Rita Moreno, Turns 76 Today
Born Rosita Dolores Alverio, in Humacao, Puerto Rico on December 11, 1931, actress Rita Moreno was the first performer to win an Oscar, Emmy, Tony and a Grammy. Moreno and her mother moved to New York City in 1937. Rita got her first taste of show business at the tender age of eleven, when she started dubbing Spanish-language versions of American films. On November 11, 1945, she made her Broadway debut, co-starring with Arthur Keegan and Eli Wallach.
The early fifties found Rita cast and portrayed in magazines as a kind of Hispanic 'sex siren.' The cover of the March 1, 1954 edition of Life Magazine featured a profile of the young actress with the provocative title "Rita Moreno: An Actresses' Catalog of Sex and Innocence." During the 1950's, Moreno was forced to take roles as stereotypical fiery sex-pots to keep working. If not cast as a Hispanic siren, she was cast as an "exotic," on shows like Father Knows Best in which she played an exchange student from India. However, during this time, she did appear in 1952's Singin' In the Rain as Zelda Zanders and as Tuptim in 1956's the King and I
In 1961, director Robert Wise cast Moreno as Anita, in the film version of West Side Story
However, despite her proven talent, roles were hard to come by in the 1960s. The 1970's turned out to be a pretty good decade for Moreno, and marked a career resurgence. Ironically, it was in two vastly different roles -- that of a $100 hooker in director Mike Nichols brilliant film of Jules Feiffer's acerbic look at male sexuality, Carnal Knowledge
During the seventies, Moreno won a 1972 Grammy Award for her contribution to The Electric Company soundtrack album, following it up three years later with a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for The Ritz (1976), a role she would reproduce on the Big Screen (She was nominated for an Oscar). She then won Emmy Awards for The Muppet Show and The Rockford Files.
Rita can currently be seen as Amalia Duque, in the CBS series, Cane.
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