Thursdays in February | 17 Films
There are so many ways to measure a great star: talent, beauty, charisma, longevity, individuality.
One who checks every box and so many more is TCM Star of the Month, Rita Moreno.
Moreno’s eight-decade long career has resulted in over 200 film, television, and theatre appearances. For her work, Moreno has received such accolades as the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the elusive EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), just to mention a few.
These achievements would be more than enough, but Moreno’s story is especially impressive considering the barriers she broke along the way.
Born to a working-class family from Puerto Rico, Moreno began her career as a child dancer in New York. She made her Broadway debut at 13 in a show called “Skydrift” which folded after only one week. However, this appearance was enough to get the attention of an MGM talent scout who offered Moreno a contract. This started Moreno’s courageous journey to Hollywood where she was quickly given small, but consistent work playing various “ethnic” (her description) types in film musicals. These roles were everything from a Tahitian Island girl pining over Howard Keel in Pagan Love Song (1950), to an Indian maiden in love with cowboy Dennis Morgan in Cattle Town (1952).
It was not until 1961, after a full decade of jumping from role to role and studio to studio, that Rita Moreno won the role she was absolutely born to play. Her performance as the Puerto Rican firecracker Anita in the Best Picture winning masterpiece West Side Story (1961) deservedly won Moreno the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
This month, TCM’s tribute to Moreno will include 17 of the actress’ films.
In addition to her most famous appearances in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and West Side Story (1961), the lineup will include some of the actress’ lesser known and less frequently shown films.
In 1952 alone, 20-year-old Moreno made an impressive five films, in addition to three appearances on television. While her role as silent screen star Zelda Zanders in Singin' in the Rain is now the most recognizable of these, perhaps Moreno’s most significant role from that year was the spirited Manuela in The Fabulous Senorita. In post-World War II Cuba, struggling businessman José Rodriguez (Nestor Paiva) is in desperate need of a bank loan. He tries to pawn off his beautiful daughter Manuela (Moreno) to the loan officer’s son Esteban (Vito Scotti) as collateral. The problem is Manuela is already in love and planning to elope with the handsome and penniless Pedro (Tito Renaldo). Enter Manuela’s sister Estelita (Estelita Rodriguez, yes same name as her charter), who tries to help her sister escape. Several cases of deception, mistaken identity and spitefulness ensue. The dizzying and senseless plot does not really matter, it’s all just fun. The film is mostly a showcase for Estelita Rodriguez, who made a string of similar movies about charismatic women in the late 1940s and early 50s. For this film, Moreno had to be sent on loan-out from MGM to Republic Studios. Republic was one of the few studios making films that were aimed at the long-neglected Latino audience. Though mostly made on B-picture budgets, these films were unique in that they were almost entirely cast with real Hispanic and Latin-American actors, a rarity in Hollywood at the time. This film was one of the very first to showcase Moreno playing the kind of spunky and free-spirited character she would embody throughout her career.
All throughout her career, Moreno’s musical talents have been put to good use in a wide variety of movie musicals. In 1956, Moreno gave one of her best remembered performances as Tuptim, the Burma slave girl in love with a prince in The King and I (1956) for 20th Century Fox. Where that film was a smash success, her other musical from that year was a box office bomb. Paramount Studios, not always the first studio thought of for musicals at the time, tried their hand at an epic musical romance with their version of the Rudolph Friml operetta The Vagabond King. In 15th Century France, the notorious thief and poet Francois Villon (Oreste Kirkop) and his gang of commoners are captured by King Louis XI. Villon tries to win his freedom and the beautiful noblewoman Catherine (Kathryn Grayson) by defending the King against the evil Duke of Burgundy. Rita Moreno is the adoring wench who will give up her life for the heroic Villon. The original musical had been a smash on Broadway in the 1920s and was filmed once prior in 1930. However, critics and audiences were not receptive to this updated version. It would ultimately be the only film by Maltese tenor Ortese and the final film for the once popular MGM soprano Grayson. Though a capable singer herself, Moreno’s two songs in the film are voiced by the more operatic sounding Eve Boswell. For the next few year’s Moreno’s appearances were mostly on television.
In 1961, the same year as her Oscar winning triumph in West Side Story, Rita Moreno gave another fiery performance in the Tennessee Williams drama Summer and Smoke. In early 20th century Mississippi, the prim and proper Alma Winemiller (Geraldine Page in an Oscar nominated performance) is in love with the handsome, but irresponsible young doctor John Buchanan (Laurence Harvey). John is much more interested in the loose and exotic Rosa Zacharias (Moreno). This film is one of the less remembered adaptations of a Tennessee Williams play. Williams originally began writing it in the mid-1940s, but it was eclipsed by the greater successes of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie.” Elaine Page starred in an off-Broadway revival of the play in 1952 that became a surprise hit. It renewed interest in the play for both the public and its author. Williams began an extensive rewrite of “Summer and Smoke” which he completed in 1964 as “The Eccentricities of a Nightingale.” This marked one of the rare times Moreno was cast in a straight theatre-based drama. It demonstrates her capabilities as a more serious actress.
Forever versatile, Rita Moreno is also a gifted comedienne and has made many memorable comedic turns in films and television over the years. In the late 1970s and early 80s she had supporting, but significant roles in several film comedies. Director Richard Benner took on Albert Innaurato’s off-Broadway play Happy Birthday, Gemini (1980) which tells the story of Francis, a young Harvard graduate who suppresses his desires for a handsome male classmate at his 21st birthday party. Also in attendance are a colorful array of family, friends and neighbors who bring added tension and great laughs to the situation. The play had become one of New York’s longest running plays of the 70s and the timely topic should’ve been great material for a movie. However, the 1980 film by writer/director Richard Benner failed to find an audience. Alan Rosenberg plays Francis and Robert Viharo is his oblivious father, Nick. Rita Moreno is an Italian widow and Nick’s latest squeeze. The most memorable part of the film is the indelible Madeline Kahn as the loose, heavy drinking, potty mouthed next door neighbor. Though both their roles are relatively small, Kahn and Moreno shared top billing in the film.
One year later, Moreno starred in the more subtle (and successful) comedy/drama The Four Seasons, written and directed by Alan Alda. The film follows three middle-aged upper/middle class couples who take vacations together once every three months. All is well until one of the couples, Nick and Anne (Len Cariou and Sandy Dennis) unexpectedly quarrel and separate. This becomes awkward for the other two couples, Jack and Kate (Alan Alda and Carol Burnett), and Danny and Claudia (Jack Weston and Rita Moreno). All must decide how to divide their time between their separated friends. When Nick tries to bring his much younger girlfriend Ginny (Bess Armstrong) on one of the vacations, the situation is complicated even further. It also causes the remaining couples to reexamine their own relationships and lives. Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons Concertos” serve as the film’s score.
A real passion project for Alan Alda, he based his story on a friendship of his own which had broken and reconciled. Alda once shared that it was the other gentlemen in the friendship who first said their relationship “went through seasons.”
Now 91 years young, Rita Moreno is showing no signs of slowing down. In 2021 she was the subject of an acclaimed documentary, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It. She also executive produced and starred in Steven Spielberg’s critically praised new version of West Side Story. This year she will be co-starring with fellow legends Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Lily Tomlin in 80 for Brady, as well as appearing in the latest installment of the megahit Fast and the Furious franchise. You can’t stop a legend.
