Interesting Facts About the Creation of WEST SIDE STORY- Page 2

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 9/24/09 at 4:39pm

That's interesting to know.

[Mardo]

Posted: 9/25/09 at 4:55pm

Great! Very interesting!

[wickedrentq]

Posted: 9/26/09 at 5:01pm

Damn, my book isn't in the shoebox I thought I kept it in, so I can't give the exact quote. But, he immediately apologized, and explained that he was upset about something else I think.

To make up for my lack of that, I figured I'd try to find the place online where I read all his letters. Well, I found all that and more. I'm linking the page that has all his letters to Felicia, click on each to read it in full, but then make sure you click on the other 3 parts that has lots of documents from the development of WSS.

My favorite part of all the letters is when he describes "Something's Coming" (the new song they wrote for Tony) about how he has to add some 3/4's to 2/4's to "f*ck it up." Definitely a way to describe his music. And "Jerry Being Jerry."

Also, in the Rumble section, the Cat-tune part is definitely the part of the music right after "Keep Out Of This!" It's really impossible, for the record.

Enjoy the link and please discuss!
Letters from Bernstein

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/26/09 at 5:31pm

I can imagine Robbins storming out of a Hollywood party when he heard the movie orchestrations for the first time, but not necessarily because of the orchestrations themselves.

The movie was a horrible experience for him in general. I'm sure you all know that, right? He was fired from the film shortly after directing the opening sequence. He was only on the movie for about eight weeks before he was canned. It was supremely embarrassing and a shock for everyone.

Robert Wise talks about this at length on the special edition DVD. Initially, they were hired as co-directors, with the understanding that Robbins would direct the musical sequences, and Wise would direct all the non-musical scenes. That's the only way the film studio and producers would take Robbins for the movie. They didn't trust him enough to do the whole thing himself, because he had never directed a film before.

And their worst fears were realized. The opening sequence was supposed to take four weeks to film. Very complicated with all the setups, etc. Even that made the producers and film studio nervous. Then, he ended up taking seven weeks to film it. He stopped returning their phone calls. He went way over budget, and just a couple of weeks later, he was fired from the film.

And Robert Wise was stunned. He was now going to have to direct the rest of the movie himself. All of it. They were halfway through the staging of "Cool" when Robbins was fired, so Wise had to come in "mid-scene" and finish it.

They talk about having secret late-night dance rehearsals with Robbins attending (I think he finished the staging of the number Cool, and then others including Gennaro and a former dance captain or two took over), so they would work everything out with the choreography before Robert Wise went to work solo behind the camera the next day.

So, imagine the irony of Robbins and Wise sharing the Best Director Academy Award!

What I find fascinating about this is that Robbins is best known for creating the iconic choreography for a show he didn't fully choreograph (including most of the best steps!), and for co-directing the Oscar-winning film version, which he barely directed at all. His work behind the camera ended after the first ten minutes!

Wow.

Updated On: 9/26/09 at 05:31 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 1:09am

But Peter Gennaro could never have conceived a musical like West Side Story and Robert Wise could never have directed a dance movie musical without him

Pretty much everyone who ever worked with him did better work with him than they ever did again. He MADE artists surpass themselves.

That's why people worked with him despite their anger or discomfort with his personal cruelty or his political actions.

And when he wasn't being cruel, he was charming.

[Paul W. Thompson]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 1:48am

I have always felt that WSS has strong parts and a weak(er) whole. It seems disjointed to me. And yet the dances are great, the orchestral pieces are great, the songs are great, (at least two of) the scenes are great, etc. It's like it was put together by a committee of people who didn't get along and didn't communicate.

[Marquise]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 9:07am

best12, I was re-watching the WSS doc on the special edition dvd and it's stated he was fired on the day they were to start filming the "Dance at the Gym" sequence.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 9:58am

Marquise---right. They were in the middle of working on Cool and hadn't started filming the dance at the gym yet.

Wise directed all of the Dance at the Gym, America, Krupke, I Feel Pretty, the Rumble, Somewhere, A Boy Like That, Maria, the Quintet, etc. And all the dialogue scenes.

The only scenes that Jerome Robbins actually directed in the movie were the opening sequence (all of it, except for the initial overhead building shots) and part of "Cool."

Wise did the rest.

Updated On: 9/27/09 at 09:58 AM

[Marquise]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 10:16am

That's sad but Robbins was way in over his head. He couldn't conform himself to the way Hollywood did things. He had his vision and his way and that was that and it eventually did him in.

At the very least most of the staging of the musical numbers were "done" before he was fired and one dance assistant including Tony Mordente stayed on to assist.

In Gavin Lambert's bio of Natalie Wood she threatened the Mirisches with walking out of the picture if they didn't hire Robbins back. Her agents balked and strongly urged her not to do so and she eventually backed off and if the movie experience was horrible for Robbins it was downright miserable for Natalie especially after his firing.

Updated On: 9/27/09 at 10:16 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 10:25am

Well, it wasn't helped by the fact that Natalie thought she would sing most of the role herself, with only some "help" on a few high notes.

Marni Nixon ended up doing all the singing for Maria, and even sang for Anita during the last part of the Quintet.

Natalie was furious and very hurt about it, too.

Oh, and I wasn't implying that somebody else choreographed the movie. Tony Mordente and the others were using Robbins' original choreography (and Gennaro's). I'm only saying he was out of the picture entirely as a co-director, which is true.


EDIT: And I'm sure it's the first, last, and only time a director was fired from a movie and won an Academy Award for it.

Updated On: 9/27/09 at 10:25 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 8:23pm

Okay, so I've been rewatching the (really fantastic) DVD documentary about the making of the movie, which includes much about the creative process for the Broadway show as well as the film adaptation.

I must admit, I'm getting senile. LOL I had some of it right, but some of it wrong, so I want to set the record straight in this thread, and add a few things I noted while viewing it again.

Robbins rehearsed with the film cast for three months before they shot anything. Three months!!! All of the numbers were choreographed for the movie by Robbins and his assistants, long before the cameras rolled.

Including the entire reworking of the "America" number to add in the Shark boys.

The reason "Cool" was broken up and rehearsed and filmed in sections was because the dancers kept getting injured. So they would work on part of it, then stop, and pick it up again later. During the filming, Baby John (Eliot Field) came down with pneumonia. The set was extremely hot because of the low metal ceiling holding all the heat in (something like 115 degrees), and then it was very cold outside, whenever they stopped and took a break. He became very ill and shot the number with full-blown pneumonia. At one point, he collapsed, and they rushed him to the hospital.

The reason Robbins was fired (and barred from the set!) was because he would never "print" anything. He kept wanting to refilm every shot. He was never satisfied with anything he shot as a director.

All of the actors knew something was going to have to happen, but they were all (according to Moreno) devastated when he was fired.

Both Wise AND Robbins were there during the filming of the opening sequences. All of it. Wise helped with some camera angles and discussions of how everything should flow, so it wasn't a Robbins-only direction, but Wise was entirely letting Robbins take the lead for this extended opening sequence. Wise offered suggestions but stayed out of his way.

Sondheim says he ALWAYS wanted "Cool" and "Krupke" to swap places in the show. He complained about it a lot during the creation of the Broadway play. He didn't think the Jets would sing a comedy number, out on the open streets, just after being in a serious rumble and witnessing two murders.

It was Ernest Lehman, the (terrific) screenplay writer who decided to switch the numbers in the film to build the tension, and Robbins went directly to Sondheim and told him that he finally got his wish!

Robbins was fired the day they began filming the Dance at the Gym. And all of the Broadway creative team flew out from NYC and showed up that first day to wish him well and see how things were going (Hal Prince, Sondheim, etc.). Nobody wanted to talk about why Jerry Robbins wasn't on the set.

Robert Wise personally called Jerry back, in post-production, to supervise the editing of the scenes that he had worked on. It was in his original contract that he would have that right to oversee the editing of his scenes. And even though he had been fired and the contract was void, it was Wise who decided to honor it anyway. They spent ten days together, without the studio's knowledge, editing those scenes.

And it was Wise who brought Jerry out to the Academy Awards. The studio didn't do it. Wise did.

So, PJ, even Robert Wise agrees with you that this film wouldn't be what it is without his directorial and conceptual contributions.

I dig Robert Wise. Genius film director. With or without Robbins.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 8:27pm

By the way, have any of you listened to Natalie Wood's original vocal tracks before Marni came in?

She actually sounds almost exactly like Marni! Especially on the Quintet. The only difference is a more assured and confident pitch, and a slightly more mature vibrato.

But the voices are almost identical otherwise. Same tone/timber, etc.

At first, I couldn't even tell the difference. It's to Marni's credit that she could match Natalie so perfectly in post-production. Wow.

EDIT: And it's weird to see that Tucker Smith, who played Ice in the movie, was also the singing voice for Riff. So he's on screen watching himself sing for Russ Tamblyn. LOL

Updated On: 9/28/09 at 08:27 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 8:50pm

One last cool thing about the Broadway show ...

Arthur Laurents said that the musical was originally designed with Maria singing an aria/solo after Tony dies. He wrote a "dummy lyric" for Sondheim and Bernstein to musicalize.

But Bernstein said he could never find the music for it. And and finally, they were in Philadelphia, and still, there was no music and no song.

They all decided to keep the "dummy lyric" about "How many bullets are left, Chino? I can kill, too, because now, I have hate!" It's all spoken dialogue.

Sometimes the real brilliance in a musical is knowing when NOT to sing.

TANGENT: That was my only problem with the musical Ragtime, which I thought otherwise was a perfect show. "Make Them Hear You" should be cut! I thought so the very first time I saw it, and I still think so today. It doesn't work dramatically. It only serves to lessen the tension. There should be NO music for Coalhouse in that scene. The music DIES for him. So does his dream. The same way it does for Maria in WSS.

The genius is that Bernstein/Sondheim/Laurents/Robbins KNEW that. They understood when NOT to sing.

Arens/Flaherty didn't. It's my only complaint with Ragtime ... but it's a BIG one.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 9:03pm

"At first, I couldn't even tell the difference. It's to Marni's credit that she could match Natalie so perfectly in post-production. Wow"

Marni Nixon was a master at her craft. She also had to match her vocals to Audrey's in My Fair Lady as that was also shot with Audrey performing to her own tracks. Does anybody know if Deborah Kerr filmed The King and I to her own vocals or did Marni again have to match Kerr's movements in post-production?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/27/09 at 10:27pm

one dance assistant including Tony Mordente stayed on to assist

Actually many of the dancers had been in the show and were Robbins "disciples," so they were all somewhat acting as dance captains.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/28/09 at 1:01am

In the documentary, they said that he had many assistants, just as you say, PJ.

His main assistant (Howard Jeffrey) also left the movie when Robbins was fired. But, he was the only one. In addition to Tony Mordente, they said that several others (Tommy Abbott, Margaret Banks, Lee Theodore, Hal Bell), and even George Chakiris, helped with teaching the steps. In fact, while Robbins was still on set, he kept asking George, who had played Riff in the London cast, to show Russ Tamblyn what to do, primarily during the rumble sequence.

Updated On: 9/28/09 at 01:01 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/28/09 at 1:13am

AEA AGMA SM ---

As far as I know, Marni was always slated to dub Deborah Kerr. I don't think they ever tried to use her real voice on those songs. Marni had dubbed Deborah's singing voice previously in "An Affair To Remember."

When they cast Deborah as Anna in The King & I, they just used the same "ghost singer."

And that devastated Maureen O'Hara, who could sing and campaigned heavily for the part. She even sent them full recordings of her singing the songs. But they decided she wasn't right for Anna. I can see why. Although I love Maureen O'Hara, she is a little to strong and powerful on screen. She would have dominated (even) Yul Brynner, rather than complemented him.

Still she was pissed, because Kerr couldn't even sing the role. But Deborah was a big (and arguably bigger) movie star at the time they were casting for this movie.

Back to West Side Story: Tony, Maria, and parts of Anita (A Boy Like That, and half the Quintet) and Riff (The Jet Song) were dubbed! That was Saul Chaplin's decision. If your singing voice wasn't absolutely perfect for the song in question, he found a voice that was. He was an "old school" music supervisor, and that's the way they did things back in his day.

[Q]

Posted: 9/28/09 at 3:20am

"a little to strong and powerful"

That's kind of funny, considering the balls of the real Anna.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/28/09 at 8:38am

Lee Theodore was probably the linchpin that anchored the dancers after Robbins left.

She had played Anybodys in the original cast, had been involved romantically with Jerry Robbins and had an ability to remember and reproduce choreography and communicate to dancers its motivation and emotional content--something Joey McNeely failed to bring to the current revival.

She choreographed several Broadway shows herself in the 1960s, including The Apple Tree and Flora, the Red Menace and restaged many West Side Story tours and revivals.

In the 1980s, before she died of cancer, she founded the American Dance Machine, which was dedicated to preserving the choreographic legacy of Broadway, including dances by Agnes DeMille, Jack Cole, Robbins, Michael Kidd and Fosse,
NY Times: Lee Theodore, 54, a Dancer And Choreographer, Is Dead

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/28/09 at 10:00am

Tommy Abbott was also a primary dance assistant here, and he was Jerome's longtime partner until he died himself in 1987.

Tommy played Gee-Tar in the movie.

In addition to serving as an assistant choreographer on the movie West Side Story, he is credited with recreating Robbins's choreography for the film version of Fiddler on the Roof.