Rita Moreno: "Natalie Wood was NOT a star!"
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friendoffilm — 11 years ago(January 17, 2015 10:37 AM)
Thanks for the interesting heads up about both Rita Moreno's and Natalie Wood's sordid backgrounds that were frought with much abuse. That really does help understand where both Rita and Natalie are/were coming from.
This:
If the film had been made ten years earlier, it would have been fantastic to see Rita as Maria and I think she would have kicked ass
is something that I wholeheartedly disagree with. Personality-wise, imho, Rita Moreno was much more suited for the role of Anita (which she played
fantastically
, imho!). I could not, for the life of me, imagine Rita Moreno playing the part of Maria, at all. Natalie Wood, imho, given her own personality, was far more suited for the role of Maria. -
BoyWiththeGreenHair — 11 years ago(January 18, 2015 09:02 AM)
Rita had actually played a character similar to Maria, around ten years before WSS, in the King Brothers'
The Ring
, opposite the criminally underrated Latino character actor Lalo Rios (that whole project is underrated and deserves a kind of respect and attention it will probably never get - I highly recommend it).
A sweet, virginal, pure "good girl" character who urges her boyfriend to give up boxing and, like Maria with Tony, pushes him "not to fight" (pretty unusual for the time to have a Latina character that positive portrayed as neither slutty nor hot-tempered, but level-headed and practical). So I think Rita could have "played" Maria conceivably. Maybe some of the vocal arrangements might have been challenging or out of her range (she did, after all, have to be dubbed by Betty Wan for some of the higher notes in "A Boy Like That"), but I doubt she would have fared much worse than Natalie.
But, what really brought that comment on was something I had read a while back, that Leonard Bernstein had originally approached Rita years earlier about portraying Maria in the original production of the musical. For some reason, she turned the part down and regretted it. Can anyone verify this? -
friendoffilm — 11 years ago(February 02, 2015 08:21 PM)
I think the "Latina drag" is pretty upsetting to a lot of Latina actresses when they consider WSS. It does come across as pretty galling.
You've made an interesting point here, pbm. I haven't stopped loving the film
West Side Story
, however. -
marvelass — 10 years ago(May 27, 2015 02:28 AM)
Yes, a lot of Latina actresses have a bad taste in their mouths when it comes to Natalie Wood. It still happens today - a straight het guy was cast as gay man Allan Turing.
So only gay actors should play gay characters? Would you object to gay actors playing straight characters? Should only Americans play Americans or only Brits play Brits and so on? Where do you draw the line?
It's called acting. It's pretending to be someone else.
. -
rorystevens — 10 years ago(July 21, 2015 09:51 PM)
she did, after all, have to be dubbed by Betty Wan for some of the higher notes in "A Boy Like That")
That's not accurate. Betty Wand dubbed the whole song of "A Boy Like That" because Rita couldn't hit the low notes.
Marni Nixon actually dubbed Rita on the high notes for "Tonight" because Rita had a cold and couldn't sing. -
mark.waltz — 9 years ago(November 28, 2016 11:48 AM)
Thank you for mentioning "The Ring" which I find to be a very compassionate view of the issues of Hispanics in the 1950's. Rita could be very much the spitfire, dancing very fiery in "The Toast of New Orleans" to "The Tina Lina" with James Mitchell, then really toning it down for "The King and I". I'd completely understand her resentment about a real Hispanic actress not being cast as Maria (although the original, Carol Lawrence, was of Italian descent, close but still no cigar), but Natalie, being of Russian birth, had a bit of an "exotic" touch to her, even if she's as far from believable as a Puerto Rican. She scored better in the same year's "Splendor in the Grass", while Rita followed up "WSS" with another fiery Latina in "Summer and Smoke". But if Wood is badly miscast in "WSS", imagine both Chita Rivera and Rita doing double-takes when Janet Leigh was cast in "Bye Bye Birdie". In one interview in the mid 1960's, Chita does a double-take when a reporter jokingly introduces her as Rita, then after laughing hysterically, replies, "Well at least you didn't say Janet Leigh!"
"Great theater makes you smile. Outstanding theater may make you weep." -
marvelass — 10 years ago(May 27, 2015 02:53 AM)
Maybe she was resentful that with so many perfectly eligible Latino actresses that could've played Maria in WSS, Wood was chosen.
What "perfectly eligible Latino actresses, pray tell? You do realize this was 1961 and pickings were slim regarding Latino actors? Moreno was perhaps the only prominent Latina actress at that time, and even she was only getting cast in supporting roles.
Furthermore, studios were gonna choose established stars over unknown entities. Same reason why Julie Andrews was passed over for the film version of
My Fair Lady
and replaced with Audrey Hepburn: Andrews had never before made a movie, and Hepburn was already a proven star and Oscar-winner.
Likewise, Natalie Wood was already a star. I don't know what Rita Moreno is babbling about. Wood had been a child star, and by 1961 (When she was 23) she had already been in three classics (
Miracle on 34th Street
,
The Searchers
,
Rebel Without a Cause
) and was an Oscar-nominee for the latter. Thus, she was already a big name. In fact, the only big name in the movie. She is first-billed and her name was several times larger than the rest and separated from the others by a space.
http://www.gazillionmovies.com/Movies/Review/DVD/Posters/Tickets/W/Images/WestSideStory.jpg
http://herecomestheneighbourhood.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/west-side-story-50th-birthday-poster.jpg
.
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