How was working with Jerome Robbins?
Rita Moreno: It was frightening. I’m sure people have heard about how ferocious he could be on the set, and how temperamental he could be, and how mean he could be. That’s the hard part. The mean part is the hard part. He had a real problem. He had a real disorder, I think. He was a very sadistic person, and people like that can smell a victim a mile away. It’s astonishing how they spot you in a room full of people. For some very bizarre reason that I still don’t understand to this day, he was never mean to me. He was very hard on me, but I was grateful for that, because I didn’t have the dancing experience that any of the other dancers, the boys and girls had, in West Side Story. I was a Spanish dancer a long time ago, and by the time I got to West Side Story, I hadn’t danced in years. So they really had to beat that performance out of me, with respect to dancing and the skills and technique. I worked my butt off to try to catch up with the other kids, and to try to live up to Jerry’s
