Many Puerto Ricans felt insulted by the way characters from the island were portrayed in the 1961 version of “West Side Story.” Here’s how Steven Spielberg’s remake responds to some of the missteps of the original film.
The original 1961 film won 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. But for decades this retelling of “Romeo and Juliet” through the lens of White and Puerto Rican gangs in New York has been panned by Puerto Ricans who felt insulted by the way characters from the island were portrayed. Some worried Steven Spielberg’s remake of the classic musical would repeat — and amplify — the very same one-sided story that’s cast a stereotypical shadow over generations of Puerto Ricans. Spielberg vowed not to do that. And it’s clear he and his team took past criticisms into account as they shaped their version. Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner significantly rewrote much of the screenplay, using Arthur Laurents’ book for the 1957 Broadway show as a jumping-off point. The songs are largely the same, but the story is different in several notable ways — especially when it comes to the movie’s Puerto Rican characters. Here’s a look at how the new “West Side Story” responds to some of the missteps of the original film. How Spielberg tried to solve the problem of Maria Natalie Wood played Maria in the 1961 film, with Marni Nixon’s voice dubbed in for all the heroine’s songs. Neither one of them was Puerto Rican, or even Latina; most of the movie’s cast wasn’t, either. Spielberg’s version casts Colombian American Rachel Zegler as Maria. And all the other Puerto Rican characters are played by Latino actors, too. “It’s so important for people like us to see people like us onscreen,” Zegler said in a recent “20/20” special on the film, “to see people like us singing ‘I Feel Pretty,’ to see people like us falling in love and feeling joy and dancing around in pretty dresses. It’s so important for that next generation to see someone that looks like them.” Zegler’s been getting rave reviews for her performance. Still, not everyone is sold on the casting choice. “I have an issue with Hollywood once again fumbling the easiest of opportunities to elevate a Puerto Rican actress. They seem to think that as long as the actors are Hispanic, that’s enough,” Daily Beast Assistant Managing Editor Mandy Velez wrote in a recent column. “Except it’s not, to me or to other Puerto Ricans so thirsty to see themselves represented on screen they might collapse from dehydration.” There’s no one wearing brownface in this movie In the original “West Side Story,” many of the actors playing Puerto Rican characters were forced to wear the same dark brown makeup — even Rita Moreno, who is Puerto Rican and played the character of Anita. “I remember saying to the makeup man one day ― because it was like putting mud on my face, it was really dark and I’m a fairly fair Hispanic ― and I said to the makeup man one day ‘My God! Why do we all have to be the same color?” Moreno told Futuro Media’s “In the Thick” podcast in 2017. “Puerto Ricans are French and Spanish…’ And it’s true, we are very many different colors, we’re Taino indian, we are Black some of us.” When she raised that point on set, Moreno said she got a surprising response. “The makeup man actually said to me, ‘What? Are you a racist?’ I was so flabbergasted that I couldn’t come back with an answer.
