Choreographer-director Michael Kidd, a major force in Hollywood and Broadway musicals, has died; his family says that he was 92, though Kidd himself had claimed to be 88, probably so that he could hang onto his student discount. A sometime actor who used dance as an expression of character and to serve a narrative function, Kidd won five Tonys for his stage work, which included Finian's Rainbow and Guys and Dolls, and was awarded a special Academy Award in 1997. Kidd was well established on Broadway before first going West to work on the joyous 1952 Ray Bolger vehicle Where's Charley?; he also choreographed the great Fred Astaire-Jack Buchanan musical The Band Wagon as well as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, whose high points drew on both his background as a ballet dancer and his enthusiasm for incorporating "work movement" into the gestures of male dancers. As the movie musical dried up as a form, Kidd participated in some high=profile disappointments (Star!, Hello, Dolly but mostly kept to the stage. He also dabbled in acting, making notable on-screen appearances as one of the three male leads (alongside Gene Kelly and Dan Dailey) in the terrific, underappreciated 1955 musical It's Always Fair Weather and as a has-been choreographer who's been reduced to staging a small-town beauty contest in the 1975 comedy Smile, and playing Paul Muni in a musical biopic on TV. In front of the camera, with his bulldog face, mop of dark hair, and a pugnacious set to his jaw, he estabished himself as a lovably scowly presence.