Table Of ContentA Place for Us
A P L A C E F O R U S
West Side Story and New York
Julia L. Foulkes
The UniversiTy of ChiCago Press
ChiCago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by Julia L. Foulkes
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 30180- 8 (cloth)
isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 30194- 5 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226301945.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Foulkes, Julia L., author.
Title: A place for us : “West Side story” and New York / Julia L. Foulkes.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCn 2016011299 | isBn 9780226301808 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isBn 9780226301945 (e-book)
Subjects: LCsh: Bernstein, Leonard, 1918–1990. West Side story. | New York
(N.Y.)—In motion pictures. | Robbins, Jerome.
Classification: LCC mL410.B566 f68 2016 | ddC 792.6/42—dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016011299
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
To Brisa,
my dancing daughter
Contents
Prologue * “There’s a place for us” * 1
1 * “Have you heard the voice of my city,” 1949– 55 * 6
2 * “Make alive the Daily life,” 1955– 57 * 38
3 * “Comes from life itself,” 1957 * 62
4 * “Get cool, boy,” 1958– 59 * 94
5 * “Camera and choreography,” 1960– 61 * 116
6 * “New York Rhapsody,” 1962– 70 * 158
7 * “Somewhere” * 187
Acknowledgments * 207
Notes * 211
Bibliography * 231
Index * 239
Prologue
“There’s a place for us”
The making of West Side Story, both the musical and the film, re-
quired research. To fit the story of Romeo and Juliet to a moment
(the 1950s), a social issue (juvenile delinquency), and a place (New
York), choreographer and director Jerome Robbins, composer Leon-
ard Bernstein, librettist Arthur Laurents, film director Robert Wise,
and screenwriter Ernest Lehman scoured the newspapers for the
latest articles on gang battles, listened to the music pouring out of
apartment windows, visited dance halls and homes in Spanish Har-
lem, and clipped pictures that evoked the drama of life in the city, its
seesaw between possibility and barrier, hope and despair. Balancing
documentation and fiction, sociology and artistry, the real and the
unreal, they transformed that research into the story of Tony and
Maria, Bernardo and Anita, the Jets and the Sharks.
Since its Broadway debut in 1957, the tragic but vibrant story they
created has moved far beyond the place and time it depicts to become
a worldwide phenomenon. There have been an estimated forty thou-
sand productions of the musical. It remains on the schedule of a sum-
mer stock theater in Long Island and a dinner theater in Chicago; is
produced in schools from Anchorage, Alaska, to Tampere, Finland;
and in 1997 was the first authorized Broadway musical to appear in
China. The 1961 film extended the success of the musical to audi-
ences far beyond the stage, and racked up its own awards. In Tokyo,
the movie played continuously for five years in the 1960s. West Side
Story has become emblematic of the best of musicals, both Broadway
1
2 ProLogUe
and Hollywood. It is a cultural touchstone, often used as a corollary
to Romeo and Juliet, yet with its own distinct character: Israeli and
Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank put on the musical as an act
of peace- making; Puerto Rican actors John Leguizamo and Jennifer
Lopez reimagine the story as parody or fantasy; and journalists de-
scribe political fights in Congress as battles between the Jets and the
Sharks.
The success of these productions is certainly due to their artistic
mastery and innovation, but not only that. West Side Story captured
its moment. The research the creators conducted deepened their por-
trayal of the central issues but, even more, caught the spirit, anxiety,
and aspirations that spiraled beyond those issues. As much as the
show was about juvenile delinquency or Puerto Rican migration to
the US mainland, it was even more about the passion of young love,
the wounds of bigotry and betrayal, and the yearning to belong. New
York of the 1950s embodied these larger themes. It had attained new
prominence on the world stage after World War II as the headquar-
ters of the United Nations; the building of Lincoln Center for the Per-
forming Arts and the Guggenheim Museum helped cement its status
as a capital of culture. But belonging in New York, finding a place to
be and to thrive, remained elusive for many, particularly the waves
of Puerto Ricans flying in from the island in search of employment,
opportunity, and full citizenship. It is this drama of a city undergoing
massive changes in infrastructure and demographics, wrought out in
personal lives, that was the foundation of West Side Story.
New York infused the making of the production and gave it much
of its realness; it was the place of love and conflict, and the place to
escape. Reviewers at the time picked up on the importance of the
city to the story, describing the musical as portraying the “jungles
of the city” or the film’s opening as offering “the most remarkable
shots ever taken of New York City from the air.”1 But the travels of the
musical and film throughout the United States and then the world
diminished the centrality of New York to the story. The further the
production moved from its time and place of creation, the more it be-
came a story of America and, then, a universal tale of youthful long-
ing and conflict.
