Love Came First—Cyd Charisse & Tony Martin

Six years ago when Cyd, a soft-spoken, long-legged dancing beauty, drove up to Santa Barbara and married singer Tony Martin, the Hollywood gossip columnists had a wry old time.

“I predict,” wrote one, “that this marriage will last all of ninety days.” “It should surprise no one,” remarked another, “if Cyd Charisse and Tony Martin don’t make a go of it.” A third wrote, “If this one lasts, I’ll regain a little of my long-lost faith in Hollywood matrimony.”

Behind these predictions of marital mishap lay several valid reasons.

Cyd and Tony had both been divorced, and Cyd had a son by her former marriage.

It is axiomatic in film circles that two show-business careers in one family mix about as well as oil and water.

Tony Martin is a crooner, and as a group, crooners are noted for inconsistency. They wander around the country from supper club to nightclub, separated from their wives for long periods of time. They are continually assaulted by predatory females. In order to be successful, crooners must direct charm and sex appeal at women.

Without elaborating on the hectic marital history of Frank Sinatra, Rudy Vallee, Billy Eckstine, Dick Haymes and half a dozen others, crooners don’t make the best of husbands.

Ballerinas are not noted for successful marriages either. Some say they cannot and should not divide their time between art and a family. Supposedly, these are incompatible and success at one usually means failure in the other.

Despite all these reasons why it should have failed, the Cyd Charisse-Tony Martin marriage is today one of the happiest and most secure in Hollywood.

The Martins live, at the moment, in a rambling, colonial house. They have just sold it because they are building a new home up the hill from Elizabeth Taylor’s new estate. It should be finished almost any day now.

Tony and Cyd are very much in love and no one has yet seen them quarreling with each other, not even their servants. As a result the most skeptical diehards now predict that if any Hollywood marriage is destined to last “until death do us part,” this one is it.

It’s a rare moment when Tony, always on the go, sits down. His first date with Cyd went badly because he dashed around all evening. Later she received many warnings that Tony was too restless, too used to charming women. Cyd smiled, and loved him for it.

The major share of credit for the blissful and still-promising situation must go to Cyd Charisse.

Tony Martin is not the easiest guy in the world to live with. Tony, as everyone in Hollywood knows, is sports crazy.

His house is filled with such souvenirs as—well, let Cyd tell you. “We have baseball bats signed by the champion New York Giants of 1951. We have a cricket bat from Don Bradman. All sorts of autographed baseballs from Leo Durocher. Leo is one of Tony’s best friends. We have footballs from St. Mary’s and golf clubs from a dozen different matches.

“When the Giants lose a baseball game, I usually try to keep the newspaper away from him or lock him in his room. He is the Giants’ number one rooter. He even owns the jacket that Bobby Thomson wore when he hit that pennant-winning homer in 1951.”

In 1948 when Tony married Cyd, he insisted upon taking her east for her first World Series although she didn’t know the difference between a fielder’s choice and a run batted in.

She knows the difference now. She also knows a lot of other new things. Living with Tony means living with a small army of music arrangers, press agents, mucians, song-pluggers, TV executives and visiting athletes.

“Tony,” Cyd explains, “cannot follow just one sports event at a time. While he watches one on TV, he has another going on the radio.”

Cyd takes all this cheerfully and graciously. She is the perfect wife because she has consistently refused to succumb to any temptation to try to change her husband. And she has never let her career interfere with her second marriage.

“Even before I was married to Tony,” Cyd recalls, “people used to warn me about him. ‘Tony Martin’s a wonderful guy,’ they’d say, ‘but he’s always on the go. He’ll never be able to settle down and you’ll never be able to change him.’

“What they didn’t realize,” Cyd continues, “is that I loved him for what he was and didn’t want to change him.”

Having Tony, Jr. kept Cyd from playing in American In Paris. She couldn’t have cared less, although it was her biggest break to date.

As to the old problem of career versus marriage, Cyd decided months before she married Tony that for her marriage would always come first.

She had an opportunity to confirm this resolution early in 1949 when she and Tony returned from their European honeymoon.

At that time Cyd was assigned the lead opposite Gene Kelly in An American In Paris, the musical extravaganza that was later to win the Academy Award. This, Cyd felt, was the big break she’d been waiting and working for. A month later, however, she dropped in one afternoon to see her doctor. He told her she was pregnant. A big, happy smile on her beautiful face, Cyd drove to MGM and raced into the office of producer Arthur Freed.

“Arthur,” she announced joyfully, “you’ll have to get someone else for the part. I’m going to have a baby.”

Freed, who has admired Cyd for years, offered his congratulations, sincere and heartfelt; but presently, a small coterie of well-intentioned emissaries descended upon the Martin household. Subtle as the Rocky Mountains, they told the expectant mother about the movie star who always works during the first six months of her pregnancy, performing all sorts of acrobatics.

“You can have a baby any time,” one particularly jaded actress advised, “but a role like yours comes once in a lifetime.”

The tall, graceful dancer from Amarillo, Texas, listened—Cyd always listens—and she thanked these people for their solicitude and counsel. But she stayed home.

She wanted her baby and she would take no risks by working while she was pregnant. She resolved to carry the baby without complaining, carping or causing her Tony any needless worry or aggravation. And she did.

In her previous pregnancy, Cyd had been very annoying to her first husband, ballet master Nico Charisse. She had awakened him at two and three in the morning, sent him scurrying to the corner drugstore for milk shakes, asked him to satisfy her every whim. She was only sixteen, and understandably she was panic-stricken at the first approach of morning sickness.

“For nine months,” Nico Charisse recalls, “she gave me a bad time. She was young and she worried a lot. She sent for her own childhood nurse from Texas. Then her brother. She made it a real big thing. Of course, she was just.a child herself and our marriage was a mistake. Mostly, I guess, it was my fault. I was too old for her. But young girls have given birth to babies since the world began. No need to drive a man nutty just because you’re bearing a baby.”

Two years after the arrival of Tony, Jr., Cyd saw the actress who had advised her against stopping work.

“See?” said the actress, “American In Paris won the Academy Award. If you had worked you might have had an Oscar today.”

Cyd merely smiled: “Some people,” she says, “are cursed with perverted values.”

The values Cyd Charisse is blessed with the outlook and demeanor that make her one of Hollywood’s best-loved actresses, are the result of all her former experiences.

Cyd has been dancing since she was six years old. She came to Hollywood when she was twelve. She has traveled widely and seen much. She knows what it is to be eaten by ambition. She knows, too, that a successful career is not enough for a normal woman. Love and children and a good husband count most.

It wasn’t always like this, of course. Cyd is from Amarillo. She was born at 1616 Tyler Street and named Tula Ellice Finklea. She was sent to dancing school to build up her thin body. Two of her dancing teachers, Constance Ferguson and Rosalee Raymond, told Mrs. Finklea one day, “Your daughter has great natural talent. It should be developed.”

The Finklea family vacationed in Hollywood the summer Cyd was twelve. She danced for Nico Charisse, one of the most popular dancing instructors in the film colony then. “You tell us right out, Mr. Charisse,” Cyd’s father demanded, “does our little girl have what it takes or doesn’t she?”

Charisse watched this tall, dark, too-thin girl from Amarillo perform. She was lithe, intense, caught up with the spirit of the dance. She moved with grace, expression and agility. She seemed to be so promising that he said in all truth, “She’s got what it takes, all right. But she needs work, of course.”

Charisse offered to supervise her instruction if Cyd would remain in Hollywood. “Will you let her stay?” he asked.

Mr. and Mrs. Finklea glanced at Cyd. The girl said nothing but her eyes begged for their consent. The parents looked at each other. Their faces reflected a profound struggle. No parents want to relinguish control of a daughter, an only daughter, just as she approaches womanhood. And yet no parents want to stand in the way of a talented, ambitious child and perhaps earn her eternal resentment.

Cyd’s parents finally worked it out. Cyd was to stay in Hollywood, live with their friends, the Crumleys, and take dancing lessons from Nico Charisse.

During the next three years in Hollywood, Cyd developed into a superb dancer.

Nico Charisse fell in love with his pupil when she was fifteen. That year Cyd got a contract with the Ballet Russe. A month later her father died. Cyd rejoined the Ballet in Europe and in a little while Charisse followed her to France, proposed marriage and was accepted.

Of this impetuous marriage, a friend says, “It was a big mistake right from the start. Nico was in love with Cyd, but she was too young to know what love was all about. There she was, fifteen or sixteen, beating around Europe, frightened and lonely. Her father had just died. She had no one to turn to. Nico showed up and proposed. The poor scared kid said yes. Then the war broke out and he took her back to Hollywood.

“What did she know about marriage or keeping house? Nothing. She brought her maid, Lindy Lee, from Amarillo. Her mother came to help when she was pregnant.

“Cyd’s mother never understood Nico Charisse. When he lost his money she couldn’t understand why he didn’t take a job as a truck driver. Cyd, of course, tried desperately to find work. She was young and beautiful and talented but somehow she couldn’t get a break. She had small parts in half a dozen productions, but nothing to get public notice.”

One afternoon at MGM, Harry Warren, the only composer to have won three Academy Awards, watched Cyd rehearse a bit for The Harvey Girls. He pointed her out to producer Arthur Freed. “Keep your eye on that girl,” he urged. “She’s got talent and sex appeal and that’s a tough combination to beat.”

Fortunately, Freed did not forget those words. It was he who wanted Cyd for American In Paris. It was he who put her in Singin’ In The Rain, and it’s Freed who is currently Cyd’s biggest booster.

As Cyd’s career moved into second gear and she got a contract at MGM, her marriage slumped. In 1947 the Charisses were divorced. Cyd and her mother got custody of Nico, Jr., and the father got visitation rights.

This divorce did not disillusion the dancer. Rather, it set her to thinking seriously about marriage. Cyd was twenty-five and she decided that what she wanted most jin life was a husband and a happy home.

Cyd admits that when she met Tony Martin, “I didn’t think he would make the right kind of husband. My agent, Nat Goldstone, was having a party. Tony was one of his clients, too, and it was Nat who introduced us. Tony took me to Chasen’s for dinner, I guess. And then he hopped around from table to table greeting old friends. Frankly, I was burned up. I didn’t know then that he loves people and he has to greet them all. Anyway, he asked for another date and I quickly said I was very busy.

“I thought that was the end of Tony and me but sometime later Nat Goldstone called again and asked if I’d like to attend the premiere of Black Narcissus. ‘Your date,’ he added, ‘will be Tony Martin. What do you say?’ I said I would try anything twice.

“On that second date Tony, of course, was just wonderful. And ever since it’s been the same way.”

After the Martins were married in 1948, Cyd’s studio suddenly began to offer her big, meaty roles. Whenever she felt they impinged upon her marriage she turned them down. Her friends were amazed. Cyd explained that with Tony beside her she was at peace with the world. Her attitude toward a career became almost fatalistic. “If I ever become a star,” she said, “I don’t want it to be at the expense of my marriage.”

In 1951 after she had organized her household and was secure in her marriage, Cyd accepted a dancing role opposite Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain. She scored so solidly that the studio gave her the role opposite Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon. Gene Kelly saw her, demanded and got her for Brigadoon.

Cyd is being nominated for practically all of the musicals Metro is planning. Having seen through the illusion of fame, she accepts her good fortune with calm.

“It’s great,” she admits, “to be in outstanding pictures, but it’s greater still to have a family to share your happiness.”

Right now both Cyd and Tony are approaching the zenith of their careers. Tony Martin is not only starring in a Metro musical, Hit The Deck, but he has his own tv show, his own radio program, picture and recording contracts, plus personal appearance box office records that still stand at Chicago’s Latin Quarter, Las Vegas’ Flamingo, and Los Angeles’ Cocoanut Grove.

“It’s a funny thing,” observes a family friend. “Tony and Cyd are gentle, non-pushing people. They’ve been around a long time. Neither of them seemed to be going anywhere in a hurry. They fell in love and got married and suddenly their careers are booming. They’ve never played studio politics. They’ve never stabbed anyone in the back. Everyone in Hollywood loves them and all of a sudden they’re big successes. Go figure it out.”

Mack Millar, Tony’s press agent, thinks he has the answer.

“Tony and Cyd definitely prove,” Millar asserts, “that it pays to be in love.”

THE END

—BY ALICE FINLETTER

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE DECEMBER 1954