FILM 1978: WEST SIDE STORY
TRIVIA: Robert Wise's original choice to play Tony was Elvis Presley. However, Presley's manager, 'Colonel' Tom Parker refused, since Elvis would only sing in six of the twelve songs, and because he would not have exclusive rights to the soundtrack.
Jerome Robbins initially refused to work on the film unless he could direct it. Producer Walter Mirisch was nervous about handing the reins entirely over to Robbins, who had never made a film before, so he enlisted Robert Wise to direct the drama while Robbins would handle the singing and dancing sequences. Robbins developed a habit of shooting numerous takes of each scene, to the point where the film went over budget and behind schedule. This led to his firing.
Throughout the movie, Natalie Wood wears a bracelet on her left wrist, not for any aesthetic reason, but because she had injured her wrist in the scene of The Green Promise (1949) when she fell on the bridge that collapsed during the severe rainstorm, causing an unsightly bone protrusion on her wrist. She wore the bracelet to hide the injury. It became her trademark in all of her movies.
The boys' jeans were dyed, re-dyed and "distressed," using special elastic thread to allow for the severity of the choreography.
The actors in the rival gangs were instructed to play pranks on each other off the set to keep tensions high.
Gus Trikonis who played Indio, one of the Puerto Rican Sharks - and who is actually Greek - is the brother of Gina Trikonis, who played Graziella, the tough red-haired Italian girlfriend of Riff, leader of the Jets. George Chakiris is also Greek.
During the entire production, the actors wore out 200 pairs of shoes, applied more than 100lbs of make-up, split 27 pairs of pants and performed in 30 different recording sessions.
The lyrics to "America" were substantially changed for the movie. There had been complaints that the Broadway version was too belittling to Puerto Ricans, in that the song mainly ridiculed Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. The movie lyrics emphasize the racism and discrimination that Puerto Ricans were subjected to in America.
Even though dubbing Natalie Wood was Marni Nixon's chief assignment, Nixon also did one number for Rita Moreno, which required a relatively high vocal register. Having dubbed Wood as well as Moreno, Nixon felt she deserved a cut of the movie-album royalties. Neither the movie or the record producers would bow to her demands. Leonard Bernstein broke the stalemate by volunteering a percentage of his income, a gesture of loyalty-royalty since Nixon had been a performer-colleague of his at New York Philharmonic concerts. He ceded one-quarter of one percent of his royalties to her (a generous amount).
With its win of 10 Academy Awards, this became the biggest Oscar-winning musical of all time, beating the record Gigi (1958) set three years before with its nine Oscars.
When filming "The Taunting Scene", Rita Moreno was reduced to tears when she was harassed and nearly raped by the Jets, as it brought back memories of when she was raped as a child. When she started crying, the Jets immediately stopped what they were doing and tried to comfort her, while pointing out that the audience was going to hate them for what they were doing.
Rita Moreno stated that her line reading of "Don't you touch me!" after the Jets attack Anita was her imitating Marlon Brando, her then-boyfriend. Brando even noticed at the film's premiere.
Richard Beymer later confessed in an interview that he wasn't happy with how his performance came out, saying that he wanted to play Tony as rougher and tougher, more like an actual street kid who used to run around with a gang starting fights for fun, but Robert Wise made him play Tony as the nicest guy around, which Beymer felt didn't mesh with the character's back story. He also said he had trouble saying some of his lines with a straight face, namely the more romantic lines. He even reportedly walked out on the London premiere of the film - even though it ended up being his most famous role.
In 2010, Stephen Sondheim (who wrote the lyrics) told "Fresh Air" interviewer Terry Gross that while he was writing the stage musical, he originally wanted the show to be the first one in Broadway history to use the words "fuck" and "shit" in its song lyrics. He wanted the end of the song "Gee, Officer Krupke" to be "Gee, Officer Krupke/Fuck you!" (instead of what it became, which is "Gee, Officer Krupke/Krup you!"), and he wanted the lyrics in "The Jets Song" to be "When you're a Jet/If the shit hits the fan" instead of "When you're a Jet/If the spit hits the fan". However, the show's writers were informed that if the Original Cast Album contained those profanities, it would have been illegal to ship the record across state lines. So Sondheim made the substitutions for those words that appear in both the stage show and the movie.
During the Prologue, the Jets take a basketball from two kids and play with it. Before they walk away, Riff throws it back to one of the kids. That kid is Kit Culkin, father of the Culkin brothers who were in movies of the 1990s and 2000s.
In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #41 Greatest Movie of All Time. It fell to #51 in the updated list released in 2007.
The interior sets were built six feet off the ground to allow for low-angle shooting with large 70mm cameras.
Many shots imitate the work of modern American painters of New York City, especially the work of Ben Shahn and Robert Vickrey.
Lee Theodore, who played Anybodys in the original Broadway production, served as an assistant choreographer for the film. Russ Tamblyn reports that he and most of the rest of the dancers in the film suffered from shin splints at one time or another, the result of extended dancing on pavement as opposed to a wooden stage or soundstage floor.
Natalie Wood kept in her dressing room a list of people who had gotten on her bad side. For reasons unknown, and unbeknownst to him, Richard Beymer made the list. He didn't find out until years later, when Russ Tamblyn told him, while they were working on Twin Peaks (1990).
Natalie Wood recorded all the songs she would sing in the film and was told that only some of her higher notes would be dubbed but eventually they were all dubbed by Marni Nixon.
The actors playing the Jets and the Sharks suffered shin splits from dancing on the concrete streets of New York City. Despite this, and the constant rain, they all loved filming on location, even doing "rain dances" so they could be on location longer (which they were eventually barred from doing as it seemed to work once or twice).
Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
Because Natalie Wood couldn't snap her fingers, the sound of finger snaps had to be dubbed.
One of Lars von Trier's favorite movies.
One of Michael Bay's favorite movies.
Referenced in the Dire Straits song 'Romeo and Juliet' in the line "There's a place for us you know the movie song"
When writing the show, Laurents and Sondheim decided not to use any actual New York gang lingo for the Jets' dialogue, feeling that would give it a 'dated' feel. Instead they mixed a few actual terms like 'daddy-o' and 'cool' with rhythmic exclamations such as 'cracko-jacko,' 'ooblee-oo' and 'pam-pam' to create their own slang.
