Monday, March 22, 2010

My hero / Cyd Charisse by Tony Parsons

 

Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire



My hero: 

Cyd Charisse

by Tony Parsons

 'When she danced she made the rest of the world melt away'


Tony Parsons
Saturday 22 March 2010

N

o human being ever moved like Cyd Charisse. When she danced – with Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, or Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings, or by herself in Party Girl – she brought an effortless grace to every move. She made dancing look as natural as breathing. She made it look easy. But it wasn't easy. Cyd was as dedicated to her craft as any sportsman, any artist. She had to be. Because in her childhood was an illness that could have confined her to a wheelchair for life.



Cyd Charisse

Cyd had polio as six-year-old girl in Texas and took up ballet to build her wasted, underdeveloped muscles. No natural, she started dancing as this frail little child and never stopped. It gave her body a lean, uncanny strength that no other dancer in Hollywood or beyond ever matched. Cyd acted and sang a bit. But when she danced she made the rest of the world melt away. In her greatest role, running rings around Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, dancing was all Cyd did. Never said a word. Never needed to.

Debbie Reynolds was Singin' in the Rain's leading lady. But Cyd was the girl who appears to tempt and torment Kelly in the extraordinary 15-minute dance sequence that is the film's heart. Playing a gangster's moll who turns her back on true love for easy money, Cyd stole the show. "Beautiful dynamite," was Fred Astaire's verdict on her. "When you danced with her, you stayed danced with."

Cyd's thing was supreme erotic elegance. She wasn't that tall – 5ft 6in – but the sublime aerodynamics of the woman, and the astonishing length of legs that had once been wasted by polio, made her appear six inches taller. "As streamlined as the Chrysler Building" was one contemporary verdict.

But beyond the silk stockings, Cyd had a thread of steel. She was more beautiful than Monroe, and tougher than Muhammad Ali. There should be statues of Cyd Charisse.

THE GUARDIAN




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016




Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)