“A lot of the dancers hated him [director-choreographer
Jerome Robbins]— but loved him. He would think nothing of making us do one step
over and over until we broke down in tears or pulled something. Shin splints
for days. He was a tough and demanding daddy, but if you got a smile out of
him, you floated on air for days.”—Oscar-winning actress Rita Moreno quoted in Joe
McGovern, “Making West Side Story’s ‘America,” Entertainment Weekly, July 7, 2017
Jerome Robbins was born 100 years ago today in Manhattan. I had
written a blog post several months
ago about his agonized decision to inform on friends during the McCarthy Era,
but that was hardly enough to sum up the career of this extraordinary if
imperfect artist.
Inevitably, I turn back to West Side Story, even
though Robbins’ many accomplishments predated and followed that landmark 1957
musical. It would have been enough that he brought it to fruition on Broadway,
but he also was instrumental in its translation to film in 1961, and he was a
co-winner for Best Director for his efforts. (Altogether, with 10 Academy Awards, the film would be one of the most honored in Hollywood history.) In a sense, the opportunity to
work in Hollywood—and on such a prestigious project—helped motivate his
controversial 1953 testimony as a friendly witness before the House Un-American
Activities Committee.
Yet the uncompromising nature that enabled him to
make West Side Story such a stunning Broadway
success also ensured that he would not complete production of the movie. Moreno’s
remarks above only hint at what a taskmaster he could be. The location shooting
in what would become, in a few years, Lincoln Center took place over a grueling
summer.
“In New York it was, like, 110 degrees,” Russ
Tamblyn—who played "Jets" gang leader Riff—recalled in this YouTube clip of his appearance at the 55th anniversary
of the movie. “And we had to do this long dance down the street where we were
walking and dancing and we had to do it over and over and over, and they had to
keep shooting,,,And finally, [co-director] Robert Wise would say, ‘Well, that’s fine for me….How
‘bout you, Jerry?’ And Jerry would say, ‘Well, I’d just like to do one more,
but I’d like all of you dancers to do it on the other foot.’ I don’t know if
you know what that means, but instead of stepping out to the left, you step out
to the right. You had all of these dancers trying to figure out what to do. So
it took a long of time.”
But what short-circuited Robbins' involvement with the
project was how he treated his collaborators and studio executives: with
dismissive contempt. He rebuffed multiple suggestions from
Wise (tasked to direct non-musical sequences) and screenwriter Ernest Lehman on how to translate scenes from
the stage to the screen.
At last, when the film was $300,000 over budget and
only one-third of the expected footage was in the can, United Artists decided
to fire Robbins--a decision made easier by a clause in his contract that few thought would ever be invoked, that allowed for his termination if the movie wasn't working out. With rumors flying that the film would shut down completely, that was the opening that United Artists needed.
It says something for Wise’s forbearance that, even when it
came to this pass, he still went to bat for his troublesome collaborator.To be fair, though, it also says something for
Robbins’ brilliance. In his autobiography, composer,
arranger, and musical director Saul Chaplin, for all his criticism of Robbins'
cruelty and sadism, still had to acknowledge him as "by far the most
exciting choreographer I had ever watched. He seemed to have an endless stream
of exciting ideas.”
Remember that the next
time as you watch the movie’s choreography, all of which Robbins managed to
complete before his ouster. And the musical numbers he finished—"Prologue," "America,"
"Cool," and "Something’s Coming"—still bristle with energy and
fire, giving viewers a visceral sense of the
violent youthful passions that end on New York’s mean streets.
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