legged beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died of heart failure, Tuesday, in Los Angeles. She was 86. Charisse appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. 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 appearances with her husband, singer Tony Martin. Her height was 5 feet, 6 inches (168 centimeters), but in high heels and full-length stockings, she seemed serenely tall, and she moved with extraordinary grace. Her flawless beauty and jet-black hair contributed 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.”
