She misses the scent of hibiscus the most, and the gentle, tropical breezes that swept over her as she danced for her grandparents at their home in Juncos, Puerto Rico. Little five-year-old Rosita Dolores Alverio loved her mother, her baby brother Francisco, and performing for anyone who would watch.
Her happy world would change completely when she was five, but after a lifetime of singing, dancing and acting, Rosita — who we know as singer and actress Rita Moreno — still feels that same thrill performing, even at the age of 88.
Rosita arrived with her mother, Rosa Maria, in New York in 1936 after a five-day trip by boat from Puerto Rico. Then 22, Rosa Maria was fleeing an abusive husband (Rosita’s father) and had bigger dreams than staying in Juncos.
The two joined 12 other relatives in a three-bedroom apartment in a tenement in the Bronx, where Rosita immediately contracted chicken pox and was sent, alone, to the hospital. She spoke no English and her mother was not allowed to go with her; the terror stayed with her throughout her life.
After recovering, Rosita attended kindergarten — again, speaking no English — while her mother found jobs as a domestic worker and seamstress. When she was six, a neighbor suggested that Rosita should take dance lessons and she joined a studio run by Paco Cansino, a classical Spanish dancer who happened to be Rita Hayworth’s uncle.
Her childhood was spent as a miniature Carmen Miranda, singing and dancing in costumes and a fake-fruit headdress that her mother sewed for her. Rosita sang in clubs, at weddings and bar mitzvahs, even on the dock for soldiers heading to Europe to fight in World War II. This led to radio appearances and jobs doing Spanish voice overs of American movies for theatres in Spanish Harlem.
Rosita made her Broadway debut at the age of 13 in a bit part of a musical that closed after just one night. She and her mother decided Rosita would drop out of school and perform full time. She got an agent and focused on auditions and casting calls, while her mother sewed costumes and booked appearances that Rosita sometimes spent hours on buses, alone, to travel to.
When she was 16, a talent agent spotted Rosita at a dance recital and arranged an introduction with Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM film studios. She and her mother spent the day making Rosita up to look like a young Elizabeth Taylor, and it worked. Mayer signed her on the spot at their meeting in New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, and she and her family packed up and moved to Culver City, Calif.
Her first day on the MGM set, Rosita met Clark Gable in the commissary and had her name changed to Rita Moreno by a studio publicist. She spent two years performing in bit parts in MGM musicals until 1952, when she was cast as Zelda Zanders in Singin’ in the Rain. But MGM chose not to renew her contract, and Rita found herself scraping to find jobs.
“This was the era of the worst of my Lolita/Conchita Hispanic spitfires in low cut blouses and dangling hoop earrings,” Rita writes in her autobiography, Rita Moreno: A Memoir.
By chance, a photographer for Life magazine found a still photo of her that he put on the cover of the magazine for an article about Hollywood starlets. In true Hollywood lore, someone at 20th Century Fox saw the photo and shouted “Get me that girl!”.
Rita signed a seven-year contract with the studio, where her roles expanded to Indian maidens and slave girls in Biblical epics. She resented the stereotypical casting for actresses with “exotic looks,” and pushed hard to break free of those constraints.
She landed a supporting role in The King and I in 1956, and met the first of two great loves of her life: Marlon Brando.
This was the Golden Age of Hollywood, and Rita lived the starlet life. Her studio contracts required her to hit the party circuit, where she rubbed elbows with Sen. John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis, Jr. She dated (briefly) Dennis Hopper and a very young Elvis.
But it was Marlon Brando who she loved, and their relationship lasted first as lovers and then as friends the rest of his life. It was toxic, and dangerous for Rita, resulting in an abortion and suicide attempt.
Then Rita got the role of a lifetime: Anita, in the film adaptation of West Side Story. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1961, the first Latina to win an Oscar.
“Anita was the epitome of the great ethnic role,” Moreno writes. “She was Puerto Rican, and she was fighting for her rights!”
Far from ensuring her place in Hollywood, the award only brought Rita more stereotypical roles. She took a break from Hollywood and in 1964 moved to London, acting in the West End before returning to Broadway to perform in a short-lived new play by Lorraine Hansberry. In 1965 she met Lenny Gordon, a cardiologist to whom she would be married for 45 years, and gave birth to her only child, daughter Fernanda.
Marlon Brando convinced her to take a role opposite him in the 1968 film, The Night of the Following Day, but her work over the next decade was primarily with PBS and its slate of children’s programming, something she chose so she could be with her daughter.
She starred in The Electric Company from 1970 to 1977, winning a Grammy for her work. She also appeared on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, for which she won her first Emmy Award in 1977.
Rita returned to Broadway in 1975, winning the Tony for her role of Googie in Terrence McNally’s play, The Ritz. The win put her in elite company as one of just a handful of performers to capture an EGOT — Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.
Still, her success left her without the kinds of roles she relished.
“I had battled racism and sexism all my life,” she writes. “Now I had to battle the worst enemy of all: ageism.”
Rita and Lenny created a cabaret act for her, and she hit the road performing at any venue that would book her. She also opened for bigger acts, including Sammy Davis, Jr. in Las Vegas, and comedian George Burns, with whom she and Lenny shared double martinis in his dressing room after each performance (despite his being in his 80s).
After that, Rita says she began years of “marathon guesting” on dozens of television shows, including The Love Boat, The Golden Girls, Miami Vice and The Rockford Files, for which she won her second Emmy in 1978.
More recently, she voiced Carmen Sandiego in the series Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and played Sister Pete in the HBO series, Oz. After her husband died in 2010, Rita produced and starred in an autobiographical play at the Berkeley (Calif.) Repertoiry Theatre, where she and her husband had moved to be closer to their daughter and her family.
She had a small voice role in 2014 in the children’s movie, Rio 2, which ended up being her most successful commercial film, and she currently stars in the Netflix remake of One Day At a Time, about a Cuban-American family. Today, at 88, she’s an executive producer and is set to star in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story, the movie that first made her famous.
“Staying active and persevering is part and parcel of the character of a performer,” Rita writes in her memoir.
“You always have to be able to get up, dust yourself off, and move forward.”