Image courtesy of Nuestro Stories.
We know a lot about Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno. We know she is an EGOT — she has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards. We know she was Anita in West Side Story (and that she hated the lyrics and dark make-up she had to wear).
We also know that Rita Moreno was Valentina in the latest iteration of West Side Story by American director Steven Speilberg — even though the Spielberg revival didn’t hit the mark. Far from it.
Yet, at 90, she still can take over a red carpet just by wearing a sleek black number by Venezuelan designer Carolina Herrera and a pair of crystal-adorned black flats.
Rita Moreno is just a girl who decided to go for it, as she has said many times. But there are things we bet you don’t know about Moreno. Here are just five of them.
Rita Moreno was the first Latino to achieve PEGOT status
At 87, Moreno became the third person and first Latino to achieve PEGOT status by winning a Peabody, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award. Film director Mike Nichols and entertainer Barbra Streisand are the other two PEGOT winners. “So proud to be the first Latino recipient,” Moreno said on Twitter.
A relationship with The King
She was with Elvis Presley somehow, but Elvis was more of a brother than a lover. It seems Elvis saw her and liked what he saw. Imagine that! Moreno said she dated him several times, but although he was “sweet,” she found him “boring.” He was a country boy, Moreno once explained.
And she captivated a president
President John F. Kennedy flirted with her. According to Moreno, she was with her friend, the late actress Ann Miller in a hotel in Palm Beach when John F. Kennedy, who was running for Senate at the time, walked into the nightclub inside the hotel. His wife, Jackie, was with him, but JFK was immediately taken by Moreno, although she didn’t know who he was. “He was a bad boy,” Moreno said. “And I loved every minute of it!”
Rita Moreno almost gave up once
She attempted suicide. In her 2021 PBS documentary, “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It,” she confessed how her tumultuous relationship with actor Marlon Brando led to attempted suicide. (She also confessed to aborting Brando’s child. He forced her.) “I tried to end my life with pills in his house. That’s how I tried to do it. I didn’t understand that if I was going to kill this pathetic, sad, trod-upon Rita, the rest of Rita was also going to go with me,” she said in an interview.
Hollywood broke her heart
Despite her success with “West Side Story,” she didn’t make a film again for seven years. Moreno couldn’t find meaningful roles after her Oscar win because Hollywood stereotyped her. “I was still only offered those dusky maiden roles,” Moreno said in an interview. “I decided I would never do one of those roles again: ‘Ha ha, I’ll show them!’ But they showed me — I didn’t do a film for seven years after ‘West Side Story.’ It broke my heart.”
But then came Googie Gomez, from The Ritz, written by Terrence McNally, and she never looked back.
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