Michael Kantor: So when you were a child, what was your impression about Broadway? That’s our subject. Was Broadway a dream? Was it a destination? What was Broadway?
Chita Rivera: I had no idea what Broadway was. Being brought up in Washington, D.C., I was just in the ballet school because I broke up all the furniture in the house. And I was a tomboy, so mother put me in the Ballet School. And it wasn’t until I got a scholarship to New York City Ballet that I became aware that there was, you know, something other than movies. You know, I was just a tomboy who wanted to dance. And climb trees. And I went to see my first show was The Vamp with Carol Channing. And I remember not liking it too much, but loving her. So I thought, wow, what an amazing light on that stage. And then I went back to class and I was going to join the company. And then, I heard about other shows and there were kids that were auditioning that didn’t have scholarships. So I went to this audition for Call Me Madam and that’s, I loved the audition. That was really when my eyes popped open and Jerry Robbins, of course, was the choreographer and it was ballet and character and I felt perfectly at home. So I got the job.
Michael Kantor: When you started, would you say ballet was a bigger part of the Broadway dance world than it is now?
Chita Rivera: I think so.
Michael Kantor: To start.
Chita Rivera: Yes, I think ballet, it appears in my mind anyhow, that ballet was a larger part of theater when I was coming up. There were the Jerome Robbins, there were the Michael Kidds, you know, the Alvin Ailes. And, you know, so I felt perfectly home at that time. There are different styles now, but they are connected to the basic training, which is ballet, you know? But you have a lot of choreographers that have a style, you know, like Bobby Fosse.
Michael Kantor: What was the first Broadway show you were in and describe the feeling of hearing?
Chita Rivera: The very first show I was in on Broadway was, well I did the road company with Elaine Stritch of Call Me Madam. So that was the road. On Broadway I believe was maybe Guys and Dolls. I replaced Anna White who was having a baby and I played a Cuban. But that was my very first. Also, close to that was Can Can was the one and only Gwen Verdon.
Michael Kantor: Was it hard, well let’s talk about West Side Story. How did you come to be in that and speak to working with Jerome Robin?
Chita Rivera: Now, which one did you want first?
Michael Kantor: How do you get cast?
Chita Rivera: In Westside? Okay. I was, one day a friend of mine said Cheetah there is a show that’s holding auditions called Westside Story and it’s Romeo and Juliet but it’s about today and I think you should audition. Dee Dee Ryan was her name and I said, oh, all right, I’ll do that. And so I got to the audition and I sang, I think, first. And I remember being totally so scared that I was shaking in my boots. And I also remembered, because I put it in my head, like this is how styles happen. I was so nervous that my hands were shaking so I stuck my hands in my pockets and I started to walk. This is how style is born, you know, from fear or whatever. And I sang My Man’s Gone Now from Porgy and Bess, and Lenny just fell on the floor because I sounded like, well, it was a soprano that sang that song, and I have a bass baritone voice. And he was so amused that he asked me to sing it twice. And I did. And then after I. The singing audition, I auditioned about five times because Jerry Robbins was, he wanted to make sure that all the couples were perfect together, the Anita and the Bernardo and the Maria and the Tony. And so it was very, very difficult, but it was one of the most exciting times of my life.
Michael Kantor: What was Jerry Robbins like in rehearsal? Apparently, you know, he purposely inspired a certain kind of fear.
Chita Rivera: Well, Jerry, in rehearsals, and you’re talking to a gal who calls him Big Daddy, to a girl who knows that he’s a genius, he was a genius. And if you told me to jump off a building and land on my left foot, I know it’s possible if I do exactly what he tells me to do. There are a lot of people that would not talk about him like this. But, he really challenged you. I think basically people can be lazy. They have no idea, especially dancers at that time, they have no what they can do unless somebody pulls it out of them. And that’s exactly what he did. We used to sit on the steps of the, at that it was the 52nd Street Theater, it was called. I hope I’ve got it right, I’ve been around so long. Ha ha! And we used to talk about my character in colors and in textures. And dancers were not used to this kind of delving into a character because we were generally in the chorus, you know, and didn’t have to depict a certain kind of person. He made us go back into our own histories, go back and make up stories about our families that belonged to the show, to the story of West Side. And yes, it was tense at times, but when you did it right, it was amazingly exciting, and you felt it. And you felt yourself grow. You felt your, suddenly dancers weren’t just physical. They were thinking. They were using their own minds. And a lot of us came out of that, thanks to Jerry. You know, better actors, better dancers, better… Understanding ourselves so much more, you know. So it was the most exciting time, I think, for dancers.
Michael Kantor: In what way was West Side Story feel like very different from the other shows at the time?
Chita Rivera: Well, West Side felt very different than any other show because the story was so powerful. We were, all of us, were delivering that story. And it also was a problem at the time. It was very timely. I mean, only a few weeks before we started. No, as a matter of fact, we were in rehearsals. There was the bulletin board when we came into the theater, and one day, there was a full page of. Capeman, the show Capeman came from this story where this Puerto Rican boy had killed, he had killed another boy in what is it, a schoolyard, just two blocks from where we were rehearsing. And Jerry took the page, put it on the bulletin board, and the boy had this black cape, beautiful young man, with a knife in his hand and a body in his feet, at his feet. And the top of it read, this is your life. We thought we were just doing a show, you know. Suddenly, you now, it just went through all of us that we were depicting real life here, that people do act like this, that this is a problem of our time. And so it kind of flipped us over a little bit more into understanding how important what we were doing was.
Michael Kantor: It wasn’t musical comedy time.
Chita Rivera: It certainly was not. I had just left. It wasn’t Schuster review, Ben Bagley Schuster, it was Seventh Heaven with Ricardo Montalban and Gloria de Haven. And that was a beautiful piece, but it was by no means a dramatic piece like this. We could talk forever about West Side.
Michael Kantor: I think about the immigrant aspect of West Side, I mean, I think Arthur Lawrence was saying that’s sort of a, that’s the way that freezes people now. The song, for instance, America, is at the heart of the story. How did it feel to perform that?
Chita Rivera: To perform, the feeling I had when I performed America was exhilarating. I mean, we came off stage in Washington and the numbers stopped the show dead and we were bumping into each other saying, what do we do, what did we do? What did we? And Jerry just looked at us and said, you go downstairs, you change your clothes and you go off to the show. When I did it, I think they were pretty lucky to have a Puerto Rican girl singing that song. Because I did get several letters, not a lot, but I got enough to upset me from some Puerto Rican people who did not understand that it was tongue and cheek. That my saying, you ugly island, island of tropic diseases, there were no diseases in Puerto Rico, but that was her person playing around with a girlfriend of hers. And it hurt me. But I answered each one of them, and I tried to explain that it was by no means putting down a beautiful island, but I do think they were lucky to have a Puerto Rican sing it.
Michael Kantor: What about, you know, in the early 60s, did you feel that your Latina background made it difficult? Was it hard to cross over to roles that were written for white? Civil rights movements coming along, but.
Chita Rivera: Right. Well, when I did West Side, when I was coming along, really, I never experienced any kind of prejudice. I’m not so sure Rita Moreno didn’t in films, because I played a French woman dancer. You know, I played several nationalities before I got to West Side. And so there was one that a composer said, well, doesn’t she have an accent? You know? Because my name was Gia Rivera, which seemed kind of absurd to me. But I must say that I never really experienced anything dramatic as far as any prejudices towards Latino.
Michael Kantor: Here’s a broad question, though. Do you think Broadway is basically kind of for white audiences and white performers in a way? Do you feel like you’re an anomaly, or is it a land of totally equal opportunity?
Chita Rivera: It was not totally equal opportunity on Broadway, but I think the United States is still filled with prejudices in every area. I do, I must say. When I go to see a show, I look to see how many blacks are in the show. I look if there are any Latinos in the shows. I look see. There hasn’t been another West Side, you know, where the story is Latin. We are so overdue at this point for a fabulous Latin musical. With all the great music out there. Great music. And great musicians, we’re way overdue, and I don’t want them to do it without me, so they better do it fast.
Michael Kantor: That’s great. Jumping ahead to chorus alone. Here’s the question, what about a dancer’s life did a chorus line capture best for you?
Chita Rivera: Oh, the auditions. The auditions, The Chorus Line was a fabulous musical and it did depict a dancer’s life, a chorus dancer’s live. I remember going and saying, of course Ginger Rogers slipped in beside me when I was looking at it, because my family had come with me and they knew that I wanted to watch the Chorus line alone, because this is my life. So they moved to the other. Part of the theater. Well Ginger Rogers came in and she slipped in beside me and she talked through the whole thing and I could have killed her because I was not experiencing it the way I wanted to. It was very much on the nose, of course, line. The auditions made me go, Oh God, no, don’t make me go through this again. Actually one of the boys in the show, Michael Surekia, I hired for a show that I did, my own show, that Kendra and Ed did for me, and Ron Field. And Mikey was actually in Chorus Line, and he was the one who had his head down all the time. So I had to deal, actually, with his head down all of the time in my show. I used to say, Mikey, get that head up. You know, so it was nice connecting. Tony Stevens also, who I had a lot to do with a lot of the tapes and discussions, he was also in my show.
Michael Kantor: Let’s talk about Chicago. What was the tone of Chicago when it started? How overtly did Bob Fosse recognize Watergate?
Chita Rivera: Well, I can’t… Bobby. Bobby Fosse. When we first started the rehearsals, I was totally in awe. I was in California and they called and said, we’d like for you to do the show with Gwen. Well, she was our idol, certainly mine, and to know that I was going to be standing next to her, performing with her, dancing. Dancing as one, which is one of the numbers in the show, it’s the very end. But she was, you know, she came from the chorus too. So she just embraced me and we were immediately sisters. Bobby was not totally well at that time. So he was kind of, you now, well Bobby was dark anyhow, you know and he was working very hard to get it to what he wanted it to be. He, there were some things that used to happen in the courtroom scene that kind of like embarrassed me at first because, you know, he gets very sexual and Gwen was sitting there with this bright eye, these bright eyes and this red curly hair and this little outfit and knitting. And these people were. Doing it up on the thing, and I’m like, oh my god, you know, can this happen? I think he took a lot of it out when we finally did it. But, you know I had never, you want to know the truth? I had ever connected Watergate and Chicago at all. I never connected it. I hate to sound stupid, but also the question has never come up before how, you had, you didn’t say parallel, but uh… You know, how the question was there. We, I guess, came before our time. I don’t know how that can happen. I don’t understand that, before your time. He hit it right on the nose. Clearly, our world is not getting any better because it’s still running and it’s really being understood now, which is great, you know. But we lost the tony to Chor’s line. Um, which kind of surprised me, you know, I think all of us.
Michael Kantor: That’s great. I looked at some of the original dancing, and there’s, I don’t know, maybe the word, this might sound like the wrong word, but hoochie coot, there’s a 20s, describe the dancing, from whatever terms. You talked about the sexiness in that scene. There’s real overt sexiness, like almost maybe at the time, too much, I dunno.
Chita Rivera: I guess, oh, the style of Chicago was very 30s, you know, the Charleston, you know, very, very sexy. The women were delicious. All different shapes, colors, to the nines. Tony Walton’s set was just beautiful with these huge faces and with cigars hanging. The stage was shiny and there were cards that were drawn all over the stage. So you were surrounded by this vaudevillian kind of atmosphere. Gwen and I had little, little, what do you call those things to blow in the windmills. You know, on our bras, and we had little short teddies on. It was so stylish, and so feminine, and sexy. You couldn’t get any sexier than Gwen Verdon anyhow. I think we can say the style was dark and still vivacious because when it turned at the end and we had our top hats, we were in white. We were in totally white costumes, you know, and short things and little tails and white top hats. And then we threw roses at the end, which I think this company does also.
Michael Kantor: Shoot and film, gotta love that, anyway. Yeah. No video here. Speak to, what was Michael Bennett like as a dancer?
Chita Rivera: Michael Bennett and I did Bajour with Herschel Bernardi and Nancy Dussault and it was a gypsy show. Michael Bennett was a fabulous dancer himself. He, because at that time you also had to dance, you had to have a ballet, a jazz, a modern background And, and he had this… He was very sexy on stage, Michael, very sexy, and fire, that Italian fire he had. So he was, you know, if he hadn’t gone off in the direction he had, I mean, I could have seen him do solo roles, you knows, as a dancer. He was a very exciting to dance, very sex.
Michael Kantor: Is there a trick to being sexy on stage? Is it just coming out of your persona? Yeah. What makes someone sexy?
Chita Rivera: A person that is sexy on stage is a sexy person. They know the feeling of their body. They like the feeling their body and they want to give it up to you. They want you to see it. They appreciate their temple.
Michael Kantor: Let me interrupt and put it a different way, because it just occurred to me. Is Broadway a magnet for those kind of dancers more than ballet or no?
Chita Rivera: Well, Broadway attracts and allows the personality to come out more because you’re playing, you know, different characters and you change costumes and but you’re the same character. Ballet, there’s a lot of very sexy ballet dancers. But they’re classical, you know. It’s just a different type of sensuality. But a sexy dancer is one that is and doesn’t pretend to be. I think that is true about a person, period. You’re sexy when you just are, when you feel everything around you, when you the person in front of you, when you’re really there, when you feel your own body. When you move, you enjoy that movement, you know, and you do it to its fullest, you now. And then there’s some choreographers that just give you sexy steps to do, and you try to make them real, rather than, hey, I’m being sexy. That doesn’t work for me, does it for you?
Michael Kantor: Tell me about Bob Fosse. What was it about what he gave you in the sexy choreography?
Chita Rivera: Well, Bob Fosse was a sexy man himself. He liked women. He liked sex. I’m not saying this from a point where I know it. I’ve experienced it. But he loved sex. He loved to make them look beautiful. He loved the sexual scene, everything that… Went up to the act. And he had a fabulous sense of humor about it, too, which is great. He kind of stepped back. And if he could, I think he would watch you looking at it and get a big old kick out of that. He loved the woman’s body. He liked to make sure it was seen in its best. I think his muse, Gwen, was the sexiest of them all, and she… Magical creature that could be 12 and could be 30, and even when she was sexy, she was sexy, you know, because she had this angelic innocence about her. Nobody else has captured. And it came from Gwen. She also had that funny little voice. You know, that was so adorable, you know, when she sang. She made me cry whenever I saw her. When I saw in Sweet Charity, I just thought that was one of the best things I’d ever seen.
Michael Kantor: Thank you. What about John Kander and Fred Ed’s music appeals to you? And what do you think about you appeals to them?
Chita Rivera: I don’t know what it is about me that appeals to Freddie and John, but they are an amazing duo. Because Freddie’s lyrics, they, he can take a lyric, he can a chorus of a song, such as How Lucky Can You Get, and take the same chorus and flip the intention around with John changing. The music, not the melody, but the emotional impact and the power of the music. And it can mean totally the opposite. They also, you know, they write some fabulously passionate music, very dark at times, very dramatic, you can’t. I don’t think there’s anybody around that can write vamps like John. I mean, the minute you hear, or you hear jazz, he writes vamps, more different kinds of vamps than anybody that I’m aware of. You know it’s a candor and ebb song. Freddie writes very, very funny, special material. He’s written some amazing things for my club, ACT. And Liza’s and Joel’s. And where I fit with them, thank God, is… They like power, also, and like Liza’s power, you know, because they can build a song to make it hit, you know, so hard at the top that it’s exciting, you know, it brings you almost up on your feet. I’m glad they chose me to write, you know, some many shows for, and we’re doing a new one. The visit which is very exciting. I don’t know where I fit them You’d have to ask them, you know, they’d better say the right thing. That’s all I can say
Michael Kantor: Somebody said to me that the problem with Broadway now is that a star such as yourself can’t work consistently. There just aren’t enough new shows anyway. You have to step back into other things. So my question is, maybe you agree with that, maybe not. You are coming up now. Now, you think it would be possible to make a career on Broadway the way you did.
Chita Rivera: A young person coming up today, would they be able to have a career such as mine and Gwen’s and several others back then? There are a lot of, right now, you know, Broadway changes, you know. There was a time when there was a huge musical, the Call Me Madams and all of those. Then there were the Stop the Worlds I Want to Get Off, there were the smaller musicals, the Irma La Deuces, you All of those. And that was an era, which was great. Then, you know, we come up with the political ones, and we come with the passionate ones, like West Side, and then the comical ones, like Bye Bye Birdie, which is the West Side flipped over. Totally. It’s a time of revivals right now. Why not? I get a little worried now. You know, we’ve had some sad times with 9-11. And so I understand that. It’s easier bringing in a revival, a good one, one that deserves to be, a musical that deserves to come back. You’re sure of it, you know. You’re pretty sure of that. It’s certainly been tested before. A brand new musical has not been tested before and so we have to go to different parts of the country to do them. Which was the case, which is the case with The Visit. That’s, I can only speak from my standpoint. So a dancer would have to deal with what exists now and certainly can have a wonderful career because it keeps changing. Pretty soon, hopefully we’ll have more original shows on Broadway because we can’t lose our writers. We can’t loose our directors to films and other places. We just can’t, we need them for the theater. We need for them to express their gifts and their talents right here on Broadway. And I think that’s going to happen. I certainly hope so before I’m finished. I certainly hopes so. We have too many gifted. People around, this is the place where they’ve got to be able to express themselves.
Michael Kantor: Not Toronto, right?
Chita Rivera: Yeah.
Michael Kantor: I feel like you’re carrying a lot of weight or I’ve never been a star, but maybe that’s a hard question.
Chita Rivera: You see, to have the responsibility of having the lead role in a show is hard sometimes because you do want to look out there and see those bottoms on those seats. You want them to be pouring out of the theater. A lot of that depends on the critics, you know. Um, I always thought that the ring. Was a wonderful subject, and Liza was there, and we didn’t, you know, we were not a success. That’s because I think the reviewers did not, you know give us favorable reviews, even though I won Tony from it, but still you want it to be a success, so you do feel, I’m going through that right now with Antonio Banderas It feels great not to carry it. You know, it really feels great not to care it. But a lot of my shows too, I had a leading man, Dick Van Dyke, who was not Dick Van dyke at the time, even though his name was the same, but he was not that huge star. The piece was a terrific piece and we got great reviews. And that’s been the case with most of the shows. The spider-woman was. Was a magnificent piece, but there was Hell Prince, and there was Kander and Ev, and da da da, da da. I mean, all those names had something to do with it.
Michael Kantor: Do you think Broadway can still produce the stars? I think you, Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, the list goes on. And that was a time, do you think Broadway produces stars the way it once did?
Chita Rivera: Oh, I most definitely think Broadway can’t produce their stars, of course they can. All the person has to be is talented and want it, and stay there, and be recognized by the critics. It’s like life, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You just got to believe in what you love, do the heck out of it, then see what happens. I’m still playing this doggone game now, after all these years. You just have to do, they have to be there. Sutton is a lovely talent. It was wonderful to see her in, what’s the name of the show? Yeah, Millie. It was a wonderful to a see a really talented girl that could do all of it. And you knew that she was going to, there’s a very big chance, hopefully, for her to be what she wants to be. Um, I do like nowadays. It’s good, isn’t it? Grand, isn’t it? Great, isn’s it? Swell, isn’t, it? Fun, isn, it? Nowadays, there’s men everywhere, jazz everywhere, booze everywhere, life everywhere, joy everywhere. You can like the life you’re living, you can live the life that you like. You can even marry Harry and mess around with Ike. And that’s good. Isn’t it, grand? Isn’t, it, great? Isn’t it, swell? In 50, this is the best part, in 50 years or so, it’s gonna change, you know. It’s heaven nowadays. And that’s Freddie. And that the truth. It’s the truth about the theater. It’s a truth about it all changes. But if you stick in there and believe in what you’re doing and hang out with the right people, don’t hang out the wrong people, then you’ll have a nice, you’ll have a really nice run.
Michael Kantor: That’s great. Thank you. Thanks for that. We need like, for the open of our series, what is Broadway like? What’s the feeling? What’s just the adjectives, the heights?
Chita Rivera: Broadway, Broadway is life. It is putting that plug in that socket and the light comes on right away. It is communication immediately. It’s giving and taking, it is sharing, it’s hearing stories, it is getting away from any problems that you might have and we tell you a story and make you feel better. It’s telling a story. That maybe connects with your life. And you think, oh, I’m having a horrible time and nobody understand. And you go to the theater and say, oh my God, that person is just, you know, they’re going through the same thing I am. And it’s life, it’s like.
Michael Kantor: What about the energy of dance? What does it feel like to dance on a Broadway stage?
Chita Rivera: What does it feel like to dance is really what it is. Hi. Let me, I would like to, I just like to say the space, the stage itself is an amazing space. It is like no other space in the world. You know that that theater and that stage still holds steps from great, great dancers or the walls still. Have sounds ringing from them, from voices that have sung in that theater. It’s rich, the theater is rich. And if you open up to it, and the stage itself, by the way, the space, you must never ever screw around with that space. You have to be truthful and honest in that space, because it’s a very spiritual, and without sounding, some people will say, I don’t know why, but it’s religious space. You have to be true because you’re You’re communicating in that space.
