![]() One is Canada's David Alvarez, who plays Shark leader Bernardo, a role originally portrayed by Greek actor George Chakiris. ![]() "Back in 1961, that was just the convention and that was just how movies were made."Ī new generation of Latino triple threats - all actors, dancers and singers - emerge in Spielberg's adaptation. Pagan Love Song Rita plays a Tahitian girl named Terru. The Toast of New Orleans In Rita’s earliest film for MGM, she plays Tina, a Cajun girl from the Louisiana bayou, the first in a string of stereotypical ethnic roles. It "looks really weird to us today because we see that, and, 'What is that?' and, 'Why does have so much makeup?'" said Charles Ramírez Berg, a professor of film studies at the University of Texas at Austin and an expert on Latinos in American cinema. So Young and So Bad Rita’s film debut is the one and only time her name appears on a marquee as Rosita Moreno. The old West Side Story was no exception. One expert says that Latino performers have been overlooked and stereotyped by Hollywood for years. Moreno, now 89, takes on a new role as Valentina, a scene-stealing shopkeeper. The Cuban-Canadian actor says there is 'so much pride' in the new adaptation of the 1961 classic. Picture this: a 10-year-old Steven Spielberg belting out Gee, Officer Krupke at the dinner. Their affair is complicated by allegiances to rival teenage gangs: the Puerto Rican "Sharks" and the white American "Jets."ĭavid Alvarez portrays Bernardo Vasquez. All the biggest changes in Steven Spielbergs West Side Story - including Rita Morenos new role. Like the original, his version is based on the 1957 stage musical by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein, recounting the forbidden romance of Tony, an American boy, and Maria, a Puerto Rican girl, in 1950s New York City. ![]() "In some respects, it's pretty much the same … I think we're represented so poorly in films and television."ĭirector Steven Spielberg says he wanted to cast his version, in theatres now, more "authentically" - to make sure the actors playing the famed musical's Puerto Rican teens "were 100 per cent Latinx and young." "In some respects it has gotten better," she told CBC News. But in the 60 years since, Moreno says Latino representation in film and television "hasn't changed anywhere near enough." Still, she - and her white colleagues - were made to wear makeup that darkened their skin. When Rita Moreno starred as Anita in West Side Story, the 1961 movie in which half of the characters are Puerto Rican, she was the only Latino performer among the cast. Rita Moreno on West Side Story, then and now CBC News 3.
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