Stephen Sondheim: My 'West Side Story' Lyrics Are 'Embarrassing' - ABC News ABC News Stephen Sondheim: My 'West Side Story' Lyrics Are 'Embarrassing' By JOHN BERMAN Stephen Sondheim finds the music from "West Side Story," one of the most revered musicals of all time, downright "embarrassing." And he should know. He wrote the lyrics. "It embarrasses me," he said. "It's very hard for me to listen to some of those songs." Only a man who has won eight Tony Awards, two Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar could get away with saying something like that. That man is the 80-year-old composer-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim. He is a true Broadway legend.

Most theater buffs have heard (or sung) at least one of Sondheim's most famous scores, which include, "Sweeney Todd," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," "Into the Woods," "Company," "Sunday in the Park with George," "Assassins" and "Follies." He also wrote the lyrics for "Gypsy" and then, of course, "West Side Story." There's even a Broadway theater named after him. Earlier this year, the Henry Miller Theater on West 43rd Street in New York City became the Stephen Sondheim Theater, another event in his career that the composer was somewhat uncomfortable with. "Embarrassing. Thrilling but embarrassing," Sondheim said. "First of all, I've never been fond of my name. 'Sondheim' ... doesn't sing." Then, of course, there have been constant celebrations, honors, birthday tributes and praises from Sondheim's other prestigious colleagues, including actress Bernadette Peters, who called him "a walking, living icon." Again, the great composer blushed. "It's really nice, but it's also embarrassing," Sondheim said.

"My tendency, my desire is 'leave me alone, just let me ride.'" Then he added about watching his life's work unfold: "What's great about standing in the back of the theater while the show is going on is if the audience doesn't like it, you can go to the bar right next door and have a drink." Sondheim: 'When I Write Words, I'm Very Careful' A new world of publicity has opened up for Sondheim. He is now an author, having just finished his first book, "Finishing the Hat." It's a collection of his lyrics and memories of a Broadway career that has spanned more than 50 years. The trick, he said, to producing such rich material is lying down on his couch. "I think I like writing lying down because I like to fall asleep in the middle," he said. He is meticulous in the way he works, writing only with soft, Blackwing pencils -- a brand that went out of production for years, so he bought a lifetime supply. "Luckily, when they were in their heyday, I bought boxes and cartons of them because they wear out so quickly." He also is scrupulous in how he produces his craft.

"When I write words, I'm very careful," he said. "When you write lyrics, there are so few lyrics in the song, so few words ... in a lyric that each one has enormous weight. You know, a line in a song is like a scene in a play." There's more to his enormous musical success than just lying on his couch and using a special kind of pencil. Sondheim was taken under the wing of another impressive Broadway legend, Oscar Hammerstein, who was like a surrogate father to Sondheim in his teenage years. "One of the things I learned early on about theater and all art is art needs surprise, otherwise it doesn't hold an audience's attention," Sondheim said. "Theater needs surprise, so I like to surprise myself and I want to surprise the audience." He has been full of surprises. "Company," which opened on Broadway in 1970, was the first musical without a defined, linear plot.

"Sweeney Todd" debuted on Broadway in 1979 and featured the "Demon Barber of Fleet Street," while, on a sweeter note, the 1987 Broadway production of "Into the Woods" was a delightful romp through children's fairy tales about what really happens after "happily ever after." Despite his massive success, Sondheim also has been met with fierce critics over the decades, many of whom have said his music is too cold, impersonal, difficult to sing and lacks mass appeal. Sondheim doesn't seem fazed by them. "I think it's the only one of the arts that's mostly reviewed by ignoramuses, people who know nothing about what they're writing about," he said, although he admitted that when "Sweeney Todd" first opened, it lost two-thirds of its money. Sondheim's Most Famous: 'Send in the Clowns' Whatever small struggles he has encountered in the past, there also have been stunning successes.

"A Little Night Music," now in revival on Broadway, features one of the most iconic songs ever to hit the stage and perhaps the most famous song Sondheim ever wrote: "Send in the Clowns." Peters, who recently took over the role of Desiree from Catherine Zeta-Jones in the revival, is the most recent actress to sing the powerful song. "What's funny about Steve's songs is you think, 'Oh, this is about something,' and then you start working on it and you go, 'No, it's about something,'" Peters said. "It goes even deeper than you imagined." As for "West Side Story," despite Sondheim's grumblings, the musical was produced by a Broadway all-star team, with music by Leonard Bernstein, direction by Jerome Robbins, and Sondheim's lyrics, which he penned in his early 20s. "Most of the lyrics were sort of ... they were very self-conscious," he said. "Bernstein wanted the songs to be ... heavy, what he called 'poetic,' and my idea of poetry and his idea of poetry are polar opposites.

I don't mean that they are terrible, I just mean they're so self-conscious." There is one bad song in particular that stands out for Sondheim, one that Jack Nicholson turned into a hilarious parody in the film, "Anger Management," as many others have done. "I'm fond of quoting 'I Feel Pretty,'" Sondheim said. "The street girl is singing, 'It's alarming how charming I feel.' ... I just put my head under my wing and pretend I'm not there." Although all of the composer's great work has continued to live on and be celebrated, he said being immortalized isn't important to him. "I'm one of those people why doesn't care about posterity," he said. "There are people who care; I couldn't care less what happens to my stuff after I die because I won't be around to enjoy it." ABC News' Lauren Effron contributed to this report. 0 Shares The Official West Side Story Web Site -- FAQ 15. Can you suggest some topics for an essay about West Side Story? 1. How does West Side Story compare to Romeo & Juliet? WSS is a modern day adaptation of the timeless classic by William Shakespeare.

They both involve two young people that fall in love, but are kept apart by their friends/families. This causes grave consequences. For more information, please read Jack Gottleib's West Side Story fact sheet . 2. Where does it take place? West Side Story takes place on the west side of Manhattan, New York City. Most of the scenes take place in the streets, playground, on the roof, at Doc's or under the highway. 3. When does it take place? West Side Story is set in the mid 1950's, when many Puerto Ricans moved to NYC. 4. What's the basic plot? For a full plot summary of West Side Story, please visit Music Theater International's WSS page . 5. Who are the main characters and who played them in the movie and original broadway version? Riff, leader of the Jets Bernardo, leader of the Sharks Maria, Bernardo's little sister Tony, a founder of the Jets Doc, owner of Doc's store/Tony's boss Anita, Bernardo's girlfriend Ice, one of the toughest Jets Lt. Shrank, police officer To find out who played each character, visit the WSS Archives Major Productions page . 6. Where are the gangs from?

The Jets are from Manhattan. They have ruled their "turf" for years, after defeating the Emeralds. The Sharks are from Puerto Rico. They have just recently come to NY, and want a "turf" of their own. 7. Who wrote West Side Story? West Side Story is based on a conception by Jerome Robbins. Book by Arthur Laurents Entire Original Production Directed and Choreographed by Jerome Robbins Orchestrations by Leonard Bernstein with Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal Film Version: Directed by: Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins Screenplay: Ernest Lehman Choreography: Jerome Robbins 8. When was West Side Story written? Jerome Robbins' proposed the idea for writing a musical based on Romeo and Juliet to Leonard Bernstein in January of 1949 (working title: East Side Story, set in the slums at the coincidence of Easter-Passover celebrations). In August of 1955, a meeting with Arthur Laurents produced another idea -- two teen-age gangs as the warring factions, one of them newly-arrived Puerto Ricans, the other self-styled "Americans." In November, 1955 Stephen Sondheim joined the project as lyricist.

A year and a half later, rehearsals began for the Broadway premiere of West Side Story. For more about the development of WSS, please read The Growth of an Idea by Arthur Laurents, New York Herald Tribune, 8/4/57. 9. Where was West Side Story first performed? The stage version of West Side Story opened in previews/tryouts on August 20, 1957 in Washington D.C. Following this and another preview engagement in Philadelphia, the musical opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater, September 26, 1957. The film version was released on October 18, 1961 10. How are the movie and the stage version different? While the movie version of West Side Story is among the most faithful of Hollywood adaptations, a number of changes were made in translating the work to film, some to suit the medium, others to suit the audience sensibilities, and one or two so-called artistic choices. Here are some examples. Setting. While it seems only natural now, the idea of filming on actual city streets took some time in forming. The original stage version was performed with abstract settings, minimal in the extreme. Score.

The music of West Side Story was carefully re-worked for the film. The Overture includes the song "Maria," changed from "Somewhere" in the stage version. (The overture is often eliminated in the stage productions.) Music was added extending "The Prologue", and so the actual dancing of the Jets evolves slowly from other physical movement such as the basketball shots. (On stage, the dancing begins almost immediately.) The change most often discussed and debated is the switching of "Gee, Officer Krupke" and "Cool". Apparently a song as jolly as Krupke was considered incompatible to the mood created by the rumble, so this song, as well as the merry "I Feel Pretty" were both moved up to happier times before the rumble. "Cool" was placed in the slot following the rumble, with great effect. On stage, "America" is a light-hearted number sung by Anita and the Shark girls. On film, new lyrics were added to bring in the Shark boys and the bitter and sardonic view of those boys allow them into the story somewhat more than their stage counterparts.

The order of songs is switched here also; on stage "Maria" and "Tonight" are consecutive, followed by "America", while in the film the production number comes between the two love songs. The "Dance at the Gym" was extended as well, mostly to accommodate the acrobatics of Russ Tamblyn. The duet "A Boy Like That / I Have a Love" was shortened for the film version, and "One Hand One Heart" is slightly shorter as well. The stage play contains a full-cast ballet sequence, "Somewhere," which was eliminated in the film. Some of the action of the final sequence-the members of both gangs walking away from Tony's body-repeat similar action from the ballet, and the same music is used. Character. The changes noted above brought about the introduction of a new character: Ice was created to provide a solid successor to Riff for the later part of the film. This character does not appear on stage. Other minor details, such as Consuelo's decision to go blond (and her subsequent decision to go back) and the light-headedness of Rosalia were sacrificed in the changes. Madame Lucia, the proprietress of the bridal shop, is not a character in the stage version.

For reasons unknown, Velma and Graziella have switched partners: In the playscript Velma is paired off with Riff. Dialogue. Much of the original dialogue remains in the film version. Some lines were added for character and story development. The most noticeable changes were caused by an effort to clean up what might have been considered objectionable words and ideas, used on stage in 1957 but still not acceptable for films in 1961. 11. What awards has West Side Story received? ANTOINETTE PERRY AWARDS (for the original Broadway production) � Scenic Design - Oliver Smith Carol Lawrence, Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical Best Conductor/Musical Director, Max Goberman Best Costume Design, Irene Sharaff NEW YORK FILM CRITICS � Best Picture West Side Story ACADEMY AWARDS � Best Picture, West Side Story � Best Supporting Actor, George Chakiris � Best Supporting Actress, Rita Moreno � Best Direction, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins � Best Cinematography, Color, Daniel L.

Fapp � Best Art Direction, Color, Boris Leven (Art Direction), Victor Gangelin (Set Decoration) � Best Sound, Fred Hynes, Gordon Sawyer � Best Scoring of a Musical, Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin, Irwin Kostal � Best Editing, Thomas Stanford � Best Costumes, Color, Irene Sharaff � Special Award, Jerome Robbins for his brilliant achievement in the art of choreography Also nominated: GRAMMY AWARDS � Best Soundtrack - West Side Story, Johnny Green, Saul Chaplin, Sid Ramin, Irwin Kostal (That same year, Stan Kenton was awarded a Grammy for Best Jazz Performance, Stan Kenton's West Side Story) Writers Guild of America � Best Written Musical, Ernest Lehman (for the adapted screenplay, 1962) New York Film Critics Circle Award � West Side Story, Best Film Laurel Awards � Cinematography, Color, Daniel L. Fapp � Female Supporting Performance, Rita Moreno � Best Musical � Best Supporting Actor, George Chakiris � Best Supporting Actreess, Rita Moreno Directors Guild of America � Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise and Robert E.

Relyea (assistant director) 12. What is the instrumentation for West Side Story? Reed I: Piccolo, Flute, Alto Saxophone, Clarinet in B?, Bass Clarinet Reed II: Clarinet in E?, Clarinet in B?, Bass Clarinet Reed III: Piccolo, Flute, Oboe, English Horn, Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone, Clarinet in B?, Bass Clarinet Reed IV: Piccolo, Flute, Soprano Saxophone, Bass Saxophone, Clarinet in B?, Bass Clarinet Reed V: Bassoon 3 Trumpets in B?

(2nd doubling Trumpet in D) 2 Trombones Electric Guitar / Spanish Guitar / Mandolin Violin I - VII Cello I - IV Contrabass ** Traps, Vibraphone, 4 Pitched Drums, Xylophone, 3 Bongos, 3 Cowbells, Conga, Timbales, Snare Drum, Police Whistle, Gourd, 2 Suspended Cymbals, Castanets, Maracas, Finger Cymbals, Tambourines, Small Maracas, Glockenspiel, Woodblock, Claves, Triangle, Temple Blocks, Chines, Tam-tam, Ratchet, Slide Whistle 13. How do I get started on researching more information about West Side Story? You can start by visiting the archives section of . There, you can learn about the history of West Side Story. And for more information, you can head to Google and type in "West Side Story," "West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet," "West Side Story characters," "West Side Story plot," or "West Side Story awards," etc. Good luck and have fun! 14. How can I find pictures from West Side Story?

You'll find pictures at westsidestory.com or you can try an image search at Google's Image Search . Please note that all images at The Official West Side Story Site are used with permission from the copyright holders. If you are interested in using any of the photos at this site, please e-mail licensing@leonardbernstein.com for more information. 15. Can you suggest some topics to include in an essay about West Side Story?" Here are some sample West Side Story essay topics: � What are the satirical numbers in the show, and what do they tell us about the Jets and the Sharks? � What are the different kinds of songs and musical pieces used in the movie? � What kind of dance numbers are there, and how do they differ from each other? � How in the opening do the Jets transfer from realistic motion into dance? � Discuss the Tonight Quintet - how does it show the anticipation of the gangs and Anita, Maria and Tony? � Arthur Laurents made up the slang that the gangs use. Describe and discuss it. � Discuss some of the interesting cinematic effects (such as the opening sequence of the city, or the use of color) � Discuss the relationship of Maria and Anita?

� How do characters' prejudices evolve in the work? � What do you think happens after Tony is shot? West Side Story Official Site -- Leonard Bernstein Bio Excerpt Fact Sheet Leonard Bernstein by Humphrey Burton, Chapter 26 ����������� In early December of 1956, immediately after the opening of Candide, Bernstein fled to Nassau to get away from it all. He talked to no one for three days, except to order his meals, as he rested and lucked his wounds far from the madding crowds of Broadway. Even had the show been an unqualified triumph, too much of his music had been jettisoned along the bumpy road from Boston to New York for him to feel comfortable about the hit-and-miss business of composing a Broadway show. As it as, he must have experienced a brief sense of despair at all the hard work and agonized hours that had failed to jell. ����������� West Side Story was still waiting in the wings, but Cheryl Crawford, who had become the show�s producer the previous April, had not yet succeeded in assembling a production package. Meanwhile, Bernstein had committed himself in the months ahead to a heavy new load of conducing and television programs.

In November 1956, shortly before Candide opened, he had been appointed joint principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, effective the 1957-1958 season, sharing the title with Mitropoulos, who was stepping down as musical director. The appointment was widely seen as an interim move which would test Bernstein�s willingness and ability to devote a substantial portion of his time to the Philharmonic. His first contact with the orchestra, after a six-year hiatus, would be the month-long engagement arranged before negotiations for a more permanent position had begun. This was brought forward and additional two weeks to December 13, as a result of the death in the Pairs airplane crash of Italian Conductor Guido Cantelli. Bernstein kept to Cantelli�s planned programs, which mean restudying among other music the grand Mathis der Mahler Symphony by Hindemith. ����������� His own programs began after Christmas with three performances of a virtually complete Messiah, presented in two parts rather than three � in Part One, the Christmas music, culminating in the �Hallelujah Chorus,� and in Part Two, after the intermission, the music for Easter. There was controversy immediately.

His interpretation was �grotesquely unauthentic,� according to Paul Henry Land, who had succeeded Virgil Thomson at the Herald Tribune, and �one of the finest things yet to his credit� if one was to trust Irving Kolodin. Altogether he conducted twenty-two concerts in six weeks. His repertoire included Prokofiev�s Second Violin Concerto with Isaac Stern and Beethoven�s Second Piano Concerto, his first collaboration with the eccentric but brilliants Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. The two concertos and Messiah were immediately recorded by Columbia. The recording company was beginning to influence repertoire and soloist choices, but it also gave the orchestra a strong profile. Emphasizing his commitment to American music, Bernstein conducted Toy Harris�s Third Symphony and the American premiere of Copland�s challenging Short Symphony of 1933, as well as the first performance of the full orchestra version of his own Candide Overture. �A smart sophisticated little piece,� judged Harold Schoenberg, then a second-string critic of the Times, it rapidly became Bernstein�s most popular concert hall composition. ����������� In between concerts Bernstein wrote and hosted another major �Omnibus� essay, An Introduction to Modern Music.

Essentially he wanted to persuade his enormous audience that twentieth-century music was as beautiful in its own way as that of earlier centuries. He demonstrated convincingly that �beauty� and �dissonance� were relative terms, and explained the tonal system of harmony in terms of a baseball diamond on which the home plate represented the tonic key. Though he granted that a composer like Alban Berg could use Schoenberg�s system of composing with all twelve tones to compose beautiful and moving music, his skepticism concerning the universality of the twelve-tone system and his preference for Copland and Stravinsky were clear for all to see. Dimitri Mitropoulos had led the Philharmonic in major works by Schoenberg every year from 1950 to 1954. Bernstein was choosing instead to highlight contemporary American music, and his �Omnibus� lecture gave early notice that he would be an articulate spokesman for musical conservatism, while all around him the tide was flowing toward serialism.

����������� A few days before Candide closed, Leonard Bernstein and Felicia left tow for a two-week holiday in pre-Castro Cuba with Marc Blitzstein, who was recuperating from a hernia operation and was depressed by the impasse in his composing career since the production of his musical Reuben Reuben had been canceled before its Broadway opening in the fall of 1955.� Ironically, he now earned higher praise as the translator of Brecht than as composer. Bernstein was equally disconsolate following Candide�s failure, but the two friends and their families consoled themselves with ever more elaborate word games, incorporating French, German, Italian, and even Latin words to add spice. ����������� Their professional prospects could hardly have been more different. Although Candide had been a box office flop, Bernstein�s music for it had been widely praised � only Irving Kolodin wrote it off as �padded out by formula� � and he was ready to bounce back with West Side Story. Several important developments would soon improve his finances.

An exclusive recording contract with Columbia, signed in April 1956 and announced to the public in the fall with the issue of five Bernstein LPs in a single month, provided an annual fifteen-thousand-dollar advance against royalties, and he was promised a busy schedule of new recordings. His television fee was almost doubled when �Omnibus� switched to AMV and Sunday night screenings. Even his concert work was set to expand in a new direction: it was announced that he would take over artistic control of the Philharmonic�s �Young People�s Concerts�. ����������� While Bernstein was still on holiday in Cuba, Time published a profile of him in which it listed five different Bernstein Careers and had laudatory comments about them all. His portrait appeared on the magazine�s cover, the first time an American conductor had ever been singled out for such acclaim. Significantly, the caption read �Conductor Leonard Bernstein� � this in the very week when his most ambitious composition, Candide, was set to close. It seems fair to assume that during their Cuban vacation Felicia encouraged him to concentrate for the next few years on conduction.

(The Time article said Mitropoulos was �very likely to quit soon.�) There was no certainty that West Side Story would fare any better on Broadway than Candide had done. The immense effort involved in preparing a musical no longer seemed commensurate with the uncertain reward. In any case Bernstein was not a natural commercial Broadway composer. He had just sailed through six weeks of Philharmonic concerts with great panache. Now he had the chance to follow Gustav Mahler�s footsteps and become New York�s music director. Like Mahler, he could be a conductor in the winter months and a composer in the summer. On the financial side there would be handsome additional income form the television shows and the Columbia recordings. Whatever the grumbles to his friends, he loved being in studios and he loved teaching. Above all, he reveled in being a celebrity, as he had ever since the heady days following his Carnegie Hall debut in 1943. ����������� Felicia too, enjoyed the society role. There was tremendous status in being the wife of New York�s leading musician. In the fall of 1956 she had been photographed for the Herald Tribune in the dress she would wear for the opening concert of the Philharmonic season.

�It was of floor length which faille,� the report read; �the pearl and gilt embroidery began just under the empire bodice.� She looked breathtakingly beautiful. To maintain that kind of elegant lifestyle, money was essential, lots of it. A gossip columnist estimated that from all sources Bernstein earned one hundred thousand dollars in 1956; examination of his financial records indicates that before taxes he actually did slightly better. But a nine-room Manhattan apartment at a prestige address was not easy to keep up, and there were the Chilean cook and nanny to pay for. (Julia Vega joined her compatriot Rosalia Guerrero in 1954.) ����������� Decisions taken in the weeks following his Cuban holiday reshaped Leonard Bernstein�s career still further. The first move, the assumption of the �Young People�s Concerts,� was soon followed by successful negotiations with William Paley of CBS (a member of the board of the Philharmonic) to have four programs a year televised on Saturday mornings at noon. And in April, before he had given a single concert in his official role as joint principal conduction, negotiations began for him to become the Philharmonic�s music director when Mitropoulos stepped down.

����������� Two weeks after receiving his first Emmy Award, for Best Musical Contribution to television, he demonstrated his versatility as a conductor with an hour-long �omnibus� feature broadcast on Easter Sunday. The subject was the grandeur of J.S. Bach, and the program featured excerpts form the Magnificat and the St. Matthew Passion. Considering how rarely he had performed the choral music of Bach, his enthusiasm and knowledge were impressive � he conducted, played piano and harpsichord, even sand a little. His talk touched on many aspects of Bach�s genius � the strength and beauty of his counterpoint, his numerological complexities (which Bernstein compared to the Talmud), his musical pictorialism, the mystic fusion of words and music in the chorales, the high drama of the Passion story. He spoke finally of Bach�s religious spirit; simple faith; he argued, was the spine of Bach�s enormous output. BY late spring of 1957 the eleventh hour for West Side Story had arrived, and with it the crisis withouth which no Broadway story is complete.

Having nursed the production for more than a year and seen it postponed in March, allegedly because of casting difficulties, Cheryl Crawford called its creators into her office on the morning of April 22 and told them she was quitting. Bernstein felt suicidal. �I don�t know how many people begged me not to waste my time on something that could not possibly succeed . . . a show full of hatefulness and ugliness.� Sondheim remembers his sense of shock and surprise at being rejected. But when Crawford�s partner Roger Stevens was telephoned in London he confirmed his interest and urged them not to give up. That night Sondheim enlisted the support of his producer friend Harold Prince, to whom, unbeknownst to Bernstein, he had already played much of the score. Prince and his partner Robert Griffith flew down from Boston the following weekend.

Prince recalled the subsequent audition in his memoirs: �Sondheim and Bernstein sat at the piano playing through the music and soon I was singing along with them and Bernstein would look up and say, �My God, he�s so musical!�� ����������� There was a rapidly approaching deadline: Bernstein had to leave in September for concerts in South American and Israel, to be followed by his first New York appearances as joint principal conductor of the Philharmonic. Production had to be now or never. Robbins threw in his own bombshell. He wanted Herbert Ross to do the choreography so that he could concentrate on directing. Prince threatened to pull out unless Robbins agreed to be in change of the dancing (his was the hottest name among the collaborators). Robbins relented, on condition that he would have eight weeks rehearsal instead of the customary four, there was to be more dancing in West Side Story than in any previous Broadway show and extra rehearsal was essential to block all the numbers. Even so, Robbins entrusted some of the dance numbers to the choreographer Peter Gennaro. ����������� In their brief careers as producers, Griffith and Prince had had three hit shows in a row. With Roger Stevens behind them, they quickly raised the case and established a production schedule.

They chose a bid New York theatre, the Winter Garden, and booked a five-week pre-Broadway tryout, three weeks in Washington and two in Philadelphia. ����������� Fine-tuning on the scare of West Side Story went on throughout the early summer. They dropped what Bernstein described as the �militantly aggressive: opening chorus, �Mix,� sung by the Jets and the Sharks.� The replacement number, �prologue,� was another big chorus for the rival gangs with, as Bernstein put it, �millions of lyrics to insanely fast music.�� Eventually, the lyrics were dropped in favor of pure dance; the only sounds the chorus produced in the opening five minutes are a whistle and the rhythmical click of fingers snapping. ����������� Bernstein had originally intended his song �Somewhere� to serve (with a different lyric) as the love music for the balcony scene between Tony and Maria played on a tenement fire escape. Laurents and Robbins were not convinced, so Bernstein and Sondheim created a new love duet, using the �Tonight� music from the quintet heard later in the act. �Somewhere� found its ideal position in the second act as the introduction to the dream ballet.

����������� Composing West Side Story and Candide in tandem let to some surprising switches of material between the two works. Tony and Maria�s duet, �One Hand, One Heart,� was originally intended for Candide and Cunegonde. The music of the satirical number �Gee, Officer Krupke� was annexed form the Venice scene in Candide, where its punch line (to Latouche�s lyrics) had been, �Where does it get you in the end?� The traffic flowed both ways. The marriage duet in Candide �O Happy We,� started life as a song for Tony and Maria in a tea party scene that was dropped. ����������� Once the green light had been given, Bernstein had two main tasks; coaching the company in his music and supervising the orchestrations, which began in late June, with Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal carrying out Bernstein�s wishes. Ramin was especially knowledgeable about jazz and vaudeville. He suggested some of the slapstick effects in �Officer Krupke.� Kostal had been a student of Stefan Wolpe: he did the music for the weekly �Show of Shows� starring Sid Caesar.

He described Bernstein as a great orchestrator. �If he�d had the time he wouldn�t even need us. . . . .When it came to West Side Story every note is his: still, he would say once in a while, �Who said that orchestration can�t be creative?� He was entirely appreciative of anything that we did. Jerome Robbins, if you changed anything, would really get angry. Lenny would say, �Jesus, why didn�t I think of that?�� Bernstein once told Kostal he was like a sponge; �I learned everything I know from everyone I meet. I pick their brains.� Kostal�s wry comment was: �Yeah, sure. He learned everything I know, but I didn�t learn everything he knows.� ����������� As a first step in their preparation, Bernstein and his orchestrations went to the Winter Garden to hear the resident band. Under the prevailing union rules, certain players came with the theater; they were officially knows as house men but Bernstein called them �Shuberts,� after the name of the owners of the theater.

�how would you guys feel if we got rid of the viola Shuberts?� he asked his orchestrators �If they don�t come to the theater we�ll have to pay them anyway,� warned Kostal. �Okay,� Bernstein said, �Let�s just do without them, because I couldn�t stand listening to my show every night and hearing what those guys would do to the viola parts.� The two �guaranteed� cellists were also disappointing, and Kostal suggested dividing the cello parts so that the freelance musicians on the first desk would play the difficult music while the Shuberts �played the potatoes.� A similar procedure was adapted for the violin sections. Doing away with the violas created a little more room in the crowded pit for the elaborate percussion section Bernstein needed for a score that was heavy with jazz and with Latin-American rhythms. ����������� With Bernstein totally reoccupied with preparations for his musical, Felicia and the children flew to Chile on July 9 for two months with Felicia�s mother in Santiago. Bernstein�s letters provide a more accurate and detailed �log� of the weeks leading up to West Side Story�s first night in Washington than the one he subsequently published in Playbill.

����������� Leonard in New York to Felicia in Santiago, July 19, 1957: :Darling: The work grinds on, relentlessly, and sleep is a rare blessing. Jerry continues to be � well, Jerry: moody, demanding, hurting. But vastly talented. We start on the book Monday, trepidation in hand; and the score is still not completed. At the moment the Problem is the usual one of the 2nd act ballet, which is finished, and will probably not work at all and be yanked and we�ll have the manufacture a new one. It�s going to be murder from here on in. My nights are all spent in work, so no fun at all.� ����������� In Chile Jamie, nearly five, and Alexander, just two, met their cousins � the children of Felicia�s sister Nancy. �Jamie is the queen, the glamorous beautiful imperious pixie and they�re at her feet ready for her slightest whim,� Felicia wrote in her first letter. �I miss you so that it hurts � I think it�s the incredible depressing distance between us.� ����������� Leonard to Felicia, July 23: �The show � ah yes.

I am depressed with it. All the aspects of the score I like best � the big, poetic parts � get criticized as �operatic� � and there�s a concerted move to chuck them. What�s the use? The 24-hour schedule goes on � I am tired and nervous and apey. This is the last show I do. The Philharmonic board approved the contract yesterday and all is set. I�m going to be a conductor, after all.� ����������� A few days later Bernstein had to interrupt work on West Side Story in order to attend a Columbia Records sales convention in Miami. �Home tomorrow, in time . . . for a RUN-THRU of Act One! Imagine � already! Where does the time all go to? In a minute it will be August, and off to Washington � and people will be looking at West Side Story in public, and hearing my poor little marked-up score. All the things I love most in it are slowly being dropped � too operatic, too this and that. They�re all so scared and commercial success means so much to them. To me too, I suppose � but I still insist it can be achieved with pride. I shall keep fighting.

����������� �I mess you all terribly � especially you, who have come to mean something miraculous to me. You reside at the very core of my life, my darling.� ����������� Felicia responded with the king of emotional support Bernstein needed: �Don�t give up the ship, Lennuhtt. Fight for what you think is right � you are so far ahead of all that mediocrity and in the long run they�re only interested in the �hit� aspect of the theatre. What you wrote was important and beautiful. I can�t bear it if they chuck it out 0- that is what gave the show its stature, its personality, its poetry for heaven�s sake! From way down here protest!! Promise me you�ll make an effort to get enough sleep � and don�t take too many pills. Are you eating correctly or just pastrami sandwiches and coffee in cartons? Lennuhtt?� ����������� On August 3, Leonard wrote: ���������� . . . I signed the Philharmonic contract. . . . Big moment. Bruno arrived at 10:30A.M.; contract in one had and a huge chilled bottle of Brut in the other. . . .

I made a coup. The lawyers had fallen out so far that the contract was up to 20-odd pages, and growing; and the disputes were growing correspondingly. So I scotched it by tearing up the whole thing, and writing a one-page letter that said I was engaged for such a period for so much money, sincerely yours. They loved it. Simple, and trusting. We�ll settle the details as they come along. ����������� Other events � nothing but the show. We ran through today for the first time, and the problems are many, varied, overwhelming; but we�ve got a show there, and just possibly a great one. Jerry is behaving (in his own way - and Arthur is doing well. But the work is endless: I never sleep: everything gets rewritten every day: and that�s my life for the moment. And imagine, we open two weeks from Monday. A week later, her reported on a last-minute change: 8 August already! ����������� . . . I missed you all terribly yesterday. We wrote a new song for Tony [�Something�s Coming�] that�s a killer, and it just wasn�t the same not playing it first for you.

It�s really going to save his character � a driving 2/4 in the great tradition (but of course fucked up by m with 3/4s and whatnot) � but it gives Tony balls � so that he doesn�t emerge as just a euphoric dreamer. ����������� These days have flown so � I don�t sleep much; I work every � literally ever � second (since I�m doing four jobs in this show � composing, lyric-writing, orchestrating and rehearsing the case). It�s murder, but I�m excited. It may be something extraordinary. ����������� The show had its first run-through � for an audience of Broadway dancers and singers � on August 10. It is traditionally done without sets or lighting or costumes, but on this occasion, Arthur remembered, �the case came out on stage in colors they had chosen for Jets and Sharks and their girls. They did it on their own, by themselves, and it was very, very touching.� During rehearsals Robbins had kept the rival groups separate offstage as well as on.

�I thought it was pretentious,� Stephen Sondheim said, �but of course it was perfect, because without any animosity or hostility, there was a sense of each gang having its own individuality, so that you had two giant personalities on stage.� ����������� On Tuesday, August 13, the company moved to Washington. Tow days later Leonard wrote to Felicia again: ����������� Dear Beauty, ����������� Well, look-a me. Back to the nation�s capital and right on the verge. This is Thurs. We open Mon. Everyone�s coming, my dear, even Nixon and 35 admirals. Senators abounding, and big Washington-hostessy type party afterwards in Lennhutt�s honor. See what you miss by going away. Then next Sunday, which is my birthday, there is the Jewish version � a big party for me, but admission is one Israel bond. All helps the show. We have a 75 thou. Advances, and the town is buzzing. Not bad. I have high hopes. ����������� . . . If I sound punchy, it�s because I am.

Up all night trying to put together an overture of sorts, to carry us through until I do a real prelude. [He abandoned this idea, preferring to have no music before the Prologues began. Later he claimed not to have written the overture, but his letter surely confirms that he wrote something.] Orchestra reading all day yesterday � a thrill. We have surprisingly good me, who can really play this terribly difficult stuff (except one of two of them) � and the orchestrations have turned out brilliant. I tell you this show may yet be worth all the agony. As you can see, I�m excited as hell� - oh so different from Candide. ����������� The show opened on August 19. Relying on adrenaline to get his performers through the evening, Jerome Robbins called a final dress rehearsal at 3P.M. It was a risky move, but it paid off. The evening performance had none of the embarrassing stumbling that had marred the first performance of Candide in Boston. President Eisenhower�s chief of staff, Sherman Adams (later famous for the scandal surrounding his vicuna coat), was in the audience. So were senators Fulbright and Javits, together with Mrs.

Robert Kennedy, three ambassadors, and Justice Felix Frankfurter, whom Bernstein found in tears at the intermission. In Felicia�s absence, Helen Coates went to the post performance party on Bernstein�s arm.� When the reviews arrived � all of them �raves�� - Bernstein read them out to the guests before going on to the case party where he played jazz piano with the dancers until five in the morning. When she received a cable from her husband next evening, Felicia was beside herself with happiness. She wrote back: �Oh joy oh bliss, oh rapture! Your cable with the frabjous news has just arrived � thank you! I�d been desperate for some word all day long. Congratulations to one and all � how happy, how marvelously happy you must be. As for me I�m bursting with pride and frustration � of all the moments to miss sharing! . . .Oh God how exciting it must have been! Were you very nervous � did you sit through it or pace?� ����������� Later in the week Bernstein went to the White House for lunch. �Such credenzas, such breakfronts!? He exclaimed to Felicia. �I really felt in. . . .

All were talking of nothing but West Side Story. I think the whole government is based on it.� But despite the pressure to return to America (she had also just received two offers to do television plays) Felicia preferred to make her mother happy by remaining in Chile for another week. When the Washington reviews reached Santiago, she was one again trembling with excitement � �such reviews, my God, I carry them around with me to read over and over again.� The Washington Post called West Side Story �a uniquely cohesive comment on life . . . . The violence is senseless but Leonard Bernstein�s score makes us feel what we do not understand.� The Daily News said I opened �a new field in the American stage.� A critic for the Seattle Times perceptively noted that �perhaps the love story is a little too reminiscent of Rome and Juliet.� ����������� Flushed with success, Bernstein told a journalist that he felt like he did after his first dance. A celebrated photography caught him leaping for joy outside the National Theatre. He had just been told that the box office had �gone clean� for the entire run. �It�s only Washington, not New York,� he wrote to Felicia; �don�t count chickens. But it sure looks like a smash .

. . the book works, the tragedy works, the ballets shine, the music pulses and soars, and there is at least on history-making set.� (Bernstein is referring to Oliver Smith�s magic moment when the tenement walls fly up to reveal a sky filled with stars.) In Washington the program credits read �Lyrics by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.� �I can see you�re upset,� Sondheim remembers Bernstein saying to him as they drove back to their hotel from the day�s rehearsal. �The lyrics are yours an you should have sole credit and I will arrange that.� Sondheim thanked him. �And we�ll make the financial adjustment too,� Bernstein went on. �Oh, don�t bother about that,� said the grateful Sondheim. �After all, it�s only the credit that matters.� When Sondheim told the story later, he would ruefully add: �I�m sorry I opened my mouth.� ����������� As Bernstein�s most intimate collaborator, Sondheim recognized early on that his task was �to bring the language down to the level of real simplicity. The whole piece trembles on the bring of self-conscious pretentiousness anyway. . .

and Lenny�s idea of poetry was much more purple than mine. Back up by Arthur Laurents, I got stronger about it as I felt more sure of myself.� Out went Bernstein�s draft lyric of �Maria� � a song he had already sketched for East Side Story in 1949 when Maria was going to be Jewish and Tony was an Italian Catholic from Greenwich Village. �I had a dummy lyric,� Bernstein said later: �Lips like mine � divine � very bad@ Like a translation of a Neapolitan street song.� Sondheim perceived that since Tony had only just met Maria the song should not be about the girl herself but about the loveliness of her name � �the most beautiful sound I ever heard/All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word.� Bernstein later claimed that it �took longer to write that song than any other. It�s difficult to make a strong love song and avoid corn.� ����������� The melody of �Maria� begins with the tritone interval Bernstein pinpointed as the kernel of West Side Story � . . . in that the three notes pervade the whole piece, inverted, done backwards. I didn�t do all this on purpose.

It seemed to come out in �Cool� and as the gang whistle [in "Prologue�]. The same three notes.� ����������� When it was decided to add Tony�s first-act song �Something�s Coming,� Bernstein and Sondheim raided the scene-setting page in Laurents�s outline. �something�s coming,� Laurents had written: �it may be around the corner, whistling down the river, twitching at the dance � who knows?� The lines were incorporated in the lyrics. �We raped Arthur�s play-writing,� Bernstein said. �I�ve never seen anyone so encouraging, let alone� generous, urging us, �Yes, take it, take it, make it a song.�� ����������� Like Sondheim, Laurents was working on his first Broadway musical, but he was an experienced dramatist and screenwriter. His invention of a teenage language and his skillful updating of Shakespeare�s plot intricacies are t the hear of West Side Story�s success. The show�s climatic moment when, with a gun in her hand, Maria makes a speech over Tony�s lifeless body, is one of Laurent�s most striking contributions.

According to Sondheim, Bernstein wanted at this point to create a mad scene for Maria, but he could not find the appropriate style. �It cries out for music,� Bernstein said himself. �I tried to set it very bitterly, understated, swift. I tried giving all the material to the orchestra and having her sing an obbligato throughout. I tried a version that sounded just like a Puccini aria, which we really did not need. I never got past six bars with it. I never had an experience like that. Everything sounded wrong.� So Maria�s words, which Laurents had written merely as a guide to lyricist and composer, became the dramatic text. �I made,� Bernstein confessed, �a difficult, painful but surgically clean decision not to se it al all.� West Side Story is a true marriage of all the arts. It is emphatically not an opera. ����������� The West Side Story creator whose name receives especial prominence in every for of billing is Jerome Robbins � his �original conception� is contractually protected by a �name in a box� clause. Robbins in rehearsal is a formidable personality. Sid Ramin remembers an early cast meeting at which Robbins said, �I knows I�m difficult.

I know I�m going to hurt your feelings. But that�s the way I am.� Bernstein remained in aw of him. When there was the threat of confrontation about music to be cur or an orchestration to be changed, Bernstein would back down. �I hate scenes,� he confined to Ramin. At the dress rehearsal in Washington, Sondheim, who was sitting with Bernstein, was startled to see Robbins do down to Max Goberman at the conductor�s podium and five orders for a rhythmic pulse to be added to the second verse of �Somewhere.� Instead of remonstrating, Bernstein slipped out of the theatre, Sondheim found him with several scorches lined up at a nearby bar. ����������� What counted was the chemistry between Robbins and Bernstein, which was as strong as it had been for Fancy Free. �I remember all my collaborations with Jerry in terms of one tactile bodily feeling: composing with his hands on my shoulders. . . . I can feel him standing behind me saying, �Four more beats there,� or �No, that�s too many,� or �Yeah � that�s it!�� Robbins described their work together as one of the most exciting collaborations he ever had.

After Bernstein�s death he spoke of �the amount of fuel that we fed each other, the ideas and chemistry between us, each one taking hold of something and saying, �Hey, I think I can do that,� or saying �No, don�t write it as music, we can do it better in book� � or �don�t do it in song, I can do it better in dance.� The continual flow between us was an enormous excitement.� ����������� Robbins had no problem defining the genre of West Side Story. �It�s an American musical. The aim in the mid-50s was to see if all of us � Lenny who wrote �long-hair� music, Arthur who wrote serious plays, myself who did serious ballets, Oliver Smith who was a serious painter � could bring out acts together and do a work on the popular stage. . . . the idea was to make the poetry of the piece come out of our best attempts as serious artists; that was the major thrust.� For Robbins it was a �musical�; for Bernstein �a tragic musical comedy.� In his heart Bernstein refused to yield primary authorship to his colleagues. Writing to David Diamond for Philadelphia he insisted that �this show is my baby . .

. . If it goes as well in New York as it has on the toad we will have proved something very big indeed and maybe changed the face of American Musical theater.� ����������� West Side Story ran nearly two years (772 performances0 THEN TOURED NATIONALLY FOR CLOSE TO A YEAR BEFORE RETURNING TO New York in 1960 for another 253 performances. In 1961 it was released as a feature film. BERNSTEIN was criticized by the critic Brooks Atkinson for having �capitulated to respectability� when he withdrew from Broadway to become music director of the New York Philharmonic. The truth is more complicated: Bernstein knew that the creative collaborations he had enjoyed (and endured) with Lillian Hellman and Richard Wilbur on Candide and with Sondheim, Robbins, and Laurents on West Side Story were experiences too intense and exhausting to be renewed on an annual basis. The creators were not permanent teams like Rodgers and Hammerstein or Gilbert and Sullivan. Besides, the rival attraction of being sole lord and master of the New York Philharmonic, encouraged week in and week out to journey among the masterpieces of two centuries of music, was for Bernstein too strong.

Coupled with Candide, West Side Story made a splendid climax to Bernstein�s composing years. But it was neither the end of an era nor the beginning for Broadway Bernstein claimed it to be.� West Side Story was a singular marvel of style and substance created by what Stephen Sondheim dubbed a �unique concatenation of people.� ����������� The New York premiere on September 26, 1957, was not a total triumph. �The show is, in general, not well sung,� wrote Walter Kerr, the man Bernstein most feared, in the Herald Tribune. �It is rushingly acted. . . . And it is, apart form the spine-tingling velocity of the dances, almost never emotionally affecting. But Kerr led off his review with two much-quote phrases: �The� radioactive fallout from West Side Story must still be descending on Broadway this morning.� He applauded �the most savage, restless, electrifying dance patters we�ve been exposed to in a dozen seasons.� All seven morning newspapers were strongly positive; Brooks Atkinson of the Times, the most important of the bunch, called it �a profoundly moving show . . . as ugly as the city jungles and also pathetic, tended, and forgiving . . .

Everything contributes to the total impression of wildness, ecstasy and anguish.� This is one of those occasions when theater people, engrossed in and original project, are all in top form. . . . This subject is not beautiful, but what West Side Story draws out of it is beautiful. For it has a searching point of view.� ����������� The only consistently hostile review was Harold Clurman�s in The Nation: he called it a �phoney� and accused the writers of intellectual slumming for the purpose of making money. The offended Sondheim informed Bernstein, tongue in cheek, that he was canceling his Nation subscription immediately. Sondheim�s handwritten not to Bernstein delivered on the afternoon of the New York premier provides a touching epitaph to an important chapter in the history of American musical theatre: West Side Story means more to me than a first show, more even than the privilege of collaborating with you and Arthur and Jerry. It marks the beginning of what I hope will be a long and enduring friendship. Friendship is a think I give or receive rarely, but for what it�s worth, I want you to know you have it from me always.

����������� �I don�t think I've ever said� to you how fine I think the score is, since I prefer kidding you about the few moments I don�t like to praising you for the many I do. West Side Story is a big step, Leonard, for you as it is for Jerry or Arthur or even me, and in an add way, I feel proud of you . . . . May [it] mean as much to the theater and to people who see it as it has to us.� © 1994 by Humphrey Burton. The Songs of West Side Story - Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic The Songs of West Side Story AllMusic Rating google+ AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann In 1992, AIDS Project Los Angeles staged an all-star benefit concert in which contemporary artists performed songs from West Side Story. It was a cute one-shot idea and well-received (especially with such inspired choices as having Little Richard sing "I Feel Pretty"). That should have been the end of it, but several years later, producer David Pack organized this recorded version, and the cute idea has become a multi-artist embarrassment.

Pack has enlisted a cast of middle-level stars with the intention of contemporizing the Leonard Bernstein - Stephen Sondheim score. So, naturally, "Gee, Officer Krupke!" becomes a rap song performed by Salt-N-Pepa and others, and "A Boy Like That" is rendered with a new jack/Latin vibe by Selena . At least such tracks are amusing one-time listens, but most of the music has been transferred into facile, faceless L.A. studio pop sung by such practitioners of the style as James Ingram , Michael McDonald , Kenny Loggins , Natalie Cole , and Tevin Campbell , and played by session regulars like Greg Phillinganes . It isn't all terrible. Brian Setzer turns in a sizzling "Prologue/Jet Song," indicating that unlike most of the participants, he didn't hear the music for the first time when Pack sent him a tape. A version of "Cool" featuring Patti Austin , Bruce Hornsby , and Branford Marsalis captures the song's feel in a jazz context. But more often, the performances are way off target, sometimes more because of context than talent.

Aretha Franklin and Little Richard are themselves at all times, but they bring little or nothing to this music, at least in these arrangements. Phil Collins no doubt loves the music, but he has no business singing it. Of course, the truth is that Leonard Bernstein , a card-carrying eclectic and media maven, would have loved this record. He also would have loved a Merseybeat version in 1966, a disco version in 1976, and a synth pop version in 1986, and this one will sound just as silly in years to come as those would have. Almost as silly as it sounds right now.

Track Listing Arthur Laurents: Playwright and screenwriter who wrote the books for 'West Side Story' and 'Gypsy' | The Independent Arthur Laurents: Playwright and screenwriter who wrote the books for 'West Side Story' and 'Gypsy' Sunday 15 May 2011 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online The playwright and screenwriter Arthur Laurents wrote the books for two true classics of musical theatre, West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959), and directed the hit musical La Cage aux Folles (1983). His plays included the powerful anti-semitism drama, The Home of the Brave (1945) and The Time of the Cuckoo (1952), which on screen became David Lean's Summertime. His screenplays include Hitchcock's Rope (1948), and The Way We Were (1973). West Side Story and Gypsy would figure in most historians' top 10 stage musicals – indeed, Gypsy is often cited as having the best book of any show.

West Side Story had a score by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (making his Broadway debut), while Sondheim also provided lyrics for Gypsy, to Jule Styne's music. Both benefited from the superb choreography and staging of Jerome Robbins, but Laurents' contributions cannot be over-estimated. His teaming with Bernstein, Robbins and Sondheim was not placid. Robbins was a theatrical genius but arguably the most disliked of Broadway personalities, and Laurents was to call him "a monster", but the musicals on which they collaborated, West Side Story and Gypsy, have proved their durability. As conceived by Robbins and Bernstein, West Side Story was to transpose Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to a tale of warring Catholics and Jews in New York (with the title East Side Story), but Laurents persuaded them that it would have more originality if based on the experience of Puerto Ricans in the city. It was also his idea to begin the show with a wordless dance sequence demonstrating the conflict and rivalry between the two street gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. Broadway had never seen a show like it when it opened in 1957.

I was fortunate to be at the first night in London in 1958, when the show opened at Her Majesty's Theatre, and it was one of the most electrifying evenings I have ever experienced – it seemed as if the applause, cheers and stamping would never stop. Gypsy began life as a memoir by the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee about her early life as a child performer in vaudeville, driven by a fiercely ambitious mother. Robbins had envisioned "a panorama of vaudeville and burlesque", but Laurents thought the show should be built around the mother, Rose, and her single-minded pursuit of fame for her daughters, June and Louise. With Ethel Merman set for the part of Rose, Styne and Sondheim wrote a rich, melodious score, the songs perfectly integrated with Laurents' witty, perceptive and economical script.

Merman, who had a reputation for firing performers who stole the limelight, displayed her generosity for the good of the show in allowing two major show-stoppers by other members of the cast – "All I Need Is The Girl", in which one of the chorus boys envisions the song-and-dance act with which he hopes to headline, and "You Gotta Have a Gimmick", the hilarious advice three strippers give to Louise. Rose herself has one of the great tour-de-force numbers at the show's climax, "Rose's Turn", in which all her bitterness and frustrations erupt. When the show was staged in London in 1974 with Angela Lansbury starring, Laurents devised a chilling piece of new staging in which, having finished the number to rapturous applause from the audience, Rose continues bowing after the applause dies out as if lost in a hallucination. In 1962 Mervyn LeRoy directed a film version that was fairly faithful to the original, with Rosalind Russell energetically conveying all of Rose's electricity, vulgarity and humour (though most of her singing was dubbed by Lisa Kirk).

Gypsy has had four major Broadway revivals, starring Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti Lupone, and earlier this year Barbra Streisand announced that she would be starring in a new film version, but Sondheim was allegedly not happy with the idea, and Laurents, at first in favour, agreed. West Side Story has also been revived several times, most recently in 2009 in a production for which Laurents controversially had the Puerto Ricans speaking in Spanish. The son of a lawyer, Laurents was born Arthur Levine in Brooklyn in 1918, and educated at Cornell University where, as a summary of his autobiography put it, he "learned to write plays, learned he was homosexual, and learned what his politics would be as he organised support of the Spanish Civil War and protests against campus witch hunts." Those undergraduate days were to be the inspiration for his novel and screenplay, The Way We Were. He became a prolific radio writer, and when he was drafted into the army he wrote training and propaganda films. Near the end of the war he produced a radio series, Assignment: Home, conceived to prepare soldiers for a return to civilian life.

The highly praised plays included The Knife, which dealt with racism in the services, the theme of Laurents' first play to be produced on Broadway, Home of the Brave. When offered a writer's contract by MGM, he moved to Hollywood, where he met the actor Farley Granger, who was to become his lover. Following an uncredited rewrite of the script for the powerful story of insanity, The Snake Pit (1948), Laurents then did a fine job adapting Patrick Hamilton's play, Rope, for Alfred Hitchcock. Based on the Leopold and Loeb case in which two college boys killed another simply to demonstrate their superior intellect, it gave Laurents the task of fashioning a script that would satisfy the strict censorship of the time, since the youths (one of them played by Granger) were lovers. Laurents later stated that the script was so discreet that he was unsure whether James Stewart ever realised the character he was playing was supposed to be gay.

Laurents and Hitchcock became good friends, but when Laurents refused to adapt the book Hitchcock had bought as his next project, Under Capricorn, telling the director that he disliked it and thought it wrong for Ingrid Bergman, who was set to star, it ended their friendship. Laurents instead collaborated with Philip Yordan on a screen adaptation of Yordan's play, Anna Lucasta (1949) starring Paulette Goddard, then wrote the screenplay for Max Ophuls' Caught (1949), James Mason's first Hollywood film, in which Robert Ryan played a character on Howard Hughes. In the 1950s, Laurents foundhimself briefly blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he was able to clear himself, proud of the fact that he never informedon anybody. He wrote the screenplay for Anastasia (1956), which won Ingrid Bergman an Oscar, and wrote aneffective screen adaptation of Françoise Sagan's Bonjour, Tristesse (1958), which Otto Preminger made into a memorable film.

Laurents' next two plays, A Clearing in the Woods (1957), and Invitation to the March (1960), starring Shelley Winters, were both failures. He had made his debut as a director with the latter, and in 1962 he directed his first musical, Harold Rome's I Can Get It For You Wholesale. It is remembered now as the show which introduced Barbra Streisand to Broadway and made her a star. The musical, which featured Laurents' former lover, dancer Harold Lang, had a modest run, with Streisand stopping the show every night with her comedy number, Miss Marmelstein. In 1964 Laurents wrote the first Broadway musical with both words and music by Sondheim, Anyone Can Whistle, which had a brief run. Though Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury were lauded for their performances, Laurents' book was panned as pretentious and naïve in its attempts to be symbolic. In 1967 Laurents wrote the book for the musical, Hallelujah, Baby, written for Lena Horne, who wisely turned it down.

In 1959 Gypsy had amazingly failed to win one Tony Award, but Hallelujah, Baby, a turgid musical with a mediocre score by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, won Laurents a Tony, an indication that such trophies should not be regarded too seriously. In 1983 he won a second Tony for his direction of the Jerry Herman-Harvey Fierstein musical, La Cage aux Folles. In 1973 he had his biggest film hit with The Way We Were, starring Streisand with Robert Redford. He also wrote The Turning Point (1977), set in the world of ballet, with bravura performances by Anne Bancroft and Shirley McLaine. In 2000 he wrote his opinionated, outspoken and immensely readable memoir, Original Story. After his long relationship with Farley Granger ended, he lived with the aspiring actor Tom Hatcher for 52 years until Hatcher's death in 2006. Arthur Levine (Arthur Laurents), playwright and screenwriter: born Brooklyn, New York 14 July 1914; died New York City 5 May 2011.

More about: The Real-Life Drama Behind 'West Side Story' : NPR The Real-Life Drama Behind 'West Side Story' Toggle more options Embed Embed The Real-Life Drama Behind 'West Side Story' The Real-Life Drama Behind 'West Side Story' Toggle more options Embed Embed January 7, 200910:05 AM ET Commentary Choreographer Jerome Robbins created real animosity and antagonism between the two opposing gangs, both on and off stage. Hulton Archive/ Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Hulton Archive/ Getty Images Choreographer Jerome Robbins created real animosity and antagonism between the two opposing gangs, both on and off stage. Hulton Archive/ Getty Images L-R: Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins. Alfred Eisenstaedt//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Alfred Eisenstaedt//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images L-R: Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins. Alfred Eisenstaedt//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images I was 10 or 11, and I'd been swept off my feet: I'd just seen West Side Story. I practically flew downstairs to talk to a neighbor of ours — a filmmaker who was an old family friend.

Written in the mid-1950s, West Side Story pushed the envelope for musical productions during conservative times. United Artists/ Handout Collection/ Getty Images hide caption toggle caption United Artists/ Handout Collection/ Getty Images Written in the mid-1950s, West Side Story pushed the envelope for musical productions during conservative times. United Artists/ Handout Collection/ Getty Images "Terrible," he said. "I hated all of it." I was stunned. The music? "Tacky, sentimental stuff," he said. Even the dancing? He laughed. "Especially the dancing." I turned this over in my mind for years afterward. Later, I learned that the neighbor I'd talked to that day was one of about 10 people named as a Communist by Jerome Robbins, legendary choreographer for West Side Story — and former Communist Party member — in his friendly testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Robbins was a homosexual in the closet, like so many gays at that time, and some believed he'd been threatened with exposure and had buckled under the pressure. Others thought he was just ambitious, and wanted to make sure the blacklist wouldn't get in his way. That's the 1950s for you.

There was always a lot going on under the surface. It was Robbins who dominated the production of West Side Story, which had been written in the mid-'50s by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and a young Stephen Sondheim. "West Side Story is 1957; we were really just coming out of the McCarthy era," says Gregg Lawrence, author of the Robbins biography Dance With Demons. "He was one of those who was terrorized and named names, and it really shaped him for the rest of his life." It had been Robbins who came up with the original idea of a modern, urban Romeo and Juliet; Bernstein and Laurents added the idea of warring street gangs in place of Shakespeare's feuding families. In the play, a Puerto Rican girl named Maria, whose brother is in one gang, loves Tony, who's in the opposing "American" gang. Article continues after sponsorship "That kind of bigotry and prejudice was very much in the air," writer and co-creator Arthur Laurents says.

"It's really, 'How can love survive in a violent world of prejudice?' That's what it's about." Tension On And Off Stage Laurents says that there were strong undercurrents in rehearsal: "So many people who I spoke with described the production itself as a gang war." "Jerry [Robbins] had declared that first day that the stage was a battleground," adds Carol Lawrence, who played the original Maria on Broadway in 1957. "You were never allowed to walk on that stage except at his request; he was absolute dictator. "He brought this Method-acting technique into the show," Lawrence says, "where he deliberately tried to foment animosity, antagonism, between the two opposing gangs, both on stage and off stage. They weren't allowed to eat together. They were not supposed to socialize." In the '50s, that tension was real. Grover Dale, the original "Snowboy" (one of the Jets) in the production, lived on W. 80th Street when West Side Story was happening. "There were gangs right there, and I walked past guys that were doing the catcalls that I was delivering on stage," he says.

"Where do you think I learned how to do that? On 84th Street is where the rumbles were happening." Pushing Boundaries West Side Story brought that tension inside, even within the constraints of a more repressive time. "There are no four-letter words in it. You couldn't use 'em in those days," Laurents says. "A scene that I wrote ended with, 'Hey, Officer Krupke, krup you!' And they said 'brass ass.' Well, that was considered shocking and daring. It must have been 20 years later before they used four-letter words so freely. "The idea was to do something good," he adds. "I think we were all in love with musical theater. I don't think any of us thought of the commercial possibilities of the show. I thought it would last, if we were lucky, three months." Consider this: It was ardently, feverishly heterosexual musical theater, created by four gay men at a time when it was even less acceptable to be gay than it was to be Leftist. But Arthur Laurents says that's beside the point. "It's four Jews," Laurents says. "There's a big difference. It's true. I think being part of a minority...

I know gays were a minority, but gays didn't figure much in the '50s. Jews figured then, now and always. But I think that was more what we had in common, what drove it — drove the feeling of injustice, at any rate." But the bigger question revolves around how Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents, both of them blacklisted, found a way to work with Jerome Robbins? After all, it was only a few years after Robbins had cooperated with the forces responsible for the blacklist. "Since then, looking back," Laurents says, "I'm not very proud of myself for ignoring the fact that Jerry informed, because that validated him. And I had to face that. I can explain what I did; I don't condone it. We were all so involved in the making of the piece that extra-curricular affairs, as it were, didn't enter into it. There were no fingers pointed. It was not a good time. Anybody who went through it, it still comes up almost every day, and it's us, and it's them." The Final Curtain Call How did a 1957 audience greet the spectacle of West Side Story?

"I think the innovation was having death, attempted rape, murder in a musical, in musical theater," Laurents says. "The subject matter — bigotry and violence and prejudice — and [the idea] that people would pay money to see that with an orchestra." "The opening night in Washington, D.C.," Carol Lawrence says, "when the curtain went up for our curtain calls, and they had just seen Tony's body taken over and the strain of 'Somewhere' and just a bell tolling -– still breaks me up — we ran to our spaces and faced the audience holding hands. And the curtain went up and we looked at the audience, and they looked at us, and we looked at them, and I thought, 'Oh, dear Lord, it's a bomb!' " "We thought the thing was going down the drain," Laurents adds. "Oh, it was awful." "And then, as if Jerry had choreographed it," Lawrence says, "they jumped to their feet.

I never saw people stamping and yelling, and by that time, Lenny had worked his way backstage, and he came at the final curtain and walked to me, put his arms around me, and we wept." Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune opened his review with the classic and much-repeated line, "The radioactive fallout from West Side Story must still be descending on Broadway this morning." There's that '50s imagery, though neither on stage nor in life did West Side Story have a '50s-style Ozzie and Harriet ending. "I never said anything to Jerry until the show was frozen in Philadelphia," Laurents says. "And then I told him I thought he was an immoral, indecent man. I don't know how much it mattered to him."

Question: Who wrote the music to "West Side Story"?
Answer: Leonard Bernstein