Book Review: ‘Chita: A Memoir,’ by Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco – The New York Times
CHITA: A Memoir, by Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco
How did Chita Rivera feel when she saw Rita Moreno, another actress of Puerto Rican descent, in the movie role of Anita that Rivera had originated on Broadway in “West Side Story”?
“How dare she?” she recalls thinking in “Chita,” her playful and history-rich memoir. “That is my dress, that is my earring!” The truth is she was already kicking it up with Dick Van Dyke on Broadway in “Bye Bye Birdie” at the time. So she got over it. Then, when that show became a movie, Janet Leigh took Rivera’s part of Rosie, even after Rivera killed with “Spanish Rose,” her stereotype-bashing number, on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Look it up on YouTube, you won’t be sorry.)
Years later the steamy role of Velma Kelly that she originated in “Chicago” for Bob Fosse went to Catherine Zeta-Jones, who won an Oscar for it. “She’s the perfect choice,” she responded when Rob Marshall, its director, checked in.
Cutthroat as the acting game may be, and even harder for talent with Hispanic names long before J. Lo, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rosie Perez and Daphne Rubin-Vega hit the scene, Rivera comes off as thirsty for recognition — but not bloodthirsty — despite the urgings of her colleagues Gwen Verdon, Fred Ebb and others to up her diva game.
She moved in with relatives in the Bronx and describes a heady time of bodegas, subways, public school and intimidating ballet instructors. Overcoming her fear of singing, she got into the national tour of “Call Me Madam” with Elaine Stritch, then on Broadway in “Guys and Dolls” and “Can-Can,” starring Verdon. With “West Side Story,” her career took off.
Essentially a good girl, despite her insistence that she has a fire-breathing alter ego, Dolores (who occasionally makes herself heard in the book), at 90, this national icon doesn’t seem to want to burn many bridges. If roles or songs were taken from her and given to others, all for the best.
She doesn’t get too political either, although she does unload about what it means to play Latina characters “subjected to racist taunts,” and on her defining early role as a street-sassy Puerto Rican. When Rivera was suggested for “1491,” one of his lesser-known shows, Meredith Willson, who wrote “The Music Man,” asked, “Doesn’t she speak with an accent?” She allows that while she bumped into ethnic stereotypes, the theater world was more relaxed than Hollywood. “I wanted to be considered for a range of roles and for the most part I succeeded,” she writes.