8 March: Cyd Charisse

Cyd Charisse, the American dancer and actress, was born on this date in 1922. 10 things you might not know about her:

1. Her real name was Tula Ellice Finklea.
2. "Sid" was a childhood nickname she got because her younger brother couldn't say "Sis" properly. It was the Hollywood producer Arthur Freed who changed the spelling to "Cyd". The surname Charisse was from her husband, Nico Charisse.
3. She contracted polio as a child. It was to aid her recovery from the disease that she first took up dancing lessons.
4. Her first film roles were uncredited, in the films Escort Girl and The Gay Parisian. Her role in the 1943 film Something to Shout About brought her to the attention of Robert Alton, a choreographer who also discovered Gene Kelly. By 1946, she was dancing with Fred Astaire in Ziegfield Follies, which led to her first speaking role in The Harvey Girls.
5. Gene Kelly chose her to dance with him in the finale of Singin' in the Rain, because Debbie Reynolds wasn't a trained dancer.
6. In the 1960s, Hollywood musicals went into decline. Charisse retired from dancing but still took acting roles.
7. She married twice. She and Nico Charisse were divorced in 1947 and in 1948 she married Tony Martin, a singer, to whom she remained married for the rest of her life.
8. In later years, she made an exercise video for senior citizens called Easy Energy Shake up.
9. She holds the Guinness World Record for the most valuable legs after her legs were insured for $5 million in 1952.
10. She died in 2008, aged 86, after suffering a heart attack.

My Books 

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The Ultraheroes series

Several new groups of superheroes, mostly British, living and working (mostly) in British cities like London and Birmingham. People discovering they have, and learning to live with, superpowers. Each book is complete in itself although there is some overlap of characters.

The Raiders series

A tale of two dimensions, and worm hole travel between the two. People displaced in both time and space, learning to get along and work together to find a way home while getting used to the superpowers wormhole travel gave them. A trilogy.

Golden Thread

A superhero tale with a difference. Five heroes from another dimension keep returning - whenever they return, they have a job to do and are a well-meshed team in order to do it. Until one time, something goes wrong...

Tabitha Drake series

A different kind of power - the ability to talk to dead people. Tabitha has it, and murder victims seek her out to make sure justice is done. Tabitha has this and a disastrous love life to cope with.

Short story collections

Some feature characters from the above novels, others don't. They're not all about superheroes. Some are creepy, romantic, funny.