Rita Moreno My WEST SIDE STORY
On her first day in Hollywood, 16-year-old Rita Moreno entered the MGM lot with equal parts trepidation and excitement. A talent scout had spotted the Puerto Rican-born, Bronx-raised teenager at a Spanish dance recital. Rita was signed on the spot days later by studio boss Louis B. Mayer himself, so blown away was he by her resemblance to another teenage star. “My God,” he’d declared as she arrived for their meeting (accompanied by her mother Rosa) at his penthouse suite in New York’s Waldorf Astoria. “She’s a Spanish Elizabeth Taylor!”
“I’ll never forget that first day in the studios, it was so exciting,” says Rita, now 90 and speaking to from her home in Berkeley, California. “I practically moved in there. I visited the sets, visited the commissary where they served food to the big stars. They had a steam table with real food, things like apple pie and Boston baked beans and roast beef with gravy. Stuff I never had at home – we had rice and beans. It was lunchtime when I was taken there and in walks Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor. I thought I
