My good friend Jade Esteban Estrada is not only the brilliant host and member of the Jigglewatts Burlesque Revue, he is also an accomplished journalist. In 2012 he interviewed the legendary superstar of Broadway and Hollywood, Rita Moreno. In honor of the inaugural Latin Burlesque Festival happening this Friday and Saturday nights (9/26/14, 9/27/14) in Dallas, Texas, it is my pleasure to share this fantastic interview with you! It's quite juicy....
REALTIME RITA
By JADE ESTEBAN ESTRADA
Photo by Mike LaMonica
October 21, 2012
Rita Moreno may still be best known for portraying “Anita” in the 1961 film adaptation ofWest Side Story, but the 80-year-old actress, singer and dancer would need a two-terabyte hard drive to document her place in the history of showbiz. She's the only Hispanic performer to win a Tony, an Oscar, a Grammy and an Emmy, but such industry footnotes might not interest the generations of diehard fans who've watched her slow dance – and romantic dip – with American pop culture through the latter half of the 20th century and beyond. From her distinctive glottal “Hey, you guys!” on Electric Company to her rendition of “Fever” on The Muppet Show and her role as Fran Drescher's TV mom, chances are that even the TMZ generation in Tweetdom has seen her somewhere.
Before her recent return to San Antonio with “My Life in Words and Music,” a cabaret show and fundraiser for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, I caught up with Moreno at her home in Berkeley, California.
We talk while she applies her makeup.
My introduction to Moreno was via the 1982 television sitcom 9 to 5, in which she played the role originated by Lily Tomlin in the 1980 film of the same name. Seven decades of omnipresence in the business is a rare blessing.
“It's scary, isn't it?” she says. Her voice is energetic and youthful. “And I'm not only here but I'm very present. I'm working. I'm happy.
"What can I say?” she adds with a Jewish vaudeville inflection that requires no reply.
In 1965, Moreno married the late Leonard Gordon, a New York cardiologist.[He's] a nice Jewish doctor, but that's redundant,” she told People Magazine in 1975. In a 1984 television interview with Joan Rivers she identified herself as “an honorary Jewette.”
That explains the accent, which comes and goes. Sort of like Madonna's British clip. A diva's privilege.
I ask what she thinks of the evolution of television.
“I love what's happening on television these days. There are better television shows than movies,” she says. Her favorite show at the moment is Homeland.
I make a sound that reveals my ignorance.
“You don’t' know it?!” she says like a courtroom interrogator.
After I explain why I’ve failed to watch the Showtime series, I learn that not all television programming has earned her stamp of approval.
“I despise – with all my heart – the reality shows,” she says.
I imagine her slowly shaking her head, one blushed cheek, in the mirror.
“I despise the coarseness ... and the lack of self-respect of the people in those shows. There's a certain moral failure that's taking place in this country ... reality shows really reflect that,” she says. “It's very sad to me.”
Moreno says big movie studios still sign young talent after a quick screen test these days, albeit not as frequently as they did when she was younger.
“People nowadays, in order to gain fame ... they have to go about it in such different ways that it's sometimes difficult to keep up with them. Sometimes I don't want to keep up with them,” she says.
Even the chuckle that follows is ... grand.
“It's so different from my time,” she adds thoughtfully. “I think really good talent is getting a much better break now than they did when I was a girl.”
I recall her burlesque performance as a sexy blonde in the TV series The Rockford Files. It would give Jennifer Lopez an impressive run for her money. In a battle of the 'Ricans, if you will.
How so? I ask.
“There are so many avenues in show business. There are many ways to be seen.” She finds “the new technology” like blogging and tweeting “encouraging and spirited.”
When I ask what it was like working with Eli Wallach – the actor with whom she starred in her first Broadway show, Skydrift, at the Belasco Theatre in 1945 – I can almost hear her eyeliner skid under her left pupil.
“Why on earth did you bring him up?” she asks. “I'm curious.”
I can feel her staring at the cell phone.
“Well, I – uh - he's famous,” I stammer, wondering if I imagined his honorary 2010 Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.
“Well, I did my very first play with him and then I did my very first movie with his wife Anne Jackson,” she finally says.
Her previous rhythm kicks in.
“Now that I think of it, I think the man is fantastic. The man is 90-something and he's still working. If there's a goal to look forward to ... that's what I want to do ... it's what I'm doing!”
OK. Now I'm curious. Are you surprised I brought him up? I ask.
“Very. You're a very young man,” she says. “You may think he's very famous. He's not.”
I imagine a ceremonious return to her eyeliner.
Moreno's own role models were the movie stars of her youth.
“I wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor more than anything else in the world.”
When she says this, she sounds like a 1950s starlet on the red carpet answering the fluff questions of a roving reporter.
“Most people today would have no idea who those people are,” she says.
Acting is the favorite of her three primary art forms, but she says she was never really interested in being a Glenn Close or Meryl Streep.
“I didn't know from great actresses because I never went to see great actresses,” she says. “[Greta] Garbo was too late for me. I looked to all the icons ... the ones the world was loving and worshiping.”
A pause.
“Ava Gardner may have been one of the worst actresses ever, but I would drop everything just to see a movie she was in. She ... was ... gorgeous.”
That had to be a mascara moment.
Moreno in every way presents herself as a product of her time, place (New York) and profession, but even though she left Humacao, Puerto Rico, when she was 5, she still feels an emotional pull towards the island.
“I feel very close to Puerto Rico ... but I feel very close to my Puerto Rican-ness,” she says. Her double “ss” is theatrically elongated.
Moreno's forthcoming memoir got a kickstart when she performed her solo show “Life without Makeup” at Berkeley Rep. She describes it as “a young girl's journey away from her identity after the acceptance of her identity.”
“It wasn't easy being a Latina Puerto Rican girl 'cause they made it so hard for me when I came to New York City from Puerto Rico,” she says.
“They” being the studios and even some of her peers in Hollywood.
“I was called a lot of bad names. It occurred to me that maybe it wasn't such a good thing to be a Latina.”
In today's America, where you can choose almost any identity you like, it’s a sad novelty to hear such a recollection.
“We're always a target,” she says. “That's why Elizabeth Taylor was such a role model for me ... more than that there were no role models. For Latino kids, there weren't any.”
She mentions Dolores Del Rio as a potential icon who was before her time.
“I came to believe that being who I was was not a good thing,” she says. “It was a difficult journey. That's what this story is really about.”
Many actresses chose to white-wash their names, like Rita Hayworth, an actress who's uncle had a hand in getting Moreno into show business.
When I say Hayworth’s name, she immediately replies, “Margarita Carmen Cansino” – like the answer to a test she studied for a long time ago.
When she brings up her own given name, Rosita Dolores Alverío, I joke that it sounds like a lot to fit on a marquee.
“I don't think that was their worry,” she says.
Moreno was her stepfather's name. In the 1984 Rivers interview, Moreno told Rivers that the industry was finally pronouncing her name properly: “Moreno” instead of “Marino.”
“If that's the case, shouldn't it be “Rehno, Nevada?” Rivers jokes. When one of the Smothers Brothers, also guests on the couch, chimes in to back up Rivers' case with “Los Angeles,” Moreno tells them: “Shut up ... “You did your awful song, you two.”
I wonder if she trusted her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in West Side Story to be a hall pass into a society where she sought acceptance.
“I did,” she says. “Until I found out that it wasn't a pass.”
I hear a thump.
“My phone just dropped. Sorry.”
Unexpectedly, as Moreno reaches for the phone and her guard is down, her voice becomes sweet, vulnerable and unaffected.
“It didn't matter one bit,” she says, returning to a story she’s told many times. “After I won the Oscar, I didn't make another movie for seven years. I was offered things but they were all gangland movies. I had no interest in that whatsoever.”
But a run of good fortune and good scripts eventually came along, including the 1969 film Popi opposite Alan Arkin. They both played Puerto Ricans.
“I did a movie with Marlon Brando,” she says, as if going down her short list of favs.
Oh, really? I ask.
“It's called...”
There's a pause.
“Why don't you look it up on the YouTube or something!” she snaps. “Do your homework!”
Well, of course after that I did, and learned that she was in a romantic relationship with the actor for eight years – and even attempted suicide in his home with sleeping pills in 1960.
Moreno Lesson #2: Know the Brando lowdown.
OK, so I deserved that one. I took one for the team. Dear reader: You are the team.
But what's Moreno Lesson #1, you ask?
You know, I was trying not to bring that up.
Up until that moment, I'd done a rock-solid job suppressing the memory of my first interview with Moreno at the 2000 HOLA Awards in New York, where she presented the newly renamed Rita Moreno Award for Excellence to actor Shawn Elliott. When I got my chance to congratulate her privately I asked, “So, how does it feel, Ms. Moreno?”
“How does what feel?,” she replied in a tone so icy I may or may not have shit my pants.
Moreno Lesson #1: Be SUPER specific or risk getting hit on the head with a Tony, an Emmy, an Oscar or a Grammy. (The last one hurts most 'cause of the way it's shaped.)
Almost no time has passed during my flashback. I change the subject.
Is there anything that still scares you or makes you nervous? I ask.
“I'm terrified of going onstage and doing a play. I get horrible cold sweats but I do it anyway. I'm one of those constantly scared people who's constantly challenging herself,” she says.
But why would she put herself through that?
“Because I love to act and I know the only way I can do that is by getting onstage. It's really hard for me, Jade. Opening night of any play is always absolute hell,” she says.
“My knees actually knock ... would you believe that?”
“Against each other,” she adds.
Another pause.
“I'm always afraid I'm going to disappoint.”
San Antonio-based humorist Jade Esteban Estrada is a recurrent host and member of the world-famous Jigglewatts Burlesque Revue. Visit him at www.getjaded.com.
This story was originally published by Plaza de Armas. www.plazadearmastx.com.