7/27/2023 0 Comments Rita moreno young dancer"Do you think you can fool Conchita?" Hands on hips, nostrils flaring. Every damn thing that was offered to me was always these girls - "Why you no love Lola no more?" Which is funny now but, oh, man. I longed to speak English as I speak it now, and it was really depressing for me. They really didn't know the difference, and I felt I was in no position to say, "Wait a minute! If she's wearing these big Spanish combs and the lace shawls over that, that's Spain - that ain't Mexico." And we always had the same accent. Q: Any memories of Fireside Theatre's The Saint and Señorita?Ī: I played a fiery Mexican girl who wore Spanish combs and mantillas. The few live things I did were not Hispanic. It was always that way in filmed television. The Saint and the Señorita, which was my first filmed television show. It's interesting because, when I think of it, in filmed television it was always the señorita - I mean, all the titles: The Marriage of Lit-Lit, which was for Fireside Theatre. Q: Why did you tend not to get ethnic roles in live TV?Ī: I've never been able to figure that one out. It convinced me once and for all that my being Hispanic was my undoing, which a number of years later sent me into psychotherapy. But the powers that be just said, "We don't know what to do with her." So they dropped me. If he'd been around more and had more roles for young people, I might have still been at MGM. Interestingly enough, it was Gene Kelly who put me in the role of Zelda Zanders, which had nothing to do with being Hispanic. They didn't know what to do with me because of the Hispanic name. And then I did Singin' in the Rain, and after that I was dropped from that contract. Q: What kinds of roles were you doing for MGM?Ī: I did a film with Lana Turner and Ricardo Montalban called Latin Mothers. By the time you were through doing a half hour, your eyes were bright red and running because the lights were so very strong. So if you were going to dance, you had to dance in a space of about four feet by four feet. In those days, they had one camera and they didn't have the zoom lens. Q: How did you break into live television for the Dumont Network?Ī: I did some singing and dancing. So a lot of people keep saying, "Oh, you were wonderful in Spider Woman," and I say, "Thank you." I think it's because Chita Rivera and I played the same role in West Side Story, Anita. I get credit for doing an awful lot of plays that I haven't done. It was a Broadway drama called Sky Drift based very loosely on Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. Q: You went to Broadway at a young age.Ī: I did my very first Broadway show when I was thirteen passing for eleven, looking nine. My first American experience was the big lady in the New York harbor. After about four to five months, when she'd earned enough money and learned some English, she went back to Puerto Rico to get me. She took a ship to New York City and stayed with an aunt in the Hispanic ghetto and got a job as a seamstress in a sweatshop. I think she was about eighteen, nineteen. Q: How did you come to New York from Puerto Rico in 1936?Ī: My mother obtained a divorce from my father. The entire interview can be screened at /Interviews. The following is an edited excerpt of Moreno's conversation with Miller. Moreno, who was recently inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, was interviewed in June 2000 by Marla Miller for The Interviews: An Oral History of Television, a program of the Television Academy Foundation. Here she discusses her struggles as an Hispanic entertainer determined to change America's tune. Her tenacity was such that Moreno would eventually triumph on Broadway, film and television, and become the first person in history to win a Tony, Grammy, Oscar and Emmy in competition.įrom her early appearances on The Jack Benny Show and The Electric Company to later roles on Oz and the rebooted One Day at a Time, television has provided Moreno with some of the most rewarding - and frustrating - experiences of her career. Pigeonholed as a generic "Latin" sexpot, Moreno fought long and hard for roles that would showcase her versatility as an actress, singer and dancer. But while that character's frustrations were played mostly for laughs, Moreno faced a real-life ethnic barrier that was anything but comic. In 1961's West Side Story, Rita Moreno sang "America" in her role as Anita, a Puerto Rican immigrant adjusting to life in New York City - and won an Oscar.
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