Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heartattack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.
She appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and1950s.
Classically trained, she could dance anything, from a pas de deux in 1946's Ziegfeld Follies to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1953's The Band Wagon (with Astaire).
She also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on television and in nightclub appearanceswith her husband, singer Tony Martin.
Her height was 5 feet, 6 inches, but in high heels and full-length stockings, she seemedserenely tall, and she moved with extraordinary grace. Her flawless beauty and jet-black haircontributed to an aura of perfection that Astaire described in his 1959 memoir, Steps in Time, as "beautiful dynamite."
"Her beauty was breathtaking," Debbie Reynolds, who starred with Charisse in the 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain, said in a statement. "The world will miss her dancing."
Charisse arrived at MGM as the studio was establishing itself as the king of musicals. Threeproducers — Arthur Freed, Joe Pasternak and Jack Cummings — headed units that drew from thegreatest collection of musical talent. Dancers, singers, directors, choreographers, composers,conductors and a symphony-size orchestra were under contract and available. The contract list alsoincluded the screen's two greatest male dancers: Astaire and Kelly.
She first gained notice as a member of the famed Ballet Russe, and got her start in Hollywood inballet sequence in a 1943 Don Ameche-Janet Blair musical, Something to Shout About.
She signed a seven-year contract at MGM. She also got a new name, the exotic "Cyd" instead ofher lifelong nickname Sid to go with her first husband's last name.
Singin' in the Rain marked a breakthrough.
When Freed was dissatisfied with another dancer who had been cast, Charisse inherited the roleand danced with Kelly in the Broadway Melody number that climaxed the movie. She stunned critics and audiences with her25-foot Chinese silk scarf that floated in the air with the aid of a wind machine.
Charisse also danced with Kelly in Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather and Invitation to the Dance.
Silk Stockings in 1957 marked the end of her dancing career in films, as well as thetwilight of the movie musical. With the film business suffering from the onslaught of television,MGM dismantled its great collection of talent. Musicals were too expensive, and foreign audienceshad soured on them.
Charisse continued with dramatic films, several of them made in Europe. She and Martin tooktheir musical act to Las Vegas and elsewhere. In 1992 she finally made her Broadway debut, takingover the starring role as the unhappy ballerina in the musicalized Grand Hotel.
Her name was Tula Ellice Finklea when she was born in Amarillo, Texas, on March 8, 1922. Fromher earliest years she was called Sid, because her older brother couldn't say "sister." She was asickly girl who started dancing lessons to build up her strength after a bout with polio.
"I was so frail they were afraid to touch me," she recalled in that 1996 interview.
At 14 she auditioned for the head of the famed Ballet Russe, and became part of the corps deballet and toured the U.S. and Europe. To appear with the nearly all-Russian company, she was firstbilled as Celia Siderova, than as Maria Istromena.
At one point during the European tour, she met up again with Nico Charisse, a handsome youngdancer she had studied with for a time in Los Angeles. They married in Paris in 1939.
The Ballet Russe disbanded after the war broke out, and the newlyweds returned to Hollywood. In1942, a son, Nicky, was born.
In 1948, the year after she and Nico divorced, Charisse married Martin. Her second son, TonyJr., was born in 1950.
