Bye, Bye, Chita (Rivera)

Believe me, though I struggle each week to find appropriate topics for my Beverly in Movieland blog posts, I’m not thrilled when performers I admire pass to the Great Beyond. Even when they’ve lived long, full lives, it’s sad to think that they’ll be among us no more.

 One shining star who has just left us is the magnificent Chita Rivera, known as a dancer, a singer, an actress, and an all-around grand lady of the American stage. Rivera, one of five children born to a Puerto Rican father and a multicultural mom, discovered her love of showbiz early. Trained in dance, with a scholarship to George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, she soon gravitated toward the bright lights of Broadway. Before she turned 20 she was dancing in touring companies of hit shows, and made her Broadway debut in Guys and Dolls. In 1957 came her breakthrough role: that of the fiery Anita in West Side Story. Her reviews were glowing, though she was not nominated for a Tony, and the Best Musical honors went to another of the year’s hits, The Music Man. (This was an era with a lot of great shows on the Broadway boards.)

 Another disappointment: in 1961, when West Side Story was turned into a film, the role Rivera had created on stage went to a different fiery Latina, Rita Moreno, who went on to win an Oscar for her performance. (On screen, the role of Anita seems to be an awards magnet. Though Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of the film was nominated for seven Oscars, the only winner on Oscar night was the actress playing Anita, Ariana DeBose. A sidenote: in the remake, Spielberg gave Moreno a juicy new supporting role as Valentina, the widow of drugstore owner Doc, who gets to sing “Somewhere” at a key moment in the film.)           

 I’ve always wondered why Rivera was not asked to repeat her Broadway role. Age had nothing to do with it: Moreno was actually a year older. I’m hardly privy to any behind-the-scenes gossip, but have always suspected the choice was made because Moreno (a Hollywood veteran who had played supporting roles in Singing in the Rain and The King and I) was equally talented AND a great deal prettier than her Broadway counterpart.

 In any case, Rivera recouped on Broadway as the female lead in Bye Bye Birdie, opposite Dick Van Dyke. Her character, Rose Alvarez, was specifically written as a Latina (which is one reason Dick’s stage mother disapproves of her so heartily). When the play became a movie, Van Dyke was invited along, but Rivera’s part was taken by Janet Lee in a dark wig. Ah, Hollywood! Fortunately, though, we do have some Rivera performances on film. She had played Gwen Verdon’s pal, Nickie, in the stage version of Sweet Charity.  In 1969. when Bob Fosse directed the film version, Verdon was replaced by Shirley MacLaine as the taxi dancer with a heart of gold.  And Rivera (hooray!) again got to play Nickie, displaying her musical talents along with MacLaine and Paula Kelly in the clip below.   

 She finally won a Tony Award in 1993 for a phantasmagoric role in Kander and Ebb’s musical take on Kiss of the Spider Woman. I don’t much remember that, but I’ve hardly forgotten her 2015 appearance in the short Broadway run of Kander and Ebb’s eerie The Visit. At 82, she didn’t exactly dance, but her performance was stunning. I watched it along with my own first dance teacher, the great Carmen de Lavallade. It’s one of my favorite memories.

 It’s been a tough week for Broadway fans. On January 30 we also lost Hinton Battle, a Tony-winning featured dancer best known for creating the role of the Scarecrow in Broadway’s The Wiz, which—by the way—was directed by Carmen de Lavallade’s talented husband, Geoffrey Holder.

 

 

"80 For Brady”: Before Time Passes Us By

On a flight back to L.A. following a trip that was alternatively inspiring and stressful, I was looking for light-weight entertainment on my seatback system. That’s why I turned to 80 for Brady, a comedy I knew would distract me from the cares of my everyday world. How could it fail to amuse, given that its cast was headed by some of Hollywood’s most reliable veterans? The combined star power of Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field (not to mention their combined Oscars, Emmys, and other accolades) was sure to divert me from my own anxieties. And so it (mostly) did.

 Very loosely based on an actual group of octogenarians with super-sized crushes on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, the plot features four lifelong friends of a certain age who stake everything on a trip to Houston to cheer on their hero in Super Bowl LI.  Of course the differences between the four women are sharply delineated. Trish (Jane Fonda) is a still-glamorous former beauty queen with a record number of failed romances. Maura (Rita Moreno) is a recent widow whose life in a dead-end retirement home is stifling her competitive spirit. The youngster of the group is Betty (Sally Field), who keeps reminding everyone that she’s personally not yet 80. She’s (theoretically) the responsible one: a mathematics whiz whose fellow-professor spouse (Bob Balaban) is a bit too clingy for the good of their marriage. Finally there’s Lou (Lily Tomlin), whose need for a big adventure at this point in her life clouds her judgment, and is the axis around which this story turns.

 I always dread movies that demean “cute” senior citizens by showing them trying to emulate younger, hipper folks. And of course there’s some of that here, including the inevitable (sigh!) sequence in which they accidentally trip out on cannabis gummies. And I winced when so much of the plot hinges on the search for an essential lost item (yes, I too had just lost something important, which is why this plane trip was so fraught for me.) Still, there’s fun to be had when the four overcome the world’s easy stereotypes about the elderly by showing they can dance like champions, play a killer hand of cards, and emerge victorious from a spicy food competition hosted by TV’s Guy Fieri.

 What startled me, in retrospect, was the weird parallel between 80 For Brady and the kind of movie my peers and I enjoyed when we were teenagers. One big hit in my junior highs school crowd was 1960’s Where The Boys Are. It’s the story of four college co-eds (back then the term was still used) who head south to Florida for spring break. Of course their #1 goal is romance, and they mostly find it, with very mixed results. The natural leader of the group (Dolores Hart) discovers the kind of love that may last a lifetime. The joker (Paula Prentiss in her film debut) finds an equally tall, equally goofy opposite number (Jim Hutton), and they briefly enjoy a romantic romp. Poor Angie (recording star Connie Francis) never succeeds at love, but she gets to sing the plaintive title song, which was soon blasting from radios throughout the country. And the most serious of the plotlines features lovely Yvette Mimieux whose trusting nature leads her into a genuine crisis.

 The ladies of 80 for Brady are mostly not looking for love, or even sex. Their problems are darker: widowhood, the diminishing of personal autonomy, life-threatening illness. Which doesn’t stop them from having fun wherever they can find it.

Restoring (and Rescoring) “West Side Story”

What does it take to remake the beloved 1961 musical, West Side Story? I’d say it requires two things: chutzpah and cojones. And Steven Spielberg has plenty of both. As a lover of the original film, which won ten Oscars in 1962, Spielberg sought to preserve the greatness of the original. But he clearly saw a need to re-contextualize a story (of feuding street gangs and a forbidden love affair) that has come to seem hackneyed over time.

 When the stage musical that melded the talents of Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins first burst onto the Broadway scene in 1957, the contemporary take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet seemed bold and fresh. Years later, though, we can’t ignore the creakiness of the material. And today’s sensibilities aren’t comfortable with the casting of Anglos in dark makeup as Latinos. (In the 1961 film version, the supposedly Puerto Rican Sharks gang was comprised of dancers from as far afield as Japan. Though Rita Moreno was genuinely born—like her character—in Puerto Rico, fellow Oscar winner George Chakiris is of Greek descent. Nor was Natalie Wood a PC choice to play the film’s romantic heroine,)

 Along with correcting the casting faux-pas of the original film, Spielberg gave his version a sense of the historical forces at play. New York City, circa 1960, was a place where slums were being noisily demolished to make room for Lincoln Center. In the opening, we spot at a construction site an idyllic sketch of the theatres and concert halls that will soon be springing up. A cop-character tasked with keeping order among the slum-dwellers drives the point home: one day the area will be filled with glitzy apartments owned by wealthy whites. Any Puerto Ricans still in the vicinity will be doormen and maids. And the feckless white kids who make up the Jets will continue to descend the social ladder, crowded out of their own turf first by immigrants, then by gentrification.

 I give playwright Tony Kushner full credit for fleshing out many characters, hinting at backstories for Jets like Tony and Riff, while also showing the aspirations of the immigrant Sharks. (Bernardo in this version is an up-and-coming boxer.) Fresh attention is paid to the women, who are given far more heft and dignity than in the previous film. Anita (at least sometimes) campaigns against the violence of the street gangs, Maria is less of a delicate flower than previously, and there’s an important moment late in the film when the women on opposite sides of the conflict are seen trying to look out for one another. The major addition to the familiar plot is a brand-new character, Valentina. Played by Rita Moreno, now an astonishing 90, she fills the function of Doc, the sympathetic Jewish drugstore owner of the first film. We learn she is Doc’s widow, a living example of how an interracial couple could thrive even in these fraught surroundings. As Tony’s confidante, she is in an ideal position to project the fundamental optimism behind the whole belief that SOMEWHERE there’s a place where love can survive.

 This new film is hardly perfect. There are a few serious gaps in plot logic, and the distinctive personalities of the Jets (so memorable in the earlier film) get lost here. I appreciate, though, the bleaker, tougher visuals, as well as the smart new use of the song ‘Cool” to lead into the climactic rumble. I suspect, though, that the new film will never have the same power for its audiences as the one I thrilled to back in 1961.