Tamara Toumanova, a child-prodigy ballerina of the 1930's who became familiar to American audiences as one of the most glamorous stars of 20th-century dance, died on Wednesday at the Santa Monica Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 77 and lived in Beverly Hills.

She died after a brief illness, said John Taras, a friend.

By the time she was 13, Miss Toumanova was internationally acclaimed as one of the three so-called baby ballerinas of Col. W. de Basil's Ballets Russes. She and two other phenomenally gifted daughters of Russian emigres -- Irina Baronova and Tatiana Riabouchinska -- were discovered in Parisian ballet studios by George Balanchine. They soon became the talk of London and New York.

Adoring fans nicknamed Miss Toumanova "the black pearl of the Russian ballet." Even as a teen-ager, her beauty was as remarkable as her technique. Kathrine Sorley Walker, a British dance historian, said of her in "De Basil's Ballets Russes" (1983) that with her "large dark eyes, raven wings of hair and magnolia skin, she combined lyricism and virtuosity to a remarkable degree."

A founding member of the de Basil Ballets Russes in 1932, Miss Toumanova inspired two of this century's greatest choreographers. She created roles in Balanchine's "Cotillon" and "Concurrence" and in Leonide Massine's "Jeux d'Enfants" with the company. She left the following year and was given starring roles by Balanchine in his short-lived troupe Les Ballets 1933. Returning to the Ballets Russes a few months afterward, she danced in the classics as well as in such new works by Massine as "Choreartium" and "Symphonie Fantastique." Later in her career, she performed with Ballet Theater, now American Ballet Theater, and appeared in a number of Hollywood films.

Miss Toumanova was born on March 2, 1919, in a boxcar in Siberia. She was the daughter of a czarist army colonel and his wife, who were fleeing the Bolsheviks. The couple settled in Paris, where their daughter became a pupil of Olga Preobrajenska, a Russian-born teacher.

Miss Toumanova astonished balletgoers in 1929, at the age of 9, when she appeared at the Paris Opera in "L'Eventail de Jeanne," a ballet with a cast of children. Reviewing the production in the theatrical magazine Comoedia, Andre Levinson, the most famous Parisian ballet critic of the time, called Miss Toumanova's dancing both "astonishing" and "frightening."

When quarrels between de Basil and Massine prompted the choreographer to form his own company, Miss Toumanova became a member of Massine's new Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1938. She dropped out of the company the next year to appear in the Broadway musical "Stars in Your Eyes," and rejoined de Basil's company for an Australian tour and the New York season that followed it in 1940. She was once again a member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo from 1940 to 1942, and during the 1944-45 season, was a star of Ballet Theater.

As she toured the world, Miss Toumanova was accompanied by her mother, Eugenia, one of the most famous of the "ballet mothers" of the 1930's. These mothers went everywhere with their daughters, serving as dressers, laundresses, cooks and pet keepers. In addition, the mothers were their daughters' fiercest partisans and sternest critics. Eugenia Toumanova was also said to be fond of fortune telling, faith healing and poker playing.

When, as a member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Miss Toumanova was cast in the virtuosic Black Swan pas de deux from "Swan Lake," she and her mother would minutely inspect the stage to choose the spot at which the ballerina would perform a notoriously difficult series of whipping turns known as fouettes. Then they would pray over that spot. The fouettes never faltered. Grace Robert, an American dance historian, said of the Black Swan in her "Borzoi Book of Ballets" (1946): "Tamara Toumanova is at her exciting best in this tour de force, its vertiginous turns and sustained balances exactly suiting her temperament and forceful technique."

Miss Toumanova's later career, although a distinguished one, did not always seem as remarkable as her youthful achievements. After leaving Ballet Theater, she became a freelance ballerina, appearing with such companies as the Paris Opera Ballet, London Festival Ballet and the Marquis de Cuevas Grand Ballet. During the 1960's, she toured extensively in South America with Vladimir Oukhtomsky as her partner.

She created two notable roles with the Paris Opera Ballet. In 1947, she was a star of "Le Palais de Cristal," the glittering abstract ballet by Balanchine that is known in America as "Symphony in C." Three years later, she displayed her dramatic talents in the title role of Serge Lifar's "Phedre."

Some critics thought Miss Toumanova acquired annoying mannerisms. Reviewing her in the London Festival Ballet production of "Swan Lake" in 1955, John Martin, who was then the dance critic of The New York Times, complained that "her grandiosity (including some incredible bows) smothered the whole work like so much thick chocolate sauce."

Nevertheless, she remained capable of extraordinary performances. Seeing her at the Paris Opera in 1950, the American critic Edward Denby wrote in "Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets" (1965) that he was distressed by her "careless feet, limp and wormy arms, brutally deformed phrasings" but that his objections vanished when she offered "a few terrifying extensions, a few incisive strokes that counted phenomenally."

"At these moments," he went on, "she had so much vitality she made everyone else look as if they merely crept or scuttled about her while she danced."

Miss Toumanova acted and danced in several movies. She made her screen debut in "Days of Glory" in 1944. That same year, she married the film's producer and screen writer, Casey Robinson; the marriage ended in divorce. Miss Toumanova played the ballerina Anna Pavlova in "Tonight We Sing" in 1953 and appeared in "Deep in My Heart" in 1954. She had a starring role in "Invitation to the Dance," a ballet film directed by Gene Kelly in 1955. She was also in Alfred Hitchcock's "Torn Curtain" (1966) and Billy Wilder's "Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1969).

Miss Toumanova, who became an American citizen in 1944, lived quietly in later years at her home in Beverly Hills.