Route 79

---

Click on play in one of the Media players below to listen to a song from the soundtrack. My favourites are "Cool", "Tonight" (which is a romantic number which almost everyone will have heard a version of at some point in their lives!) and my best of all favourite is "The Jet Song". (Turn up the volume - the music should play almost straight away due to low-bitrate encoding.)

Cool	Tonight Tonight

When Broadway legend Jerome Robbins conceptualised the idea of musicalising Romeo and Juliet within the context of contemporary New York City gangs, he approached librettist Arthur Laurents with the idea. The two then joined forces with musical genius Leonard Bernstein to create the now-legendary West Side Story. The show had difficult birth pains, losing a producer along the way, but when it opened at New York's Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957, it changed the face of musical theatre forever. It all started in 1949 - when dancer and choreographer Jerome Robbins suggested to composer Leonard Bernstein that they join forces on a modern musical version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The play had already been adapted for opera and ballet and he thought the love story, set against a background of family feuds, had universal appeal. Robbins proposed that they update the plot using a Jew and a Catholic as the main characters. He named the project East Side Story and called in writer Arthur Laurents to work on the libretto. Bernstein, though initially enthusiastic, decided he had too many other commitments and the project was put to one side. Six years later, meeting by accident in Los Angeles, Bernstein and Laurents again discussed the project. On this occasion, Laurents fired Bernstein's imagination by suggesting that they use a black and a Puerto Rican as the hero and heroine caught in the middle of street gang rivalry. Laurents looked out his old libretto and Robbins was contacted. Stephen Sondheim was enlisted to write the song lyrics, despite his protestation. "I've never even known a Puerto Rican". The creative team was now in place. This was to be a collaboration, not, as Laurents put it, just a "god-damned Bernstein opera". Laurents stuck as closely as he could to Shakespeare's original plot: the star-crossed lovers became native New Yorker Tony and Puerto Rican immigrant Maria; Shakespeare's Montagues and Capulets became rival gangs the Jets and Sharks; and the great love scene was transposed from balcony to fire escape. To make the characters timeless yet realistic, Laurents invented a special street language, as he felt contemporary slang would date the piece. In 1961, producer Robert Wise made West Side Story into a memorable film, which Sondheim credits with transforming the show from a cult to a smash hit. Starring Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer and George Chakiris, it is widely acknowledged as one of the finest movie-musicals of the 1960s. In the famous, dazzling opening sequence, they gradually break into a highly-stylised dance and then burst into a daring, high-stepping sequence - an exhilarating, inventive, visual ballet of pirouettes, vigorous athletic moves, and running jumps that symbolises their dominance and energy - they are readying themselves for a gang brawl. The film was awarded 10 Academy awards (Oscars), including 'Best Picture', and a special award went to Jerome Robbins 'for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film'. The film also made stars of Rita Moreno and George Chakiris, a member of the original London stage cast. Both received 'Best Supporting Actor' Oscars, while Irene Sharaff was honoured for her costumes. Some "did you knows" and trivia about Westside Story: * In case you skipped reading the above - West Side Story is based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. * Originally the script was to have dealt with a Christian/Jewish romance (called "East Side Story"), but Bernstein decided to choose a more immediately relevant theme. Ironically, neither Broadway nor Hollywood was able to rise above its own institutionalized racism to cast a Latina actress as Maria! * When West Side Story first launched on Broadway - it launched the era of the modern musical. Yes - It was THE original. prior to WSS - the closest to musicals on the stages of London and New York were operas and operettes. * The musical style is based on hard-hitting big band jazz and Latin-beat music like the mambo. Popular dance music had not settled exclusively on rock and roll yet when West Side Story was being written and composed. * The slang meaning of the word "cool" was invented by Laurents for West Side Story. It wasn't until several years after the launch of the musical that the modern slang form of the word "cool" became widespread. Cool eh? * The film version of the musical won 10 Oscars out of 11 nominations. Only Ben Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997) have surpassed it for the number of Academy Awards. * Some of the film was shot on location in Manhattan (in abandoned West Side tenements around 110th St) - but most of it was actually filmed on sound stages with stylized, artificial studio sets. * The soundtrack album for the film was at the number 1 position in the US Billboard chart for 54 weeks. * The original stage version of Maria's song "I Feel Pretty" included the lyrics "I feel pretty and witty and bright - And I pity - Any girl who isn't me tonight." In the film this night scene was changed to the daytime, and presumably for this reason, the rhyming words "bright" and "tonight" were changed to "gay" and "today." ! * For the movie - the opening dance sequences were shot on the upper west side of Manhattan where Lincoln Center stands today. This area was condemned and the buildings were in the process of being demolished to make way for Lincoln Center. The demolition of these buildings was delayed so that the filming of these sequences could be completed. * Although Robert Wise is credited as the director of the film - it was in actual fact mostly directed by Jerome Robbins - but his propensity for filming and re-filming scenes as he strove for perfection led to the movie going over budget and behind schedule. Robbins was fired by Mirisch Pictures, the production company, when the shooting was about 60 percent finished, and Wise completed the filming alone. (The original arrangement had been for Robbins to direct all of the song and dance sequences, and Wise to direct everything else.) * Robert Wise's original choice to play Tony was Elvis Presley. And Audrey Hepburn was offered the role of Maria, but she turned it down, because she was pregnant at the time.

---

Sources for the article above: Adrian Tan, Filmsite.org and MGM.