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Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, Texas in 1921. When she was six she caught polio, and she was lucky enough to recover, and her parents started her dancing to regain her strength. She started ballet at 12 and a couple of years later she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and went on a tour of Europe with them. While on tour, she met a dancer named Nico Charisse, and she married him when she turned 18, and they had a son. She also benefited by gaining her husband's last name, a big improvement over "Finklea" (the Cyd came from her childhood nickname, "Sid"). When World War II started, that ended the tours, and she moved to Los Angeles, where she was spotted by MGM and started appearing in their movies in 1943 (during that year, she would be billed under the stage name of "Lily Norwood"), in roles where she danced ballet. She appeared in around 25 MGM movies over the next 15 years. At first she solely danced, and then MGM cast her in some acting roles as "ethnic types" (like as a Polynesian girl in On an Island with You) but soon she was playing regular female leads in movies where she danced as well. Her best known appearance was in the "Broadway Melody" ballet finale from Singin' in the Rain, but she had many other great movies, and she co-starred with both Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. She was supposed to play the female lead in An American in Paris, but she was pregnant with her second child, and the role went to Leslie Caron. As the era of musicals came to an end in the late 1950s, Charisse switched over to straight dramatic roles. She had gotten divorced in 1947 and the following year she had married actor Tony Martin, who had previously been married to actress Alice Faye. They remained married for the next 60 years until she passed away in 2008 at the age of 86, and while it is rare for any Hollywood marriage to last a very long time as theirs did, this one was doubly rare, both because it was a second marriage for both of them, and because they were both active show business stars, which normally puts a great strain on any marriage. Charisse was a beautiful, talented, classy lady was a great dancer with incredible legs (in 1952 they were insured for 5 million dollars!). I highly recommend her movies, especially Brigadoon, Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and Silk Stockings (a musical remake of Ninotchka)!

Important Added Info: This index card has been personally autographed (signed) by Cyd Charisse! The index card could be matted with a vintage or repro still and framed together to make a cool display!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In each of our last several all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning many signed index cards (plus many signed photos and miscellaneous other signed items that have a different note on those)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 from his collection (or sometimes a different size photo or other item), and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     See our other note with the other signed items from this consignor for more about how he acquired them. But in additional to sending photos and other items with images of the star, he would also enclose an index card, and mention that the star could sign the index card if they didn't want to sign the photo. He found that many, many stars would sign both! This auction is for one of many index cards which he received back from the celebrities who he had written to.
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775