Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It Explores an Icon’s Life
When the revival of One Day at a Time premiered in 2017, I had the chance to interview Rita Moreno. Towards the end of our chat she told me I had a good vocabulary. “That’s it,” I thought. “I can retire now. I’ve reached the pinnacle of my career.”
That’s because Moreno is a legend. She is the rare EGOT winner—having won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. Moreno will tell you she’s actually a KEGOT winner because she was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015. Most known, perhaps, for her iconic turn as Anita in the 1961 film version of West Side Story (for which she won an Oscar), Moreno’s career has spanned over seven decades. She co-starred with Morgan Freeman in The Electric Company (winning a Grammy for the show’s album). She guested on The Muppet Show and The Rockford Files (how she won back-to-back Emmy Awards). She starred on Broadway, winning a Tony for 1975’s The Ritz. That’s not even counting Screen Actors Guild Awards, ALMA Awards, NAACP Awards and countless others. It’s so easy to celebrate Moreno and her incredible career. Now 89, she will next be seen in December in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It tells the story of Moreno’s trajectory from when she moved from Puerto Rico to New York when she was five years old to almost the present day. The documentary shows her accepting the Career Achievement Award from the Television Critics Association in 2018. Much has already been covered in interviews and in Moreno’s own biography, published in 2011, but there’s something truly special about having Moreno guide us through the story of her life. There’s nothing fancy about the way director Mariem Pérez Riera interviewed her subject, but clearly Moreno is totally comfortable and at ease. Moreno, who has been an activist for decades, has never been one to mince words or avoid controversy but you can almost sense her relief that now she has the opportunity to be completely open about all aspects of her life and career.
The movie, which boasts Norman Lear and Lin-Manuel Miranda as executive producers, features co-stars of her past like George Chakiris (Bernardo in West Side Story) and present like Justina Machado (her daughter on One Day at a Time). There’s also Héctor Elizondo, Gloria Estefan, Tom Fontana, Morgan Freeman, Mitzi Gaynor, Whoopi Goldberg, Norman Lear, Eva Longoria, Justina Machado, Terrence McNally and Karen Olivo. Riera deftly weaves their commentary in and around Moreno’s interviews, creating a nice juxtaposition between how others see Moreno and how she sees herself. They all gush about the legendary EGOT winner and rightly so. Moreno and her career are inspirations to so many. “She can do it. How close can I get?” Miranda wonders. It’s hard to discuss her without being effusive.
But what truly sets the movie apart is Moreno’s unwavering honesty. While obviously proud of her accomplishments, she doesn’t gush about herself. It would have been so easy for the movie to have been a puff piece. But Moreno refuses to let that happen. She’s candid about the horrific racism she’s faced in her career. As a young actress, she was cast as the generic “ethnic” girl, be it Native American, Polynesian, Egyptian—really any ethnicity that wasn’t white. She also developed an all-purpose accent to match. In so many movies she was cast as the “Indian girl” who was the mistress of the white man. “That’s all I was offered. I had to make a living,” she explains.