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Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided To Go For It
With the general release of Spielberg's remake of West Side Story, less than a week away, I felt it was important to view a joyous, intimate, and unabashedly candid look at a Hollywood legend, who a few days ago celebrated her 90th birthday. The first Latina EGOT winner, the incredible Rita Moreno, is profiled in a PBS documentary called Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It.
The 2021 documentary follows the accustomed path of most documentaries, but the star's past is revealed to us through contemporary settings. The star's dirt poor childhood is effectively juxtaposed with scenes of her as Anita in West Side Story, which, like the character Anita, lead to Moreno leaving Puerto Rico for America. Loved the story the star shares of her first meeting with Louis B Mayer at the Waldorf, which led to her first contract at MGM, because Mayer thought she looked like Liz Taylor.
There is a look at Rita's extensive cinematic resume, where often it was hard to tell one role from another and Moreno definitely feels the same way. Her years of playing exotic island girls who barely spoke English frustrated her to no end. I was fascinated to learn that as much as she loved appearing in Singin in the Rain, she found her role as Tuptim in The King & I to be boring. Rita doesn't hold back regarding her history with sexual harassment either.
There is a nice amount of screen time devoted to Moreno's long and turbulent relationship with the legendary Marlon Brando, where a few things about the relationship turned out to be news to me. She refers to him as "the Daddy I couldn't please". It's implied that the demons and toxicity of the relationship were worked out onscreen years later in the movie The Night of the Following Day. We also learned how the day of the 1962 Oscars, she and George Chakiris spent hours making up "loser" acceptance speeches because they felt they had no chance at winning. Moreno is known for delivering the shortest Oscar acceptance speech ever.
Commentary is provided along the way by Chakiris, Whoopi Goldberg, Justina Machado, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gloria Estefan, Chita Rivera, Mitzi Gaynor, Karen Olivo, who played Anita in the last Broadway revival of West Side Story, and Morgan Freeman, who-costarred with Moreno on The Electric Company, the PBS childrens' show that won Moreno a Grammy. We even get glimpse of Moreno on the set of the new West Side Story with Steven Spielberg. A fascinating documentary on a fascinating subject whose only real fault is that it wasn't long enough.
With the general release of Spielberg's remake of West Side Story, less than a week away, I felt it was important to view a joyous, intimate, and unabashedly candid look at a Hollywood legend, who a few days ago celebrated her 90th birthday. The first Latina EGOT winner, the incredible Rita Moreno, is profiled in a PBS documentary called Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It.
The 2021 documentary follows the accustomed path of most documentaries, but the star's past is revealed to us through contemporary settings. The star's dirt poor childhood is effectively juxtaposed with scenes of her as Anita in West Side Story, which, like the character Anita, lead to Moreno leaving Puerto Rico for America. Loved the story the star shares of her first meeting with Louis B Mayer at the Waldorf, which led to her first contract at MGM, because Mayer thought she looked like Liz Taylor.
There is a look at Rita's extensive cinematic resume, where often it was hard to tell one role from another and Moreno definitely feels the same way. Her years of playing exotic island girls who barely spoke English frustrated her to no end. I was fascinated to learn that as much as she loved appearing in Singin in the Rain, she found her role as Tuptim in The King & I to be boring. Rita doesn't hold back regarding her history with sexual harassment either.
There is a nice amount of screen time devoted to Moreno's long and turbulent relationship with the legendary Marlon Brando, where a few things about the relationship turned out to be news to me. She refers to him as "the Daddy I couldn't please". It's implied that the demons and toxicity of the relationship were worked out onscreen years later in the movie The Night of the Following Day. We also learned how the day of the 1962 Oscars, she and George Chakiris spent hours making up "loser" acceptance speeches because they felt they had no chance at winning. Moreno is known for delivering the shortest Oscar acceptance speech ever.
Commentary is provided along the way by Chakiris, Whoopi Goldberg, Justina Machado, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gloria Estefan, Chita Rivera, Mitzi Gaynor, Karen Olivo, who played Anita in the last Broadway revival of West Side Story, and Morgan Freeman, who-costarred with Moreno on The Electric Company, the PBS childrens' show that won Moreno a Grammy. We even get glimpse of Moreno on the set of the new West Side Story with Steven Spielberg. A fascinating documentary on a fascinating subject whose only real fault is that it wasn't long enough.