The King of Kamp, ensconced in MooT lore forever for his portrayal of "Chandell" (and evil twin "Harry") from the Batman TV show, used to do an ostentatious Radio City Music Hall Easter Show back in the day that was SRO every night.

That he with the bedazzled Tuxedo tails inspired other showmen — from Barry Manilow and Peter Allen to Elton John and Boy George — is a given.

But out of which strand of his helix did those Lizst Meets Eddie Duchin, Vienna Meets Vegas stylings come from? The answer could be at The Liberace Foundation & Museum.

Whether emerging onto the stage from within a Fabergé egg a la Spinal Tap, or descending a faux staircase wearing 100 pounds of pink feathers, Liberace's entrances, in which every costume change grew increasingly audacious, were what people came to see. Lee (his real name) somehow managed to make the Rockettes lose some of their dazzle when he took the stage with them.

And, well, The Rockettes are The Rockettes, just pure New York City.

Interestingly, at the time the above shot was taken, the famous dance troupe was not a racially integrated act. Back in 1984, in an interview in The New York Times, Violet Holmes, then the group's director and choreographer, maintained that "Blacks would 'distract' from 'the look of precision,' the Rockettes' trademark." The story, as she told it, was that her dancers were supposed to be mirror images of one another.

Fast-forward three years, and that "requirement" had changed. Jennifer Jones, the first African-American Rockette, debuted with the group during the half-time show of the 1988 Super Bowl. In terms of her role on Radio City's classic kickline, he was an alternate, however ... on call to fill in whenever another Rockette couldn't get her toes above her nose.

That palm tree on the left has the right idea.

These gals were "internationally famous precision dancers." I've not been able to glean much on them except they seemed to be based in New York City, were active from the 1940s through the Sixties, toured the U.S. extensively, and many of them went on to become Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.

French actress Dominique Boschero — our latest "Girl with a Gun" — and American actor Mark Damon demonstrate the "Hully-Gully" on the beach at Malibu. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.)

The Hully-Gully was a dance based on The Frug, which itself was a variation on The Chicken, invented in 1961 by Frank Rocco at the Cadillac Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida. The H-G was based on the song of the same name, made popular by The Olympics back in 1959. (The Beach Boys covered the tune on their 1965 album "Beach Boys Party.")

Ed Sullivan mentioned the Cadillac Hotel as "Home of the Hully Gully" when he introduced America to the dance as performed by the members of The Frank Rocco Revue on his weekly Sunday night show on December 10, 1961.

Dubbed "Mr. Hully-Gully," Rocco and his revue toured America a few times, including a stop at the 1964 New York World's Fair, where he danced it with a then-unknown Hollywood hopeful named Goldie Hawn. Later, he brought his tour to American servicemen stationed in Europe, who, in turn, brought the dance to English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian towns near their duty stations. From there, it spread virally across the rest of Western Europe.

One of the best visual references for The Hully-Gully is John Belushi's performance of it in the film "The Blues Brothers" (1980).

Here's a clip of a coupla broads doin' The H-G, with a bit of The Swim thrown in ...

Cyd shows us how it's done. In "Party Girl" ...



In "Band Wagon" ...



In "Silk Stockings" ...



In "Singin' in the Rain" (with Gene Kelly)...



In "Meet Me in Las Vegas" ...

She was a dance legend, with legs that never ended.

A legs legend.

But she was only five-six. That illusion of greater height all came from posture, bearing, movement, grace, and those gams.

She was a Fred Astaire partner far more electrifying when dancing with him than Ginger Rogers, IMHO. The other was Eleanor Powell.

Astaire once called Cyd "beautiful dynamite." Sultry sizzle meets sophistication. A walking blasting cap.

Charisse once said that her husband, singer Tony Martin, always knew whom she had been dancing with. "If I was black and blue, it was Gene [Kelly]. And if it was Fred, I didn’t have a scratch."

"Singin' in the Rain" (1952), "The Band Wagon" (1953), and "Ninotchka" (1957) are three of her best. Rent them immediately.

"The Silencers" (1966) will always be a guilty pleasure, along with "Party Girl" (1958) and "Maroc 7" (1967).

[ BBC Obit ]

The incomparable Cyd Charisse from "Deep in My Heart" (1954). The number is "One Alone" by Sigmund "The Student Prince" Romberg, the composer whose bio-pic this is; her partner is James Mitchell.

Is she wearing that lace dress or is it wearing her?

And how did it get past the censors of the day?