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Rita Moreno
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Born: Dec 11, 1931
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Rita Moreno was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico.
She moved to New York City in 1937 along with her mother, where she began a professional career before she was a teenager. She got her first movie experience dubbing Spanish-language versions of American films. Less than a month before her 14th birthday she made her Broadway debut in the play "Skydrift" at the Belasco Theatre, co-starring with Arthur Keegan and the young Eli Wallach.
Although she would not appear again on Broadway for almost 20 years, Rita Moreno, as she was billed in the play, had arrived professionally. It would take her nearly as long to break through the forces of institutional racism and become the first Hispanic to win an Academy Award.
She has managed to have a thriving career for the better part of six decades. Moreno, one of the very few (and very first) performers to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy.
Filmmaker Robert Wise, who was chosen to co-direct the movie version of the smash hit Broadway musical West Side Story, re-envisioned as Irish/Polish-American and Puerto Rican teenage street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks), cast Moreno as "Anita", the Puerto Rican girlfriend of Jets' leader Bernardo, whose sister Maria is the piece's Juliet. A seasoned singer and dancer, Moreno delivered a superb performance that completely overshadowed the Maria of the movie, the non-singer Natalie Wood, the only movie star in the ensemble cast.
For her performance, Rita Moreno won a well-deserved Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. Her performance was an integral component of one of the most successful film musicals in history, and a movie that has transcended the class "classic" to become legendary.
However, despite her proven talent, roles commensurate with that talent were not forthcoming in the 1960s. The following decade would prove kinder, possibly as the beautiful Moreno had aged and could now be seen by filmmakers, TV producers and casting directors as something other than the stereot...[MORE]
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Rita Moreno Nude and Sexy
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