I’ve spent a good deal of time watching the multiple Academy Award-winning West Side Story (1961), and have reached certain conclusions — you may have your own.
First, if you haven’t seen West Side (as insiders shorten it) on a big screen, you haven’t seen it. This movie-musical is an operatic experience that needs total immersion to pack the wallop that it does. Second, the best thing in this movie (pictured above, left) is its singing-and-dancing antihero for whom you root, but who cannot prevail. The cards of an anti-immigrant society are stacked against him. This role, Bernardo, was played to perfection by a dancing actor, George Chakiris (above, right).
West Side‘s principals, with the exception of Natalie Wood, who died tragically in 1981, are still with us.
In a candid rehearsal shot, a very fit Chakiris (he came to this movie set after playing “Riff” on the London stage for a year and a half) takes a perilous leap.
George is a friend of artsmeme, and we have written many stories about him. He is a hero of the dance world, having inspired a next-generation of male dancers, giving a green light to dark-haired men who are lithe, sensual, catlike, (and bad-assed) as screen dancers. Tap-dance legend Maurice Hines told me that he and his brother, Gregory, spying Chakiris in New York, shadowed him in excitement across 57th Street. Of the many great dancers attached to the dance legacy of West Side Story, both the Broadway show and the movie, frankly, few approach George’s flair — thinking Chita Rivera. The Oscar he won as Best Supporting Actor, yes, falls to him. But it also speaks to the power of dance to move, provoke, agitate, and disarm an audience.
Happy Birthday, George Chakiris, this September turning 92.
an artsmeme thanks to mike jittlov whose serendipitous encounter with george on fairfax avenue resulted in his beautiful portrait with oscar
Beautiful article. I must remark that Michael Jackson’s short film, BEAT IT, was also hugely important in inspiring young men to get into dancing. I was proud to play a character who was secure, strong, and could dance. Like George in WWS, we men in this piece gave young male dancers an image of how powerful a masculine dancer could be.