Cyd Charisse, a former co-star of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, has died in Los Angeles aged 86, her publicist says.
The actress-dancer from Texas died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after suffering an apparent heart attack on Monday, her publicist Gene Schwam said.
The long-legged star appeared in a number of films, but her fame came from the musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.
She sang and danced with legends Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, and Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings.
At the height of her fame the film company said her long legs were insured for a million dollars.
But a BBC correspondent says she did not need such publicity stunts - her talent was enough to make her an essential part of the golden age of Technicolor musicals.
'Beautiful dynamite'
Born Tula Ellice Finklea in 1921, Charisse began her career dancing with the Ballet Russe as a teenager. During a European tour she met Nico Charisse, a young French dancer with whom she had trained in Los Angeles. They married in Paris in 1939.


Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse

She appeared in her first Hollywood film in 1943, performing a ballet sequence in the musical, Something to Shout About.
Her exploits attracted the attention of the studio, MGM, which gave her a seven-year contract and changed the spelling of her childhood nickname, Sid, to "Cyd".
She was married to her second husband, the singer Tony Martin, and a new mother, when she starred with Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.
She later worked with Kelly again in Brigadoon and partnered Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon and her favourite film, Silk Stockings.



Astaire later described Charisse as "beautiful dynamite".
"She wasn't a tap dancer, she's just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did," he said in an 1983 interview.
"When we were dancing, we didn't know what time it was."
Charisse also appeared in The Unfinished Dance, Words and Music, It's Always Fair Weather and Invitation to the Dance.
Later, she was in Two Weeks in Another Town, made some films in Europe, including Warlords of Atlantis, and appeared in several TV dramas.
She made her Broadway debut in 1992 at the age of 70 in the musical, Grand Hotel, reprising Greta Garbo's role, and continued to play small TV roles.