After her Oscar, Rita Moreno waited seven years for another film
Rita Moreno became the first Hispanic woman to win an Academy Award, for playing Anita in West Side Story. Hollywood's response was more stereotyped parts, so she stayed away from films for years. She later became only the third person to complete the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony set, and she was still working into the 2020s.
Christened Rosa Dolores Alverío Marcano, she arrived on December 11, 1931, in Humacao, Puerto Rico, the daughter of a seamstress and a farmer, and grew up in nearby Juncos. In 1936 her mother took her to New York but left her younger brother behind; the siblings did not meet again until 2021. Her surname came from a stepfather, Edward Moreno. Dance lessons began with Paco Cansino, an uncle of Rita Hayworth, and she reached Broadway at 13 in Skydrift in 1945.
MGM signed her and trimmed Rosita to Rita. Most 1950s parts frustrated her as stereotypes, though Gene Kelly cast her as the silent star Zelda Zanders in Singin' in the Rain without fuss about her background, and she played Tuptim in The King and I. In 1954 she became the first Puerto Rican on the cover of Life magazine.
West Side Story in 1961 won ten Oscars, including hers for supporting actress. She had hoped for better roles afterwards; instead came gang stories and more of the barefoot Conchitas and Lolitas she found humiliating. She went to London for She Loves Me, returned to Broadway, and resumed films in 1968 opposite Marlon Brando in The Night of the Following Day.
The prizes then arrived in a rush. A Grammy came in 1972 for The Electric Company, the PBS children's show on which she shouted its famous opening line; a Tony in 1975 for playing Googie Gomez in The Ritz; and an Emmy in 1977 for The Muppet Show, making her the third EGOT after Richard Rodgers and Helen Hayes. Another Emmy followed for The Rockford Files. Later work spanned the nun Sister Pete on Oz and Valentina in Spielberg's 2021 West Side Story, alongside the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2015.
Source: Rita Moreno
