Chita Rivera, who appeared in more than 20 Broadway musicals over six decades has died, according to her daughter, Lisa Mordente. The three-time Tony Award-winning Broadway legend created indelible roles — Anita in West Side Story, Rose in Bye Bye Birdie, Velma Kelly in Chicago, and Aurora in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. She was 91.
Rivera “was everything Broadway was meant to be,” says Laurence Maslon, co-producer of the 2004 PBS series, Broadway: The American Musical. “She was spontaneous and compelling and talented as hell for decades and decades on Broadway. Once you saw her, you never forgot her.”
You might think Chita Rivera was a Broadway baby from childhood — but she wasn’t. Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington, D.C., she told an audience at a Screen Actors Guild Foundation interview that she was a tomboy and drove her mother crazy: “She said, ‘I’m putting you in ballet class so that we can rein in some of that energy.’ So I am very grateful.”
Rivera took to ballet so completely that she got a full scholarship to the School of American Ballet in New York. But when she went with a friend to an audition for the tour of the Broadway show Call Me Madam, Rivera got the job. Goodbye ballet, hello Broadway. In 1957, she landed her breakout role, Anita in West Side Story, with a score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.