fact a couple of us here Down Under nicknamed him Joel Chocolate.

      ME Why on earth do you call him that? To me he doesn’t seem to have been a very sweet individual.

      DAVID An article about him in the Melbourne Herald suggested he was very vain and that he loved himself so much if he’d been made of chocolate he’d have eaten himself

      Reply

      1. Hey Bob….nice teleplay on Joel and Snickers. There is one huge thing you should be thankful to Joel about..if his book did not exist….my tables would not be as big as they are……as I would have stopped at a Top 10 or Top 20 list versus the massive tables we have…..that would mean 86 Ray Milland movies would not be on this website.

        Reply

        1. HI BRUCE

          I suppose that had you given me the choice I would have opted for living with Joel’s opinions rather than forego your comprehensive and compelling pages so I support your decision.

          Reply

          1. Hey Bob…his ranking of a person’s every movie is something even today is rare to find. I like to think I have taken his approach and fine tuned it and made it much better….and rankings are based on stats only…while his are more subjective and could be heavily influenced by a bad Hollywood run in….like Brando would not appear in a Hirschhorn movie.

    2. Hey Steve
      1. Thanks for the visit and the comment…..always appreciated.
      2. Your 14 Cyd movies almost triples my tally of 5. Granted I am not a musical fan at all….which pretty much represents almost 100% of her movies.
      3. When Debbie Reynolds passed away Debbie wanted to see Singin’ In the Rain…so we saw it……her first viewing and my second vieweing. Boy did they copy The Artist….almost the same story…..lol.
      4. Seems we now know three things that will get Bob fired up…..Loy, Joel and John…lol.
      5. That candy is actually called Snickers…..it is the Murder She Wrote of the 2010s……lots of older actors have appeared in their commercials….from the late Abe Vigoda to Betty White to Joe Pesci.
      🙂

      Reply

  3. BRUCE 1 When STEVE gave us his excellent video on Cyd it whetted my appetite for a Cogerson page on the lady so my thumbs up to this comprehensive profile of her career.
    I loved your innovative moving coloured clip from Singin in the Rain and your miniature poster for Band Wagon Just as Steve has strayed onto your grosses patch at times, you have here stolen some of HIS thunder with fine pictorial reproductions! As always my own database will benefit from the WW grosses.

    2 Your stats chart faithfully reflects the decline of Cyd’s career in tandem with the fading of the Hollywood musical but personally I enjoyed Cyd’s later performances in Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) and most especially in Party Girl (1958) with Bob Taylor.

    3 I see that in the comments part of the page your weird idol whose strange views have received a lot of mileage on this site recently has again been giving us the benefit of his great wisdom. OK – but I just wish that he could have realised that whilst he was entitled to his own at times rather bizarre opinions few (but possibly YOURSELF) may have appreciated his speaking for everybody else –

    ‘MOST PEOPLE viewing a number like “Dancing in the Dark” from The Band Wagon would disagree. Charisse and Astaire moved with a sensual grace that matched anything in the Astarie and Rogers films.’

    4 This from a man who failed to appreciate the wonderful singing and dancing of the main star of Guys and Dolls in relation to whom elsewhere The Wild Man again considered himself the spokesman for the entire planet.

    “NOBODY cared about Desiree or Brando’s performance as Napoleon.”

    5
    Robert Burns:
    “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
    To see oursels as others see us!
    It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
    An’ foolish notion.”

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob
      1. I have to admit that I thought about Steve’s video when picking the next UMR subject….his video gave her the edge over Jamie Foxx. I wonder how many times Foxx and Charisse have appeared in the same sentence.
      2. Yep….by the time the 1960s arrived things were no longer going too well for her movie career.
      3. My “weird idol” has actually been around since my Hub Pages days….just finally giving him the proper shout outs.
      4. I of course do not blindly agree with everything Joel says (I save that for Steve…..lol)…. but I like sharing his thoughts here….it is keeping his name and thoughts alive.
      5. I just hope the next time you see or think about a The Towering Inferno you will give Joel and his Oscar wins for that movie a brief consideration…lol.
      6. You know…Joel and Marlon have the same amount of Oscars….lol.
      Good feedback as always.

      Reply

    1. Hey Elizabeth….those are two of her most famous lead actress roles for sure….thanks for stopping and commenting.

      Reply

  5. Dance critic Arlene Croce stated: “The sexiest of (Astaire’s) other partners, Cyd Charisse and Rita Hayworth, did very little for him.” Most people viewing a number like “Dancing in the Dark” from The Band Wagon would disagree. Charisse and Astaire moved with a sensual grace that matched anything in the Astarie and Rogers films.

    Reply

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