According to IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base), Rita Moreno has 163 film and television roles dating back to her movie debut alongside Anne Francis and Anne Jackson in the reform school drama So Young, So Bad, where she played a character named Dolores Guerrero and shared billing with lead Paul Henreid. And this doesn’t include the 226 credits where Moreno appears as herself or the myriad theatrical projects she’s been a part of.
(Photo courtesy of United Artists)
With seven-plus decades of experience under her belt, the ageless Rita Moreno hasn’t slowed down as evidenced in the recently released documentary Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It and the recent release of the Steven Spielberg-directed West Side Story reboot, where she receives an executive producer credit and the director and collaborator Tony Kushner created the role of Valentina for her. It’s a project that not only took her back to the Oscar-winning part of the 1961 original, but a remake she is proud of thanks to Spielberg and Kushner’s efforts at being as historically and culturally sensitive as they could be.
“Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner turned themselves into pretzels trying to find the right way to depict Hispanics,” Moreno said. “Everybody who is supposed to be Hispanic in this movie is. All the dancers are not Puerto Rican, only because he could not find a full gang that could dance, act and sing. It’s like saying we’re going to do a picture about all Jews and they all have to come from this particular part of Europe. You’re not going to find everybody like that. But everybody who is supposed to be Latino—definitely is. Plus, Tony and Steven brought academics in to speak with both the gangs during dance rehearsals. They would take time out and bring someone in to talk about the social and political situation at the time. That San Juan Hill was demolished and became Lincoln Center. But there wasn’t a week where they didn’t have people talking to them and indoctrinating them and making them ultra-aware of what that was like. And that includes the Jets. I can tell you these kids were so prepared, unlike us.”
Having made such a seismic mark on the silver screen, television and the stage, Moreno shared some of her favorite roles from each medium here.
West Side Story (1961)
“That became an iconic role for me. It’s a role that made me known worldwide, more than anything.
Oz (1997-2003)
“It was so far and away from anything I’d played before. I was absolutely in shock when it was offered to me. My God, the casting in that show was extraordinary. And every year they’d bring in some new actor to play a new prisoner and it would be somebody incredible. Not a star, but an incredible actor. It was fantastic.”
The Miracle Worker (1969)
“I did a lot of theater outside of Broadway. I think one of the things I really loved doing was playing Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker. I played an Irish girl in that and it was just wonderful and one of the best experiences I ever had.”
American Masters—Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It debuted on Oct. 5 and is available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms.
