Latin America meets the U.S. head-on in West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein was eternally interested in Latin America, whether in music he would select for his Young Person's Concerts, or in the score he provided to West Side Story. The earliest idea for the musical came from choreographer Jerome Robbins. Bernstein bought into the idea right away, but it took coaxing from Oscar Hammerstein to get Stephen Sondheim involved as lyricist.
Mark E. Horowitz, of the Library of Congress, explains the Hammerstein/Sondheim connection:
“According to Steve, one of the reasons that Oscar convinced him to take it is, he said, the experience of working with those professionals, Bernstein, Jule Styne and Jerome Robbins, who was directing choreography, would be a valuable experience and one he shouldn't pass up. So he agreed to do that,” Horowitz said in a recent interview.
If you know West Side Story only from one of the earlier Broadway productions or the 1961 movie, you will be surprised at Stephen Spielberg's 2021 take. Sondheim, speaking of Spielberg's project, trusted him to do justice to the show he, Bernstein and Robbins had created, but I still think there may have been a few gasps in the movie theaters when the Sharks, Puerto Rican hipsters which some might call delinquents, break into “La Borinqueña,” the Puerto Rican National Anthem, a scene not in the original musical.
By any measure, as Mark Horowitz observes, West Side Story is not your typical Broadway musical.
“There aren't many musicals that had happened before then, that each act ends with a dead body on the stage,” Horowitz said.
And as Stephen Sondheim recollects, it was not for everyone.
“One of the major things one does during what they call previews or out of town tryouts is you sit with the audience, and if you're really smart, you pay no attention to applause, you pay no attention to coughing . . . you pay attention to concentration,” Sondheim said. “Are they getting what you're saying? If they don't like it, there's nothing you can do about that.”
Sondheim continued: “The opening of West Side Story is wonderfully effective because you see six juvenile delinquents, [the Jets], standing around, and they start to dance, and you say, ‘Oh, I see it's about ballet delinquents.’ You've got to know that. Really.”
Sondheim: “The second night of West Side Story was my first Broadway show, and though I got slammed in the reviews, I was very pleased to have the show on, and I was standing in the back, and the curtain went up, and you saw the guys standing there and start snapping their fingers, [sings] ‘dadadada.’ And they started. Suddenly, they went into the . . . I can't remember what Jerry called it, but the move where they spread their arms out to show they own the turf, which is about a minute into the number. Three rows from the back, a man got up in the middle of the row and put his coat over his arm and said, ‘Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.’ He made his way out of the row, came up the aisle, and of course, I was standing there, aghast, and he could tell from the fact that I was standing in the back and that I was looking like I was connected with the show. And he just looked at me balefully, and he said, ‘Don't ask.’"
"And I got the whole picture. There's a guy who'd had a hard day at the office. He's on his way home. He thinks maybe I'll stop and see a musical. There's this new musical that opened. So he sits there, and he said he thinks it's going to be a musical. They're going to be a lot of pretty girls, and there’s going to be lots of lively music, and there are six ballet dancers being juvenile delinquents to dissonant music. And he thought, ‘Oh no, no, no.’ I think he went to the nearest bar and poured himself three martinis, but this was not what he wanted. I thought that makes the opening. We told him what it was going to be like, and he knew he would hate it, and he would have hated it, and that's a good opening. He knew he would hate it, and that's why I know that's a good opening!”
What a wealth of story telling, not even to mention the great songs in West Side Story, many of which fit nicely into our Great Americas Songbook. There are more stories to be told, every weekday afternoon at 2 p.m. throughout Hispanic Heritage Month. I'm James Baker. Thanks for listening to Momentos Musicales.
