October 18, 1961: The Film Version of "West Side Story" Premieres

Left: Jets. Right: Sharks.

October 18, 1961: The film version of the 1957 musical West Side Story premieres. It's a modern retelling of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In some cases, I'm doing entries for the original stage versions of shows. In some, I'm doing it for the films. West Side Story is the only one truly influential enough to deserve an entry for each version.

In this corner, of various white extractions including Irish, Italian and Polish -- and one kid known by a name that would never fly today, "A-rab" -- is a gang named the Jets: Richard Beymer as Tony (replacing Larry Kert from the original Broadway production, Jimmy Bryant did his singing), Russ Tamblyn as Riff (Michael Callan), and several other guys and girls. Elaine Joyce, already a Broadway performer, made her film debut, as Hotsie, girlfriend of Tiger, one of the Jets, several years before she became a regular panelist on game shows.

And in this corner, the Puerto Ricans, calling their gang the Sharks: Natalie Wood as Maria (with her songs sung by Marni Nixon, replacing Carol Lawrence from Broadway), George Chakiris as Bernardo (replacing Ken LeRoy -- ironically, Chakiris played Riff when the musical first took the British stage in 1958), Jose DeVega as Chino, and Rita Moreno as Anita, Maria's best friend and Bernardo's girlfriend (replacing Chita Rivera). 

The Jets and the Sharks only seem to agree on 3 things: That they're all Catholic, that you gotta be tough to survive in Hell's Kitchen -- Manhattan's West Side, 8th Avenue to the Hudson River, 41st to 59th Streets -- and that they hate the police, who hate them back. William Bramley plays Sergeant Krupke, a.k.a. Officer Krupke. Bramley was the only notable actor from the original show reprising his role.

The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (Oscars), winning 10 of them, including Best Picture, Best Director for Wise, Best Supporting Actor for Chakiris, and Best Supporting Actress for Moreno. Oddly, Beymer wasn't nominated for Best Actor. (Maximilian Schell won for Judgment at Nuremberg.) Natalie Wood was nominated for Best Actress, but for Splendor in the Grass rather than for West Side Story. (Sophia Loren won for Two Women, the 1st Oscar for a role in a language other than English.)

In the Spring of 2017, I was babysitting my niece Mackenzie, not yet a full year old. And West Side Story came on TV, with its creditless opening montage showing New York from above, including the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium in living color. When the camera finally panned down to the finger-snapping Jets, and they started dancing to Jerome Robbins' choreography and Leonard Bernstein's score, Mackenzie was transfixed, going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh." This baby could not take her eyes off a movie that premiered nearly 55 years before she was born.

Steven Spielberg directed a remake in 2021, this time with the characters played by actors of the appropriate ethnicities. Tony was played by Ansel Elgort. Rachel Zegler, Polish on her father's side but Colombian on her mother's, played Maria. David Alvarez, a Montreal-born Cuban, played Bernardo.

It was nominated for 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, making it the 2nd remake of a Best Picture nominee to also be so honored, after the 1935 and 1962 versions of Mutiny on the Bounty. But it only won 1: Ariana DuBose, taking over as Anita from Moreno, who cameoed in the film as the mentor character Valentina. No other actor was nominated, although Spielberg was nominated as Best Director for a record 11th time.

(He's won twice, for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. I guess he's better doing movies set in 1944 than he is with 1957. He shouldn't make a movie about Sputnik, the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers, or the assassination of Albert Anastasia. He wouldn't make those, but he might make a movie about the Little Rock Nine.)

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October 18, 1961 was a Wednesday. It was a big day in music for another reason: Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis was born.

Baseball season ended 9 days earlier, when the New York Yankees beat the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. Football was in midweek. The new NBA season started the next day. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens beat the New York Rangers, 5-2 at the old Madison Square Garden.

September 26, 1957: "West Side Story" Premieres

September 26, 1957: West Side Story premieres at the Winter Garden Theatre. It is often called the greatest musical in Broadway history. Arthur Laurents wrote the book, Stephen Sondheim the lyrics, Leonard Bernstein the music, and Jerome Robbins directed the show and ran the choreography. The show ran until June 27, 1959, before going on a U.S. tour.

In 1949, Robbins approached Bernstein and Laurents (all of them Jewish) about collaborating on a contemporary musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. He proposed that the plot focus on the conflict between an Irish Catholic family and a Jewish family living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, during the Easter–Passover season. The conflict was to be centered on the anti-Semitism of the Catholic "Jets" towards the Jewish "Emeralds."

Laurents wrote a first draft he called East Side Story. Only after he completed it did the group realize it was little more than a musicalization of themes that had already been covered in plays like Abie's Irish Rose, and the project was shelved.

In 1955, Laurents and Bernstein met again in Los Angeles, and talked about the recent rise of youth gangs. They decided to revive East Side Story, with the Irish family replaced by a multi-ethnic white gang, and the Jewish family replaced with a Puerto Rican gang. At this point, in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, making one of the gangs black would have been too incendiary. Sondheim was brought in, and the title was changed to West Side Story.

In this corner, the Jets: Larry Kert as Tony, Michael Callan as Riff, and several other guys and girls. And in the other corner, the Sharks: Carol Lawrence as Maria, Ken LeRoy as Bernardo, Jamie Sanchez (one of the few actual Hispanics in the cast) as Chino, and Chita Rivera (ditto) as Anita. A character named Francisca is played by an actress named Elizabeth Taylor, but it's not that Elizabeth Taylor.

The only thing the Jets and the Sharks seem to agree on, besides all of them being Catholic and that you gotta be tough to survive in Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's West Side, is hating the police. William Bramley plays Sergeant Krupke, a.k.a. Officer Krupke.

Tony has been out of the Jets for a while, and has a real job, although it doesn't pay much. He meets Maria, sister of Sharks leader Bernardo. They fall in love instantly, one thing leads to another, and, well, Spoiler Alert: Unlike in Romeo and Juliet, "Juliet" lives, but "Romeo" doesn't. Having a tragic ending was unusual for a Broadway musical. Nevertheless, it was nominated for 6 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It won 2: Robbins for Best Choreography, and Oliver Smith for Best Scenic Design.

A film version premiered on October 18, 1961, directed by Robbins and Robert Wise. Bramley, as Krupke, was the only notable actor from the original show reprising his role. Richard Beymer played Tony (with Jimmy Bryant doing his singing), Natalie Wood played Maria (with Marni Nixon doing her singing), Russ Tamblyn played Riff, George Chakiris as Bernardo (ironically, he'd played Riff in the 1st British stage version in 1958), Jose DeVega as Chino, Rita Moreno in her Oscar-winning performance as Anita, and Elaine Joyce made her film debut, several years before she became a regular on Match Game. The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (Oscars), winning 10 of them, including Best Picture. 

The show has been revived on Broadway several times, and a new film version was made in 2021. This one was written by Broadway icon Tony Kushner, and directed by the one and only Steven Spielberg. Tony was played by Ansel Elgort, Maria by Rachel Zegler, Anita by Ariana DeBose, Bernardo by David Alvarez, Riff by Mike Faist, Chino by Josh Andrés Rivera, and Officer Krupke by Brian d'Arcy James. Rita Moreno, age 89, was brought back, in the newly-created role of Valentina, a general store owner.

In 1969, after winning the Super Bowl with a different group of Jets, Joe Namath got his own TV talk show. The moderator was author Dick Schaap. Schaap was an Ivy Leaguer, having gone to Cornell University. Namath barely got through the University of Alabama. At one point during the run of The Joe Namath Show, Schaap mentioned that he was going to see Romeo & Juliet as part of the Shakespeare in the Park series, and invited Namath. Namath said, "What's it about?" Schaap was shocked that Namath had never heard of it. So he said, "Did you ever see West Side Story?"

In 1972, the World Hockey Association was founded. Two of its teams were the Winnipeg Jets and the Los Angeles Sharks. And the "Jets vs. Sharks" jokes were easy. In 1979, with the Sharks long since disbanded, the Jets were among the WHA teams invited to join the NHL. In 1991, the San Jose Sharks were founded, and the jokes resumed. In 1996, the Jets moved to become the team now known as the Arizona Coyotes. In 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers moved, became the new Winnipeg Jets, and the Jets vs. Sharks jokes started all over again.

In 2007, I was babysitting my niece Mackenzie, not yet a full year old. And the 1961 film of West Side Story came on TV, with its creditless opening montage showing New York from above, including the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium in living color. When the camera finally panned down to the finger-snapping Jets, and they started dancing to Bernstein's score, Mackenzie was transfixed, going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh!" This baby could not take her eyes off a movie that premiered nearly 55 years before she was born.

In 2019, another version of the story, & Juliet premiered in London. It was a "jukebox musical," produced by Swedish songwriter Max Martin, and featuring hit songs he wrote, worked into a story imagining that Juliet had survived and picked up her life.

Among the songs, which have arguably made Martin the most prolific songwriter of the 21st Century thus far: Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way," Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops!...I Did It Again," Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone," Ellie Goulding's "Love Me Like You Do," Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl," "Teenage Dream" and "Roar," Jessie J's "Domino," and Ariana Grande's "Problem." It is scheduled to open on Broadway on November 17, 2022 -- appropriately enough, at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.

The Winter Garden Theatre, site of the original Broadway production, still stands at 1634 Broadway, between 50th and 51st Streets. In opened in 1911, and seats 1,600. Among its other original productions: Sky High in 1925, Hellzapoppin in 1938, Wonderful Town in 1953, Peter Pan in 1954, Bus Stop in 1956, Once Upon a Mattress and The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1960, Funny Girl in 1964, Mame in 1966, Sondheim's musical Follies in 1971, Beatlemania in 1977, and Mamma Mia! in 2001. From 1982 to 2001, it hosted Cats, at the time of its closing the longest-running musical in Broadway history.

In a 2014 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Romeo, and comedian Grace Helbig played Juliet, against YouTuber Hannah Hart as Bonnie Parker and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist as Clyde Barrow.

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September 26, 1957 was a Thursday. There were only 2 scores on this historic day, both in baseball. The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago, despite Al Kaline going 0-for-4. And the Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Athletics, 2-1 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. For the Indians, rookie Roger Maris went 0-for-1 with 3 walks.