r381 - Michael Musto has some tidbits -- nothing too juicy. I'm kind of surprised to hear about a potential screentest for West Side Story. Kind of assumed that wasn't even offered to her. I imagine Rita would have still gotten it even if Chita did screentest, though. Chita was, hands down, far more of a triple threat and a far more accomplished dancer than Rita, but she was never as pretty as Rita.
I wouldn't say she shits on Liza, but she certainly.... brings her down a peg. She apparently speaks about their short run together in Chicago as well. Speaking of which, she apparently wasn't a huge fan of the Chicago revival.
[quote]The aforementioned Chita Rivera (the original Anita in West Side Story, for any straights out there) just released Chita, A Memoir, and it’s as readable as you’d expect. Among the revelations in the book (written with Patrick Pacheco): Chita says that she turned down the screen test for the Oscar-winning 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story. I asked her publicist for more detail, and the reply was, “Chita recalls that when the call came through her agent, she had scheduling conflicts that prevented her from flying to California for it.” One wonders if Chita would have gotten her kicks on the big screen if not for that twist of fate.
[quote]Another interesting section has to do with Chicago, the now legendary show she co-starred in with Gwen Verdon in 1975. I was there at one of the performances where Liza Minnelli, at the peak of her powers, subbed for Verdon. It was astonishing, but Chita has it right when she writes, “Even though Liza was rapturously received, I never thought she outshone me during her short run. She had her strengths. I had mine. She sang more. I danced more.” They were fab together — though imho, their reteaming for 1984’s The Rink gave Chita a Tony-winning star turn and Liza a meh daughter role.
[quote]Meanwhile, the still-running revival of Chicago—the second longest-running production in Broadway history (Phantom of the Opera was #1)—has never been Chita’s favorite. “I just didn’t think it came anywhere close to the radiance of the original version,” she confesses in the book. (Having seen both, I have to agree. The revival is scaled down and made sense to the public after the O.J. trial underlined what “celebrity justice” really means, but the original — whether with Rivera/Verdon or Rivera/Minnelli — was absolutely transcendent in its brilliantly bawdy satire.) Anyway, in 1999, Chita got to play Roxie in London and explains, “Playing Roxie again, in Vegas, I got to respect the adaptation. What had been sacrificed to keep costs down has been compensated with longer runs, giving more people the chance to see Chicago.”
