Overture Magazine - 2018-19 Season FINAL_BSO_Overture_May_June | Page 30

MOVIE WITH ORCHESTRA: WEST SIDE STORY
than eight years to 1949. It began with
Jerome Robbins, who had the idea of
creating a contemporary treatment of
Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy Romeo
and Juliet and approached Bernstein and
Laurents to see if they were interested in
collaborating. The original concept was
called “East Side Story” and revolved
around the forbidden love between the
daughter of a Jewish immigrant family
who had survived the Holocaust and the
son of an Irish-American Catholic family
set during the period of Easter/Passover.
This story with an anti-Semitic theme
would involve the Catholic Jets gang
battling the Jewish Emeralds gang. Both
Bernstein and Laurents were interested,
but problems developing the story and
their respective other involvements
finally put a halt to the collaboration.
6 years later in 1955, the project was
revived. The idea now seemed especially
relevant because the newspapers were full
of stories about teenage gang violence on
New York’s West Side as well as in other
American cities. Laurents and Bernstein
were interested in developing a musical
with a Latino beat, and the Catholic vs.
Jewish theme was dropped in favor of
conflict between newly arrived Puerto
Rican immigrants and American-born
gangs. Robbins signed on as director, and
since he was one of America’s leading
choreographers, the group decided that
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dance, created by Robbins, would be the
show’s primary means of expression. In
fact, the prominence of dance dictated the
casting of dancers who could also sing and
act rather than singing actors in most of
the roles. Bernstein wanted to create the
lyrics as well as the music, but the team
decided his words were too pretentious
and wisely brought in the young Stephen
Sondheim to tackle that job.
With his uncompromising
perfectionism—this would be a factor
in the film treatment as well—Robbins
created a state of extreme nervous tension
among his young performers. He also
kept the members of his two gangs, the
American Jets and the Puerto Rican
Sharks, apart so that no friendships could
develop between them and conspired to
stoke their antagonism.
Concurrently with West Side Story,
Bernstein was also composing the music
for his satirical operetta Candide, which
opened on Broadway in December
1956. Some music originally intended
for Candide was transferred to West Side
Story, notably the songs “One Hand, One
Heart” and the comic “Officer Krupke.”
Because he was so busy, Bernstein
delegated the score’s orchestration, under
his strict supervision, to Sid Ramin and
Irwin Kostal.
The creative team constantly urged
Bernstein to avoid making his music
too operatic and pushing it beyond the
technical abilities of the young dancers.
This problem came to a head at the
show’s climax: Maria’s final words after
the death of Tony. “It cries out for music,”
Bernstein said. “I tried to set it very bitterly,
understated, swift. I tried giving all the
material to the orchestra and having her
sing an obbligato [higher countermelody]
throughout. I tried a version that sounded
just like a Puccini aria, which we really did
not need.…Everything sounded wrong.”
Finally, the decision was made to have
Maria simply speak her words without
music, an approach that made the moment
all the more powerful for its starkness.
West Side Story ran for nearly two
years on Broadway, was presented for
another year on a national tour, then
returned to Broadway for most of the
following year. Then it reached out to
its widest audience of all.
The Film
Inevitably, Hollywood became interested
in putting this musical everyone was
talking about on the screen. Robert Wise,
experienced in shooting urban dramas on
the New York streets, was signed on as co-
director with Robbins and choreographer.
The movie was filmed on location in the
Upper West Side of New York, an area of
decaying tenements soon to be demolished,
ironically, for the construction of Lincoln
Center for the Performing Arts. In the
opening sequence and throughout the
film, Wise used stunning aerial and crane
shots to show both the city’s imposing
skyscrapers and the crowded streets and
bleak playgrounds of the depressed world of
the Jets and Sharks.
The original show had cast performers
mostly in their early 20s to play the parts
of teenagers, but by the time of the film,
Larry Kert (Tony) and Carol Lawrence
(Maria) were pushing 30 and deemed
too old for screen close ups. The directors
actually asked Elvis Presley to play Tony,
but on the advice of his manager, he
turned it down, to his lasting regret.
Audrey Hepburn was among the many
actresses considered for Maria. Wise next
suggested Warren Beatty for Tony. For
his audition, Beatty brought along his