West Side Story (1961)
by Claire J Rottenberg
The movie version of "West Side Story" won a record
number of Academy Awards (10), but, surprisingly, the
play did not win the Tony award for Best Musical (it
lost to "The Music Man"). The play opened in 1957 and
it ran for almost two years. None of the lead
performers from the play appeared in the movie but
several of the performers who played smaller parts
recreated their roles or played similar parts in the
movie. For example, Tony Mordente played a Jet,
A-Rab, in the play and then later played a different
Jet, Action, in the film version of "West Side
Story."
Jerome Robbins was the director and choreographer of
both the Broadway and movie versions of "West Side
Story" and he received a Tony award for Best
Choreography and an Academy Award for Best Director
(shared with his co-director, Robert Wise). The book
for the stage version was written by Arthur Laurents
but the screenplay was adapted by Ernest
Lehman.
A few changes were made to some of the songs in the
movie version of "West Side Story," but all of the
songs from the Broadway play were included in the
film version and no new songs were added. Several
songs appeared in different points in the movie -
"Cool" and "Officer Krupke" were switched and "I Feel
Pretty" and "Somewhere" were moved. "America" was
sung by both the Sharks and their girlfriends in the
film version but only sung by the females in the
stage version.
Although many film versions of Broadway musicals have
used dubbing for some of the singing in the film,
"West Side Story" probably holds the record for
dubbing. Four out of five lead players were dubbed
for at least one song - Natalie Wood and Richard
Beymer for all of their songs, Russ Tamblyn for "The
Jet Song" and Rita Moreno for "A Boy Like
That."
"West Side Story" is one of my favorite movies and
I've seen it more times than any other film (at least
15 times). I was fortunate enough to see a wonderful
revival of "West Side Story" at City Center in New
York with Julia Migenes as Maria and I loved the play
as much as the movie.