Rita Moreno: A Memoir

by Rita Moreno

  That night was wonderful. But the best part was later, when I heard from my dear friend, Liz Torrea that, while the Oscars were being televised, there was a sacred silence in El Barrio—Spanish Harlem—and in all of the other Puerto Rican neighborhoods in New York. My people were holding their collective breath. And what an outcry when I won! People were literally hanging out their windows, yelling, “She won! She won! She did it!” What they were really saying was “We won!”

  That Hispanic groundswell of pride and support made me happier than just about anything else about the award. As if to underscore this sentiment, when I flew back to the Philippines the next day and began the ascent to the jungle location, I saw a commotion on the mountain. It was a long procession of people coming down the slope: Every Filipino in the movie was marching down the mountain, singing and calling out congratulations. They all carried signs that said, “Mabuhay, Rita! Victory, Rita!”

  FINDING MYSELF IN POLITICS

  By the time I won the Oscar for West Side Story, I felt like I was truly seeking a healthy new life. In group therapy, I met a wonderful woman who introduced me to the sit-ins, marches, and political movements that were just beginning to heat up in the 1960s, especially those around civil rights. This woman had come from the old lefty days and was a fountain of knowledge.

  Perhaps as valuable as my therapy, then, was its offshoot: my growing commitment to political causes. I had discovered that the best cure for the sort of obsessive self-involvement that had contributed to my troubled life was to direct my energies outward to a wider range of interests. I began to see myself as part of the bigger picture, and to realize that, as someone who was now a public figure, I had the capacity to help others, or at the very least raise awareness. And, as I discovered, the more I worked for causes greater than myself, the less wrapped up I was in my own troubles.

  My first real foray into the political arena was a “Ban the bomb” demonstration. Strontium 90, a radioactive deposit from atomic testing, had been landing on fields where dairy cows grazed. The scientific community had established that strontium 90 was getting into milk. It was a big environmental issue, like global warming is now. Many, including myself, felt strongly that we had to do something to get rid of it fast! Otherwise, the chemical might deform the bones of future children. I was horrified by the possibility, so I picked up a placard and marched.

  From then on, I was very much enlisted in political causes, mostly to end atomic testing and racial and economic discrimination. Major stars, regular actors, and members of the film community were awakening to the need to be politically active, rising to the front lines, because we knew that we were visible and could get the TV and radio time needed to give voice to valuable causes.

  The atmosphere was highly charged throughout the 1960s. It’s hard to believe now, in this very different time, how excited we were, and how deep our commitment was to end all kinds of ills. The FBI was also very involved in tracking us as a result.

  Probably the most historic political event I participated in during that time was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever held in the nation’s capital, and one of the first to earn extensive television coverage.

  Of course I had to be there, and doing so changed my life forever. I would never again sit back passively if I had an opinion, because I witnessed firsthand how important it is to speak your mind and work together to right whatever wrongs are being perpetrated by the government.

  That year was filled with racial unrest and demonstrations. Sit-ins and picket lines were everywhere, even outside Woolworth’s. College kids both white and black sang “We Shall Overcome” along with adult protesters. It was all very new and very brave. The nation’s pulse was racing.

  It was a social revolution whose participants were being beaten, even killed. Media coverage of police actions in Birmingham, Alabama, where attack dogs and fire hoses were turned against protesters, sparked national outrage.

  Demonstrations took place across the country, peaking with the first March on Washington, the event forever immortalized by Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.

  On August 28, l963, I boarded a famous flight—a planeload of celebrities dedicated to the cause who were flying to Washington for the march. Had that plane gone down, it would have created a dearth of movie actors and a loss of other talent, as there were also writers and directors on board. Diahann Carroll and Sammy Davis Jr. were on the flight with me. So was Jim Garner, who had been a friend of mine since our first screen test, nervously guzzling Pepto-Bismol to ease the growl of his ulcer. This was probably the first time Jimmy had ever committed himself publicly to any political cause, and like many of us, I’m sure he was probably wondering what this act might cost him with respect to his career. I was very touched, because he participated anyway, knowing it was the right thing to do.

  Marlon, of course, would never have missed this event. He had been dedicated to raising awareness about racial issues all his life. I saw Marlon at one of the tactical meetings prior to the March on Washington. A lot had happened since then: I had won an Oscar, and he had married Tarita. When Marlon spotted me and said a soft “hello,” I nodded curtly and reminded myself to stay away from him for my own good.

  Seeing Marlon again, I felt a rush of fear, experiencing it as an all-too-familiar flash of extreme heat coursing through my body. It was such a primal reaction that I was embarrassed, especially because I could feel a deep blush coloring my face at the same time—from that other, more familiar heat of desire. Unbelievable! Obsessions die hard. You really have to live your life watching for banana peels and carry a very big stick.

  That thought actually made me remember something that Marlon once said to me. He was constantly characterizing me as eternally hopeful, and one day he mused, “You carry a stick with a nail in the end, like a park attendant. But instead of picking up trash, you pick up bits of hope and deposit them into your little brown paper bag.”

  It still makes me laugh. I know it’s true.

  Harry Belafonte was at that organizational meeting where I saw Marlon, and he was on the celebrity plane as well. In fact, Harry was the one who had pushed us all to participate, because he felt so strongly that the film and performing industry should be represented at the march. He knew that our presence would attract the media and strengthen the cause.

  Determination was in the air. No one believed for one minute that this time of our lives wouldn’t have a profound, permanent effect on this country. And I was part of it. It was all so exciting. The experience has stayed with me forever, and to this day I have remained politically committed to causes close to my heart, including racial equality, breast cancer, hunger, and AIDS.

  Even today, I can vividly remember the excitement of being in Washington on that scalding hot day. Nobody was quite sure how many people would turn up for the demonstration, but the numbers exceeded all expectations. An estimated quarter of a million people marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial in what turned out to be both a protest and a communal celebration.

  By the time we had made it to the Lincoln Memorial, where the speeches would be given, everyone was steaming hot and soaked with perspiration; I wished I had brought a hat. Our group was fortunate to have privileged seating not ten feet from Dr. Martin Luther King himself!

  The event included musical performances by Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mahalia Jackson, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Charlton Heston, who in later years was most often regarded as a conservative leader of the National Rifle Association lobby, was then regarded as a “wild liberal.” He was part of our contingent of artists, which that day included not only Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Diahann Carroll, Ossie Davis, and Sammy Davis Jr., but also Lena Horne, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, and writer and poet James Baldwin.

&nbs
p; The two most noteworthy speeches came from black Georgia state representative John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. Representative Lewis, of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), was the one that day who really declared a war for racial equality.

  But for sheer eloquence and staying power, it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s epic “I Have a Dream” speech that had the most lasting impact on me, as it did on the nation. I count myself privileged to have heard the speech live as he delivered it. I was sitting so close to him that I could see Dr. King’s beautiful brown face, lit with conviction.

  In that glorious, mellifluous voice, King delivered his sonorous “I have a dream” refrain, speaking of an America where children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

  I swear I vibrated like a tuning fork with his words. I was ready for change.

  * * *

  Life is curious. I certainly never expected to launch a new romance on a day of so much exciting political activity, but that was exactly what happened: I became involved with James Forman, the executive secretary of SNCC, because of the March on Washington.

  At thirty-five, James Forman was a good ten years older than most of the SNCC membership and had assumed a natural leadership role. He seemed to tower above everyone, especially me, and he was such a handsome, imposing man that I was instantly drawn to him. I could not help but note his beautiful coloring. He had smooth, creamy brown skin; a darker cap of fine nubby hair; strong, straight features; and, most arresting of all, eyes that were a rich mahogany. He had the loveliest, friendliest face I’d ever seen, and he wore the signature denim coveralls that had become the symbol of working people everywhere.

  I knew who Jim was before that day, because I had admired his charismatic speeches. On the day of the march, I recognized him in the crowd at once. We hit it off immediately and had lots to talk about after the event. Jim’s reverence for Dr. King was touching; he struck me as a very authentic man, with a certain freshness about him that was like a gentle breeze after the Sturm und Drang of my life. I was completely smitten.

  It never occurred to me that anything would happen between us, because we led such different lives. But, following the march, Jim and I continued meeting by chance at meetings and protests. One day, he offered me a ride home.

  “Sure,” I said. “But would you mind stopping at a hamburger joint somewhere? I’m dying of hunger.”

  “Why don’t we go to my people?” he said. “They always have food.”

  Because I had been reflecting lately on the importance of family, there was something about that answer that made me want to be with Jim forever. How wonderful, I thought, to be with someone who always has a support system. It was so clear to me that people had Jim’s back—people whose passion for something more meaningful than themselves bonded them in a profound way.

  As we spoke at length, Jim and I discovered that we shared common ground. He, too, had undergone a disorienting early childhood, starting with being left by his mother to be raised by a grandmother in South Carolina.

  Then, at age six—just a little older than I was when my mother uprooted me to New York—Jim underwent another drastic life change when his mother brought him to live with her and her new husband. Jim used his stepfather’s surname, Rufus, until his teens, when he finally learned his real name and met his birth father, Jackson Forman, a cabdriver in Chicago.

  Jim and I fell in love and had a surprisingly uneventful summer romance. I never saw a wedding ring on Jim’s finger, but I found out years later that he was separated from his second wife, Mildred, and was soon to move in with a woman who would become his “hidden” wife, Dinky Romilly, the daughter of author and political campaigner Jessica Mitford. Dinky became the mother of Jim’s only children, and he lived with her on and off throughout the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s.

  According to Jessica Mitford, Jim and Dinky never did legalize their relationship, because at the time it would have been awkward for Jim to have a white wife. When Dinky and Jim broke up, however, he remained a conscientious father to their two boys. I always admired him for that.

  Jim and I eventually drifted apart for practical reasons. He had his work, which took him everywhere, and I had mine, which kept me in Los Angeles. But I have nothing but warm memories of my time with this exceptional man. He was always warm and tender with me. What a rarity: a true gentleman who knows how to love—and how to part—without animosity.

  FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN

  Despite this wonderfully healthy love affair with Jim Forman, some of my dating life was no less bizarre than it had been during my earliest days in Hollywood. Probably the standout example of that was my relationship with Kenneth Tynan, a legendary English theater critic and journalist.

  Ironically, winning the Oscar brought me no juicy new roles in Hollywood. You would think that producers would be calling nonstop, right? But, oh, my, there wasn’t one little grain of interest. Everybody loved me. Everyone in the business thought I was spectacular. Yet I wasn’t offered one job, other than a couple of grade-B gang movies. I said no to most of those. Even if I never made another film, I vowed that I wasn’t going to take those sorts of roles again.

  It was so bizarre. It was almost as though I had never won the Oscar. It might have been because I had played a definitive Hispanic role that I was being offered only parts in gang movies and B movies, but whatever the reason, I wasn’t just disappointed by this; I was depressed and sad, because I had worked so hard and been recognized for it, yet I was still being asked to play the same demeaning character parts I’d always played.

  I took some of those parts because I needed the work. To stay financially afloat, I guest-starred in various television series, often in Westerns, where once again I had to be the señorita.

  In 1964, when it became clear that nothing much was happening for me in Los Angeles, I moved to London for a year with my girlfriend Phyllis, who was a real Anglophile. That was just about the time that the Bay of Pigs was taking place, and both Phyllis and I were ready for a change of pace. Our motivation was not fear of a bomb. We just wanted to flee the crazies with their self-serving behavior. Hoarding became a norm and fairly soon the market shelves became empty.

  Phyllis and I booked passage on a ship, the France, and moved to London with only a couple of trunks filled with our belongings. We had enough money to get along for perhaps six months, so we found a little maisonette, a duplex apartment, and started calling friends of Phyllis’s friends.

  I have since learned—just in my seventies and eighties—the real value of women friends, but back then I never trusted many women and was not willing to be vulnerable with them. I don’t know why. Perhaps that has to do with not fully trusting my mother. Anyway, Phyllis was the only woman friend I cherished and trusted, and I’m so grateful that I had the experience of living with her in England, among the few women friends I really cherished and trusted.

  Soon after arriving in London, I was lucky enough to land a part in Harold Prince’s musical She Loves Me, in the West End. The woman who was going to play the featured role had fallen ill and they couldn’t find anyone who could sing and act to fill the part. Tony Walton, Julie Andrews’s husband then, was producing and designing sets for the production. He told the director that he’d heard I was in town, and wondered whether I was available. When they approached me, of course I said I’d love to do it.

  This was a wonderful time in my life. The West End is like Broadway in New York, and it was a fantastic place to get away from the glitter of Hollywood. She Loves Me is a play with such charm that performing in it was a delight. It was marvelous to wake up every day and go to work. As a bonus, I was not cast as a stereotype.

  I was starring in the play when I met Kenneth Tynan at a party. He was already both famous and infamous. I didn’t know much about him when we began to go out. For instance, I had no idea that his divorcing wife, the American novelist Elaine Dundy, author of
the bestselling book The Dud Avocado, had announced, “To cane a woman on her bare buttocks, to hurt and humiliate her, was what gave him his greatest sexual satisfaction…. I married the Marquis de Sade.”

  To me, Kenneth appeared to be the exotic epitome of the London man in his designer tweeds, giving off the steam and smoke of the best salons. He was funny, exciting, and attractive in an English way, tall and bony. He knew everyone who was famous—or, to be more accurate, everyone he knew was famous.

  Kenneth hovered over the West End uttering witticisms as constantly as he chain-smoked cigarettes, one after another, the words coming so fast that they stumbled over one another in his rapid, recurring stammer. He was widely known for his quotes, such as, “A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping,” and, “A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.” I was fascinated.

  For years, Kenneth had been the top theater critic for the Observer. He was credited for being the first to praise the new wave of English playwrights, beginning with John Osborne and Look Back in Anger, and changed the future of British theater with his reviews. When I met him, he had just segued to London’s Royal National Theatre as its literary manager under Sir Laurence Olivier.

  During the time I knew him, Kenneth took part in a live TV debate, broadcast as part of the BBC’s late-night show BBC-3. When asked whether he would allow a play to be staged in which sexual intercourse was represented on the stage, he answered, “Well, I think so, certainly. I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word ‘fuck’ would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden. I think that anything which can be printed or said can also be seen.”

  This was the first time the word “fuck” had been spoken on British television. The BBC was forced by the public outcry to issue a formal apology. Mary Whitehouse, an English social activist known for her criticism of mainstream British media, wrote a letter to the queen suggesting that Kenneth should be reprimanded by having “his bottom spanked.” (She didn’t know what wish fulfillment that would have been!)