Rita Moreno: A Memoir

by Rita Moreno

  Just as the puppy stopped howling, Lenny called out, “Jeez! When you Puerto Ricans have parties…”

  * * *

  Kindness and love still flickered in my house like a pilot light, but my own joy had dampened. My best self, the one with the desire to give and fling open the doors to friends, to light the lanterns on the patio and play music, to laugh and dance, to cook up the spicy stews and serve wine, lots of wine, was muted.

  Instead, after Fernanda had grown older and was busy with high school and then college, silence often reigned in my house, with neither Lenny nor I getting what we wished from each other much of the time. We had come to a truce—a loving truce, for many reasons, but our marriage was not a celebration.

  To ward off any perceptions of myself as “heroic,” or some kind of marital martyr, I want to say that it was also true that I still needed to be coddled and looked after.

  How curious, these twists in our marriage. Outwardly, we always remained “Lenny and Rita, the perfect couple” for half a century. Our forty-five-year marriage played itself out as half farce, half tragedy, part truth and part fiction. Backstage during our long run together, I, too, had wanted to believe in happy endings.

  The mythology of Rita Moreno and Dr. Lenny Gordon would, if put into a movie trailer, go something like this: “After a stormy love affair with a movie star, a tempestuous Latina actress finds stability in the sensible embrace of a Jewish doctor. They have a baby and live happily ever after.”

  And maybe that’s not so wrong, that version. At the end of it all, after a long, long time together, our love would triumph. Lenny and I were both self-made people with big hearts. My secret self, the best of little Rosita Alverio, would rise up to embrace Lenny Gordon. Her niggling critical voice would finally shut up.

  Meanwhile, every time he passed behind me in the kitchen, no matter how old we were, Lenny would reach out and brush his hand over my tush, that funny little caress that was more than a pat. It was a cupping, a compliment, a way to say: I love your tush, and I love you.

  Writing this, I miss him. I miss Lenny.

  * * *

  At the same time, I was afraid that I would have to be unemployed forever. But I must perform. For them—and for me.

  Try to stop me. If I wasn’t hired, I decided that I would be inventive and do my own concerts. That’s exactly what I did. It might even have been Lenny who suggested it, saying, “Why don’t you do a cabaret act?”

  With that, we were off. We put together our own show with a choreographer, a music arranger, and dancers. Lenny was my manager/roadie. It took months of performing at whatever venue before we recovered our investment and made a dime.

  I remember one terrible engagement in the bar of a Marriott hotel at the Chicago airport, where we got snowed in on top of everything else. The stage was about three feet high and there were four of us, three male dancers and me. We had a marvelous salsa routine where we had to dance and jump off stools. It was fine for me, because I’m short, but the boys were taller and literally had to bow their heads when they were standing on the stools and dancing, because the ceiling was so low.

  After the wannabe-but-didn’t-quite-make-it tour, I did some tent shows. Sometimes I’d open for a big act, like Ben Vereen, and for others I was on my own. We took the show to Boston, Wisconsin, Illinois, and everywhere in between. It was a way of getting experience, I thought, and boy, was I right.

  We played in a lot of dumps. One of my favorite terrible stories is the time we did a New Year’s Eve in the Italian Catskills. I had put together the kind of act where I didn’t just do numbers that were snappy, loud, and fiery. I had included ballads, too. As an actress who sings, I love those.

  The ballads were lyrical and demanded attention. And here I was, singing these fabulous, obscure songs on New Year’s Eve in this humongous ballroom, where people were yelling, laughing, and tossing rolls to one another. It was maybe one of the worst concerts I’ve ever had to do. Nobody paid attention, nobody! And the applause was the sound of one hand clapping. I was so angry that I wanted to die, but now, in retrospect, it was hilariously funny.

  Later on, when my act was refined, I opened for Sammy Davis Jr. in Vegas and Tahoe. Sammy was brilliant and a real showman. As I finished my act, Sammy would walk onstage at the crest of my applause, and my hard-earned reward became his drumroll.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he said with a laugh when I pointed this out. “I’m not going to wait for that applause to die down!”

  I also had the opportunity to open for George Burns, a really wonderful, hilarious old man with the brain of a ten-year-old—and I mean that in a complimentary way. George had a very young girlfriend, Carol, and he used to always invite Lenny and me to his dressing room to have martinis with him. That man, who was then ninety, would have two double martinis after every show. I’d be under the table with that, but he showed no ill effects at all.

  I was opening for George at Harrah’s in Tahoe one night, and just out of mischief, because he was such a cutie, I walked out of the wings and said, “George, your fly’s open again.”

  Without thinking twice or even stopping, he said, “That’s all right. It’s got makeup on it.”

  I was so lucky, sharing the stage with George and Sammy and so many other great performers who were models of perseverance for me, as I hope to be for others.

  LOSSES AND BLESSINGS

  Reflecting on life, I think Lenny was so dear to me because, from the time I first met him, he was the most stable force in my life.

  As he and I were working through our marriage, the 1980s brought a terrible sadness: My brother Dennis Moreno had become an alcoholic at a very young age, maybe seventeen. But he joined AA and did terrifically well after that, rising to an important position in the organization because he had done so well and was so helpful to everyone. Dennis was still like a big bear cub, and I loved hugging him.

  Then, after winning that long battle against alcohol, Dennis suffered an ironic and terrible accident at age thirty-five. Riding home from an AA meeting on his motorcycle, his girlfriend clinging to his back, Dennis was struck by a drunk driver. He was not in any way at fault. He was helmeted, sober, and obeying traffic rules.

  Dennis and his girlfriend were both killed instantly. He left behind two young sons.

  My mother heard the news and called me. It was July 24, 1983. I was still in my early fifties then. I couldn’t believe that my little brother was gone.

  My mother never got over his death. And, on that buried subbasement level where I hold my own grief, neither did I. The mourning for my big puppy dog of a kid brother has yet to burst through, but it is there, like a terrible weight in my heart. I can still see his sweet, sad face before me: hangdog, the imprint of rejection by his father stamped on his features like a seal.

  * * *

  My mother’s death, when it came, was unexpected. I had placed my mother and her “Ultra Right Wing” husband in an assisted-living community twenty minutes from my house—close enough that I could run over if she needed me. How I would have loved to welcome her into my home, but I knew that Lenny would have none of that. I didn’t even ask. He was always kind and polite to my mother, but there was no chance that he would share our home with her.

  She was sad, so sad. I would visit her and just hold her, hold her hand. There were no words. I wanted her with me so badly. When I saw her, she held my hand so tight; alive, she held me in a death grip.

  This fifth marriage, which Rosa Maria had entered with her usual ebullience, had drained the joy out of her. In their little community, my mother had started off so well. I still recall her easy laugh, her hospitality, her card playing. Oh, she could be such fun, so raucous! There was something impish in her even as an old woman.

  I had the pleasure of buying a house for her: a surprise. I drove her to see it—it was so charming, a bright, sun-filled stucco house in a quiet, palm-filled neighborhood. I led her inside. “Do you like it, Mami?”

&
nbsp; “Oh, is too expensive.” She turned to go.

  “No. You don’t understand,” I told her. “This is your house. I bought it for you.”

  She stood still for several minutes; she could not absorb this.

  I had imagined a sunlit, happy life for Mami and her fifth husband. The house was in a community of couples their age. She loved to play cards, have dinners. She would have lots of friends here.

  At first, that was how it went. Rosa Maria Marcano made friends fast—but she lost them even faster, as soon as her friends met Robert Williamson, husband number five. He was big in the worst way: huge wattles, serious dewlaps, and a gut to match. He posed like the Western sheriff he had once been, and spoke his bigoted opinions in a loud voice. He could carry a gun. He was for law and order, but I bet he never read anyone their rights. Certainly he never read Rosa Maria Marcano her rights. He wanted someone to serve him, and she did.

  Marooned in her marriage, alone in the house with him, my gregarious mother listened to the clock tick. Nothing remained between them that I could discern, but for their inability to leave each other. As her husband’s health failed, he began falling down. Given my mother’s own health problems and age, it was impossible for her to care for him. So I did the only thing I could do: I moved my mother and her husband into an assisted-living apartment.

  Who knows what my mother thought about during those endless, sunlit, lonely days? Did she think about her lost parents? Of Justino or Juncos? Of Francisco?

  My mother never talked about her father and stepmother, Fela. She had returned to Puerto Rico only once, late in her life, to try to finally connect with family again. By then it was too late. She didn’t tell me until months after she had made the trip; all she could find out was that most of our family was dead and gone. There were a few cousins, but nobody she was close to, and that was it.

  I believed her, because although I had been back to Puerto Rico myself every two or three years, usually for work, I had never found any family either. One particular time I was in Puerto Rico to receive an award and some people showed up, claiming to be family, but I didn’t have a clue who they were, and they didn’t know any of the same names I did. I’m guessing they were making up those names and weren’t related to me at all.

  Lenny had been trying to find Francisco for me, but all we’d heard was that he had moved to San Diego and died of a drug overdose, although I was never able to confirm that information. I had shed bitter tears about Francisco passing away, but I wasn’t about to tell my mother what I knew. She would have been so devastated. As it was, she had already lost Dennis. Everyone was lost to her but me.

  I went to see her often. When I held my mother’s hand, I felt the warmth of her skin, yes, but also the sadness of her entire being. Her heart was broken.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  One bright day, in the middle of the day and for no apparent reason, as she had not been ill, Rosa Maria Marcano’s heart just stopped.

  Maggie, Dennis’s first wife, whom I had hired as a caregiver, said she heard my mother make a small gasp before she uttered her last words: “Just let me die.” Maggie called me at once to let me know.

  When I am deeply upset and inwardly undone, I become very controlled. I got into my car and drove, careful to obey the speed limit and use my turn signals down the freeway to the assisted-living complex. I remember that the day was very bright; the palms gleamed silver in the noonday sun.

  I found my mother dead, with a blue tube in her mouth. The paramedics apparently had tried to revive her. I hated that—that awful blue tube.

  I sat down beside her and held her hand again. This time, her hand was cooling, then cold. And I saw her again as I first remembered her: my young mami walking ahead of me, hair and hips swinging, laundry headdress in perfect balance, that near-dance procession to the stream. She walked with all of the other pretty young mothers through the rain forest, past the flowers and sugarcane. I heard her sing and laugh.

  It seemed as if we should have another chance, should be able to reverse time and start our lives together over again.

  I waited with Maggie and Mami’s husband, Robert, as he sat in shocked stillness until her body was taken away. I still did not cry. I did not really mourn her; I couldn’t for so long. I think that grief as deep as that must be delayed; there must be some anesthetic for the soul to protect you from a loss you otherwise couldn’t bear.

  What I wouldn’t give for some time with her now! To make repairs somehow, to hold her even more than I did. To just hug and kiss her constantly. When is it time to stop?

  It wasn’t enough, what we had together.

  The undertaker did a wonderful job on my mother’s hair and makeup. I was so pleased to see her like that. She would have been pleased, too; I know it. She looked as pretty as she ever had: Rosa Maria, the woman everyone fell in love with. She appeared to be resting, waiting, and she was so, so pretty. The blush on her cheeks, the rose on her lips. Her long eyelashes lowered, as if she were about to bat them one last coquettish time.

  That was how I last saw my mother. Mami.

  Only six months later Robert Williamson, husband number five, died. I honored his request and saw that he was interred in the veterans’ cemetery nearby. It was a lonely scene; he had no family, no friends. Maggie, Lenny and I stood nearby to oversee his burial.

  * * *

  My grief over losing Dennis and my mother was balanced by blessings from Fernanda. After years of saying to my daughter, “If you get married, don’t expect me to buy an over-the-top expensive gown,” I went happily berserk with joy when she announced her engagement.

  My reasoning about the dress had always gone something like this: You wear a wedding dress only once, and then what do you do with it? Why buy an expensive one? After all, I had been married in a sensible dress.

  But when my daughter said she was getting married, that whole no-fuss idea went right out the window. I blabbed to everyone I saw, “My daughter is getting married!” And for Fernanda, we bought the dreamiest, princessy wedding gown we could find.

  We staged the wedding at a gorgeous resort in the Carmel Valley, and we rode to the ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage. It was perfect.

  I now had a handsome young man in my life. And so thoughtful! I had been in the garage vacuuming the Volvo when my now son-in-law David came by and asked first me and then Lenny for Fernanda’s hand in marriage. He assured me that he loved her deeply, and he fully believed it would be forever. So what did I do? I blubbered like a Puerto Rican.

  Our first grandchild, Justin, came into this world with Lenny and me standing beside our daughter’s delivery bed as cheerleaders.

  Two years later, when the next adorable baby boy, Cameron, arrived, David gently suggested, “Do you think you two could stay out of the delivery room?”

  We did, but we were right outside the door. And more important, we now lived nearby, where we could dote and help out whenever there was a need.

  We had moved from New York to LA when Fernanda was an early teen. The stress and winters in New York and Lenny’s practice, compounded by his failing health, required the move. I’d at least be close to my profession, and that might help my career. Who knew?

  After the wedding, Fernanda and David moved to northern California. She called to invite us to visit them in their new home. “Berkeley is such a special place, Mom, and I know you’ll love it,” she said.

  While we were visiting her that weekend, Fernanda and David drove us to wine country and we did something we had never done in our lives: We went wine tasting. The problem was, Dr. and Mrs. Gordon went wine swallowing. Tasting? What’s that? We were clueless!

  By two o’clock in the afternoon, we were bombed. Fernanda decided it was time to pour us back into the car and take us back to her house. On the way there, I slurred, “You know, this is a very nice life. Let’s move up here.”

  And Lenny, who was absolutely crocked, because he normally didn’t drink much
at all, said, “Yeah, whatever.”

  We moved to Berkeley within two months. Lenny and I built a home together, a beautiful modern sculpture of a house carved into the hillside, with a 180-degree view of northern Californian heaven. The house is built of glass and cement, and is stunning. Its prescribed and definite lines reflect much of Lenny’s personality.

  I remember an early high point at our Berkeley home soon after it was completed: We stood on the veranda for the first time, looking out over the bay. Filled with gratitude and amazement at our journey thus far I said, “Hey, Lenny, the Jew and the Puerto Rican, whaddya think?”

  As the years passed, though, I was beginning to feel trapped, between the architecture and Lenny’s inflexibility. I needed a place of my own, a place that said “Rita”—imperfect, romantic, and eclectic. So I decided to carve out a sanctuary for myself and turn it into a little Victorian parlor. I claimed an unused bedroom downstairs that is now called “the Rita Room.” It’s a collage, packed with pretty paintings, pillows, embroidery, and an antique daybed. Everything that can have a curlicue does. And so I found my refuge, a private place where I could just be me.

  Because our grandsons lived so close to the house, Lenny and I could have them for dinners and sleepovers. One of my favorite things to do was make up stories for them. I started doing this when the oldest, Justin, first began staying at our house. He would sometimes have a very difficult time going to sleep. So, in an effort to soothe him, I began making up stories just for him.

  “Once upon a time,” I said, “there was a little boy named Justin, who, whenever he was worried about something, would go to this wonderful, wonderful meadow.”

  I described the meadow in soft tones and in great detail, telling Justin about the apple trees with different-colored apples on them, and a swing that could swing from the sky. “Justin never saw the ends of the ropes, but he could swing on it way up and down and almost touch the clouds. There was a wonderful velvety hill, too, where he could roll down without hurting himself, because the grass was soft as a pillow.”