Cyd Charisse Height Breakdown: Side-by-Side Comparisons with Her Famous Co-Stars
Away from the studio soundstages, Charisse never had to concern herself with looking taller than her partner. Her second husband, singer Tony Martin, stood 5 feet 11 inches. Their marriage lasted sixty years, from 1948 until her death in 2008, surviving the intense pressures of mid-century Hollywood.
In public appearances, red carpet premieres, and nightclub engagements alongside Martin, Charisse routinely wore four-inch high heels. Standing next to her husband, she looked like a conventionally proportioned, elegant Hollywood leading lady rather than an intimidating screen giant. Martin frequently quipped in press interviews that while Kelly and Astaire had to dance around her height, he simply enjoyed walking beside it.
Charisse herself was remarkably unsentimental about her physical fame. In her 1976 joint memoir with Martin, The Two of Us, she reflected on dance as purely athletic work. She acknowledged that the illusion of height was something she manufactured with her back muscles, feet, and neck rather than an accident of genetics.