Cyd Charisse, one of the most distinctive names in show business, was born Tula Ellice Finklea in 1921 in Amarillo, TX. After using a succession of faux-Russian names while touring with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and a single screen credit under the name Lily Norwood in 1943, she settled on the moniker that will live forever in movie lore. She's Gene Kelly's mysterious dream girl in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, and a more magical kind of fantasy figure for him in BRIGADOON. For Fred Astaire, she was an equal talent who inspired him to new heights late in his career, Dancing in the Dark with him in THE BAND WAGON, and dancing out her character's transformation from dour Soviet commissar to Westernized sensualist in SILK STOCKINGS. And, if film scholar David Thomson is to be believed, her outrageous, sexually charged performance in Nicholas Ray's PARTY GIRL is not only the most daring thing she ever did on screen, but the greatest. Charisse's passing on June 17 of last year saddened all fans of dance, musicals and the great Golden Age of Hollywood. Celebrate the work of this one-of-a-kind talent when AFI Silver takes a look back at some of Cyd Charisse's finest films.

AFI Member passes will be accepted at all films in the Beautiful Dynamite: The Films of Cyd Charisse series.

PARTY GIRL

"The best work Charisse ever did." -- David Thomson

"ROUGH AND READY! THE TRUTH ABOUT THE 'MODELS,' 'ACTRESSES' AND 'DANCERS' WHO PLAY WITH FIRE...AND OFTEN GET BURNED!" A neglected noir melodrama from director Nicholas Ray, ripe for rediscovery. In Prohibition-era Chicago, dancer/call girl Charisse and lame mob lawyer Robert Taylor decide to help each other go straight, against the wishes of Charisse's gangster boyfriend Lee J. Cobb. One of the best non-musical roles for Charisse, who still gets to dance here, in two show-stopping, hip-shaking numbers.

DIR Nicholas Ray; SCR George Wells, based on the story by Leo Katcher; PROD Joe Pasternak. US, 1958, color, 99 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, May 9, 8:20; Sunday, May 10, 1:00; Thursday, May 14, 7:00

THE BAND WAGON

#17 on AFI Greatest Movie Musicals

Writers Comden and Green create a theatrical variation of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN's studio setting, with Fred Astaire as a washed up Hollywood hoofer aiming for a Broadway comeback. When artistic differences with director Jack Buchanan and co-star Cyd Charisse and a disastrous preview in New Haven threaten to sink the production, the troupe turns it around with song and dance, the knockout numbers including That's Entertainment (#45 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs), A Shine on Your Shoes, and Astaire and Charisse's dream pairing in Dancing in the Dark, plus the stylish Mickey Spillane spoof, The Girl Hunt.

DIR Vincente Minnelli; SCR Betty Comden, Adolph Green; PROD Arthur Freed. US, 1953, color, 111 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, May 16, 1:00; Sunay, May 17, 1:00; Tuesday, May 19, 7:00

BRIGADOON

Vincente Minnelli's CinemaScope adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe Broadway hit casts Gene Kelly and Van Johnson as the American hunters who get lost in the highlands of Scotland and stumble across the mysterious village of Brigadoon, which appears to be trapped in the 18th century. Turns out the spellbound town appears for only one day each century--just long enough for Kelly to fall in love with enchanting lass Cyd Charisse. MGM's stage-bound version of this Scottish Shangri-La is livened up by Kelly's choreography and lots of local color--tartan kilts, purple heather and Scottish burrs--resulting in a heartwarming fantasy.

DIR Vincente Minnelli; SCR Alan Jay Lerner, based on his musical; PROD Arthur Freed. US, 1954, color, 108 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, May 23, 12:30; Sunday, May 24, 12:30; Monday, May 25, 12:30

IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER

Army buddies Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd March, March through a dizzy montage of Manhattan's bars, culminating in a drunken tango with taxicabs and the trio's celebrated trashcan lid tap dance, which Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen conceived specifically for the widescreen of CinemaScope. With middle age comes disappointment, even cynicism, but their 10-year reunion brings back their youthful élan, with Kelly finding new love--on roller skates--with sizzling Cyd Charisse, here performing Baby, You Knock Me Out with a chorus of broken-nosed boxers.

DIR Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly; SCR Betty Comden, Adolph Green; PROD Arthur Freed. US, 1955, color, 102 min. NOT RATED

Friday, May 29, 7:00; Saturday, May 30, 12:25, 4:45; Wednesday, June 3, 7:00

SILK STOCKINGS

The Cold War comedy of George S. Kaufman's play Ninotchka, previously adapted by Ernst Lubitsch starring Greta Garbo, is splendidly remade here as a song-and-dance vehicle for Fred Astaire and Charisse, she the icy Soviet bureaucrat who resists the allure of Paris, and he the Hollywood producer who convinces her to lighten up. The first and only reunion of the well-paired dancers after their success in THE BAND WAGON, terrific together here in Fated to Be Mated, and solo, with Astaire high stepping along with a top hatted chorus in The Ritz Roll and Rock, and Charisse legging it out in the scintillating Red Blues. The snazzy songs are by Cole Porter.

DIR Rouben Mamoulian; SCR Leonard Gershe, Leonard Spigelgass, based on Ninotchka by Melchior Lengyel; PROD Arthur Freed. US, 1957, color, 117 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, June 6, 3:00; Sunday, June 7, 12:40

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

#1 on AFI Greatest Movie Musicals #5 on AFI 100 Years...100 Movies AFI 100 Years...100 Songs #3 -Singin' in the Rain * #49 -Make 'Em Laugh * #72 -Good Morning

When silent stars Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen's first sound picture looks like a bomb, movie magic saves the day, as Kelly and company rush to recut the movie as a musical, with Debbie Reynolds's lilt dubbed over Hagen's screech. Vaudevillian Donald O'Connor's bravura performance of Make 'Em Laugh is eclipsed only by Kelly's splashy song and dance performance of the title track--"the most celebrated single sequence in the history of the genre," according to film historian John Wakeman.

DIR Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly; SCR Adolph Green, Betty Comden; PROD Arthur Freed. US, 1952, color, 103 min. RATED G

Friday, June 12, 7:15; Saturday, June 13, 7:30; Sunday, June 14, 1:00

TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN

Vincente Minnelli's THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL enjoys classic status as one of the great insider critiques of Hollywood, but his lesser-known 1962 film, again starring Kirk Douglas, packs just as much of a wallop. Cracked-up actor Douglas, a former star who's spent the past three years in a sanitarium after a disfiguring auto accident, takes an assignment from his old director Edward G. Robinson, now carpetbagging on a low-budget international production at Rome's Cinecittà. Charisse plays Douglas's exotic, femme fatale ex-wife, whom he still hasn't gotten over, the only thing standing in the way of his budding attraction to starlet Daliah Lavi.

DIR Vincente Minnelli; SCR Charles Schnee, based on the novel by Irwin Shaw; PROD John Houseman. US, 1962, color, 107 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, June 27, 4:00; Tuesday, June 30, 7:00