Documentary attached to the 50th anniversary MGM Blu-ray collection of "West Side Story" (1961). Details how this successful stage production was reared and molded into a beautiful cinematic one. Deep-dives into Jerome Robbins' choreography and Leonard Bernstein's score-making processes.
04-01-2003
59 min
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Michael Arick
Production:
MGM Home Entertainment
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Jerome Robbins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jerome Robbins (October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater. Among the numerous stage productions he worked on were On the Town, High Button Shoes, The King And I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, and Fiddler on the Roof. Robbins is a five time Tony Award winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He also received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for West Side Story. A documentary about his life and work, Something to Dance About, featuring excerpts from his journals, archival performance and rehearsal footage and interviews with Robbins and his colleagues, premiered in PBS in 2009.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Jerome Robbins, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. Among the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim was praised for having "reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackled "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication". His shows addressed "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience" with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life.
Sondheim started his theatre career by writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) before becoming a composer and lyricist. Sondheim's best-known works include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).
Sondheim's accolades include eight Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2008), an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has a theater named for him both on Broadway and in the West End of London. Sondheim wrote film music, contributing "Goodbye for Now" for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981). He wrote five songs for 1990's Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", sung in the film by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Film adaptations of Sondheim's work include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Gypsy (1993), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), West Side Story (2021), and Merrily We Roll Along (TBD).
Hal Prince was an American theatrical producer and director, responsible for such megahits as The Phantom Of The Opera, Evita, A Little Night Music, Fiddler On The Roof, Cabaret, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. For his stage work, he received 21 Tony Awards.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director. He won Academy Awards as Best Director for The Sound of Music (1965) and West Side Story (1961) as well as nominations as Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and Best Picture for The Sand Pebbles (1966).
Among his other films are Born to Kill; Destination Gobi; The Hindenburg; Star Trek: The Motion Picture; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Run Silent, Run Deep; The Andromeda Strain; The Set-Up; The Haunting; and The Body Snatcher. Wise's working period spanned the 1930s to the 1990s.
Often contrasted with contemporary "auteur" directors such as Stanley Kubrick who tended to bring a distinctive directorial "look" to a particular genre, Wise is famously viewed to have allowed his (sometimes studio assigned) story to dictate style. Later critics such as Martin Scorsese would go on to expand that characterization, insisting that despite Wise's notorious workaday concentration on stylistic perfection within the confines of genre and budget, his choice of subject matter and approach still functioned to identify Wise as an artist and not merely an artisan. Through whatever means, Wise's approach would bring him critical success as a director in many different traditional film genres: from horror to noir to Western to war films to science fiction, to musical and drama, with many repeat hits within each genre. Wise's tendency towards professionalism led to a degree of preparedness which, though nominally motivated by studio budget constraints, nevertheless advanced the moviemaking art, with many Academy Award-winning films the result. Robert Wise received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1998.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Wise, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
George Richard Beymer, Jr. (born February 20, 1938) is an American actor known for playing Tony in the 1961 film version of West Side Story and Ben Horne on the 1990 television series Twin Peaks.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Richard Beymer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Rita Moreno (born Rosa Dolores Alverío Marcano; December 11, 1931) is a Puerto Rican actress, dancer, and singer. Noted for her work across different areas of the entertainment industry, she has appeared in numerous film, television, and theater projects throughout her extensive career spanning over seven decades.
Her work includes supporting roles in the classic musical films Singin' in the Rain (1952), The King and I (1956), and the 1961 and 2021 film adaptations of West Side Story. Her other notable films include Popi (1969), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Four Seasons (1981), I Like It Like That (1994) and the cult film Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). She is also known for her work on television including the children's television series The Electric Company (1971–1977), and as Sister Peter Marie Reimondo on the HBO series Oz (1997–2003). She voiced the titular role of in Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? from 1994 to 1999. She also gained acclaim for her roles in Jane the Virgin (2015–2019) and the revival of Norman Lear's One Day at a Time (2017–2020). In theater, she is best known for her role as Googie Gomez in the 1975 musical The Ritz.
Among her numerous accolades, Moreno is one of a few performers to have been awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony (EGOT). She is also one of 24 people who have achieved what is called the Triple Crown of Acting, with individual competitive Academy, Emmy and Tony awards for acting. In 2004, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor bestowed upon her by George W. Bush. In 2009, President Barack Obama presented her with the National Medal of Arts. In 2013, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2015, she was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for her contribution to American culture through performing arts. She was awarded the Peabody Award in 2019. Her life was profiled in the 2021 documentary Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.
Russell Irving "Russ" Tamblyn (born December 30, 1934) is an American film and television actor, who is arguably best known for his performance in the 1961 movie musical West Side Story as Riff, the leader of the Jets gang.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Russ Tamblyn, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Saul Chaplin (born Saul Kaplan; February 19, 1912 – November 15, 1997) was an American composer and musical director. Chaplin worked on stage, screen and television since the days of Tin Pan Alley. In film, he won three Oscars for collaborating on the scores and orchestrations of An American in Paris (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and West Side Story (1961).
