Chita Rivera, Broadway pioneer and the first Anita in ‘West Side Story’, dies at 91

Chita Rivera, singer, actress, dancer and star of early Broadway, who filled the stage for seventy years and a was a 10-time Tony Award nominee (and three-time winner), has died. She had turned 91 a week ago, on January 23. The actress of Puerto Rican descent, a pioneer on the stage who gained fame in the United States for her role as Anita in the famous musical West Side Story, passed away after a short illness on Tuesday in New York, where she had lived since her youth, as announced by her daughter, Lisa Mordente.

Rivera — born in Washington to a Puerto Rican father, a saxophonist, and a mother of Irish and African-American descent, a janitor at the Pentagon — had her great moment of acclaim on Broadway in 1957, precisely thanks to the role of Anita, which was later brought to the movies in the 1961 adaptation by another Puerto Rican actress, Rita Moreno. In her memoirs, Chita, published last spring, the actress admitted that when she saw Moreno on the big screen she felt “a pang of resentment.” However, Rivera’s career continued strong on the stage in the 1960s, playing Rose Alvarez opposite Dick Van Dyke in Bye Bye Birdie. Her career did not slow down until 2015, when she had her last role in the play The Visit, with which she achieved her last Tony nomination. She herself stated then that her life was on the stage and that she did not intend to retire. She was expected to make an appearance at the New York Public Library in September 2023, which she canceled after testing positive for Covid-19.

After debuting in 1950′s Guys and Dolls, and in addition to West Side Story and Bye Bye Birdie, Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero Anderson participated in dozens of musicals such as Can-Can, Merlin, Nine and Kiss of the Spider Woman. She was part of the cast of the first Chicago, where in 1975 she played Velma Kelly, who until then was a relatively minor character, but with the arrival of Rivera took on more weight. So much so that it earned her a Tony nomination in 1976. In the 2002 film Catherine Zeta-Jones won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the same role. Then, in 2000, coinciding with the show’s 25th anniversary, Rivera took the lead role, that of Roxie Hart, and took it to various stages around the world, including Las Vegas, Toronto and London.

The actress began her career as a child, at the age of 11, when her mother (who had been widowed with five children when Chita was only seven years old) saw that she was so restless and uncontrollable that she decided to sign her up for dance classes; as a singer and actress she was self-taught. Thanks to her immense charisma, when she was only 15, a scout signed her up to study on scholarship in New York. She was only 17 when she made her debut, and 24 when she became Anita. In addition, it was on the stage of West Side Story where she met her only husband, the dancer Tony Mordente, whom she married on December 1, 1957 and had her only daughter, Lisa Mordente, now also an actress and singer, on July 30, 1958. The couple divorced in 1966. In 1986 Chita Rivera had a traffic accident in New York when she crashed into a cab that left her seriously injured, especially in one leg: it was broken in 12 places, she needed two surgeries, 18 screws and intense rehabilitation to return to dancing, and according to her, she never fully recovered.

In addition to some thirty Broadway roles, Rivera had an extensive career in film and television, with small roles and some cameos, as well as a multitude of documentaries. She is the most nominated performer for a Tony Award thanks to her ten nominations (tied with Julie Harris and Audra McDonald). The three she won came thanks to various roles. The first, for acting alongside Liza Minelli in The Rink in 1984, in a complex situation, because it was the time when Minelli was immersed in her addictions. The second, for her role as Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman, in 1993. The third, in 2008, was in recognition of her entire career. In addition, in 2002 she received the Kennedy Center Honor in Washington, a recognition that even she did not believe. And, in August 2009, then President Barack Obama awarded Chita Rivera the highest decoration that the U.S. can give to a civilian, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition