Bye Bye Beautiful Dynamite

Tula Finklea passed away Tuesday and I am sad.
All right, none of you knew her by that name. But after dancing in school to build up her health, she eventually went to Hollywood and became this:

Yes. Cyd Charisse. Or, as Fred Astaire called her on more than one occasion, "Beautiful Dynamite." Or, as I called her all the time, "The Hottest Woman in the History of Recorded Time."

Look, I don't want to argue. Marilyn Monroe is the premier sex goddess of all time, and well-deserved, in my opinion. But that was media overdrive as much as anything. (And sure, at first, she ate it up.) Leslie Parrish, especially in her Daisy Mae Scragg-Jocie Jordan phase, is probably my favorite Hollywood blonde. And redheads, well, Ann-Margret, holy shit.

But all, and I mean ALL, must bow down to Cyd Charisse. Come on. It wasn't just the characters she played who could walk into a room and destroy every man in eyeshot.



You think that kind of thing happens by accident?
As a dancer, she was beyond the pale. A better dancer than Monroe was an actress, or Ann-Margret was a singer, too. But it's not a contest. And I mean that in both senses, too.

Rest in Peace, Tula.