10.4324 9781315091860-6 Chapterpdf

Chapter 2
Genesis
On 18 September 1957,1 Bernstein wrote an invented journal outlining some key

moments in the history of West Side Story. ‘Excerpts from a West Side Log’,
written well after some of the events it describes, provides an account (sometimes
embroidered) of meetings that took place between the collaborators on the show. It
was published in the edition of Playbillthat coincided with the Broadway opening,
and begins eight years earlier, with an entry dated New York, 6 January 1949:
Jerry R[obbins] called today with a noble idea: a modern version of Romeo and
Juliet, set in slums at the coincidence of Easter–Passover celebrations. Feelings
running high between Jews and Catholics. Former: Capulets, latter: Montagues.
Juliet is Jewish. Friar Lawrence is a neighborhood druggist. Street brawls, double
death – it all fits. But it’s all much less important than the bigger idea of making
a musical that tells a tragic story in musical comedy terms, using only musical
comedy techniques, never falling into the ‘operatic’ trap. Can it succeed? It hasn’t
yet in our country. I’m excited. If it can work – it’s a first. Jerry suggests Arthur
Laurents for the book. I don’t know him, but I do know Home of the Brave at
which I cried like a baby. He sounds just right.2
The ‘noble idea’ was one that Robbins devised after talking to an actor friend who,
on being offered the part of Romeo, said that he thought the role was rather passive:
‘So I asked myself, “If I were to play this, how would I make it come to life?” I
tried to imagine it in terms of today. That clicked in, and I said to myself, “There’s
a wonderful idea here.” So I wrote a very brief outline.’3 On 10 January 1949, four
days after their initial meeting, the three future collaborators – Jerome Robbins,
Arthur Laurents and Bernstein – met together for the first time, an event recorded
in the log: ‘Met Arthur L. at Jerry’s tonight. Long talk about opera versus whatever
this should be. Fascinating. We’re going to have a stab at it.’4
News of the project travelled fast. Less than three weeks after this first meeting,
the story was out and plans were announced in the press. On 27 January 1949, the New
York Times printed an article by Louis Calta under the headline ‘Romeo to receive
musical styling’. Writing a month after the successful opening of KissMe,Kate
1
Information from Bernstein’
Bernstein’ss datebook, LBC.
2
Bernstein 1957, entry for 6 January 1949.
3
Guernsey 1985, p. 40.
4
Bernstein 1957, entry for 10 January 1949.
'2,
18 Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story
(based on The Taming of the Shrew),5 Calta began, not surprisingly, by speculating
on whether Cole Porter’s show had started a vogue for Shakespearean musicals. He
then described the new project:
The latest song and dance project drawing its inspiration from a work of the Bard’s
is a modern musical drama, as yet untitled, based on Romeo and Juliet. Involved
in getting it on the local boards are none other than Leonard Bernstein, the well-
known pianist-composer-conductor, Arthur Laurents, author of Home of the Brave,
and Jerome Robbins, the choreographer. Mr. Bernstein will write the music, Mr.
Laurents the book, which is still in the preliminary stages, and Mr. Robbins the
choreography, which he will also stage. … According to the present scheme of
things, the musical will arrive in New York next season … Indications are that
Oliver Smith will design the show’s scenery, in which case the occasion would
reunite the team of Robbins, Bernstein and Smith, responsible for such noteworthy
items as Fancy Free and On the Town. Howard Hoyt, representative of Messrs.
Robbins and Bernstein, remarked yesterday that the idea of basing a musical on the
famous Shakespearean love story has been with Mr. Robbins for some time.6
The Earliest Plans
Documents in LBC provide some clues about the initial scheme of the show. The
earliest source may be a typed list of scenes on Jerome Robbins’s headed writing
paper, annotated by Bernstein (his notes are shown in square brackets). It certainly
seems possible that this is the ‘very brief outline’ described by Robbins:
1. Hideout [Initiation: beat up Jews]

2. Street Carnival [Dance: meeting of R. & J.]
3. Balcony [Duet love scene]
4. Drugstore [R. works for druggist: Rendezvous is planned]
5. Bridal [Marriage (dummies)]
6. Playground [Big street fight – death of Tyb. and Merc.]
1. Chase Seder
[1a – Small ballet / love]
2. Cellar [Love scene (poss. fuck): Druggist gives R. pills]
3. Ballet transition [(Large ballet) abstract]
4. Family argument [House closes in: J. fakes suicide]
5. Drugstore (message) [Juke-box – Prejudice of kids against T.]
6. Cellar [Death of Romeo]
5
Kiss Me, Kate opened at the New Century Theatre on 30 December 1948.
6
Calta 1949.
Genesis 19
The ‘T.’ refers to ‘Tante’, the original name for Anita, who is mentioned in another
very early source. Bernstein’s annotated copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
includes a few more details, and a few differences. The updating was to involve rival
factions of Christians and Jews, probably around the time of Easter and Passover:
Act I
I. Street scene – pushcarts – Enter R. – or Mulberry St. Festival – or Easter =
Passover
II. Ball or Seder or motza’e shabbat [written in Hebrew]7
III. Balcony Scene
IV. Drugstore (Rendezvous, Tante)
V. Bridal Scene
VI. Street Fight
Act II
I. Chase (Roofs?)
II. Sex – Plan to escape to Mexico
III. Scene chez Capulet
IV. Romeo’s death with Tante
V. Juliet’s death8
These schemes may be quite remote from the show’s final shape, but even so there
are key moments, especially in Act I, that were to remain in place: an opening
street scene, a dance, the Balcony Scene, the Bridal Scene and the act ending with
a fight.
Any prospect of the show arriving in New York ‘next season’ (1949–50), as
Calta had suggested in his column, soon faded, although according to Bernstein’s
log some kind of start was made. On 15 April 1949, while conducting in Columbus,
Ohio, Bernstein noted that he had ‘just received the draft of first four scenes. Much
good stuff’.9 Whether he really thought it was ‘good stuff’ is called into question by
Bernstein’s later comments, quoted by Craig Zadan: ‘I remember receiving about
a dozen pages and saying to myself that this is never going to work. … I had a
strong feeling of staleness of the East Side situation and I didn’t like the too-angry,
too-bitchy, too-vulgar tone of it.’10 Whatever Bernstein made of these ‘dozen or so
pages’, the same 15 April 1949 log entry indicates that he faced up to the realities of
the circumstances in which he and Laurents were trying to fashion a new show:
7
‘Motza’e shabbat’ is the Saturday evening following the end of the Sabbath. My
thanks to Katherine Peveler for assistance with deciphering Bernstein’s handwritten Hebrew.
8
LBC.
9
Bernstein 1957, entry for 15 April 1949.
10
Zadan 1974, p. 15.
Table 2.1 Early plan for Act I music
I II III IV V VI VII
Initiation Ritual Street Party Transition Balcony Scene Drugstore Bridal shop Playground
(Prologue) (gang) Ceremony
Dogged, intense, 1) General dance 1) Juliet solo 1) Mercutio number (rendezvous to 1) Basketball
quiet, machine add Romeo with girls elope that night)
2) Mercutio & gang add Tante 2) Romeo happy song?
2) R. & druggist
3) Rosalind & Rom. 2) Farewell 3) Fight, double
Duet follows 3) J. & Tante murder
4) Juliet entrance w. 4) Romeo shows off 4) Sound ending
Tante & Tybalt
5) Make rendezvous
5) Slow motion,
interrupted by T. 6) Tybalt & gang &
victim – kid
6) Hostility,
Schrank: Gang 7) J. & Tyb. before
follows him off, Bridal shop
jeering, back in high
spirits (in one)
Table 2.2 Early plan for Act II music
I II III IV V VI VII
Seder Chase J. & Tante Duet Transition: Cellar: Transition Capulet house Drugstore
Post-lay ballet
?
Schrank enters (crowds still moving) Girls winding down Song, duet J. kicked out Cellar
seder, announces after J.: to ballet
bad news J. goes down fire with boys; sex He has sword Letter scene Duet
escape to meet R.
Plan to run away ?
Genesis 21
This is no way to work. Me on this long conducting tour, Arthur between New
York and Hollywood. Maybe we’d better wait until I can find a continuous hunk
of time to devote to the project. Obviously this show can’t depend on stars, being
about kids; and so it will have to live or die by the success of its collaborations;
and this remote-control collaboration isn’t right. Maybe they can find the right
composer who isn’t always skipping off to conduct somewhere. It’s not fair to
them or to the work.11
The scenes Bernstein received may have been those in a draft typescript of Act I,
scenes 1 and 2.12 It is unlikely that Bernstein composed any music at this stage, but
he jotted down a plan of the musical numbers for the whole show in a document that
probably dates from early 1949 (Tables 2.1 and 2.2). A few of the ideas proposed in
this plan were to survive: in Act I, the dance music in scene 2, the Balcony Scene
with its ‘farewell’, the ‘marriage ceremony’in the bridal shop, and music for a fight
and double murder; in Act II, the idea of a ballet sequence, and a taunting scene with
a ‘derisive dance’. But the project was to lie dormant for several years – as Bernstein
put it, ‘slowly the project fizzled out’.13 When it was taken up again, there were to
be far-reaching changes.
Romeo Revived and Rethought
Robbins, Laurents and Bernstein were all too busy with other projects to make
any further progress until 1955. Six years after their initial meeting, the plan for a
Romeo and Julietmusical was resuscitated, at Robbins’s urging. He was convinced
that the idea had potential, and his collaborators agreed. Bernstein’s next log entry,
dated New York, 7 June 1955, records that: ‘Jerry hasn’t given up. Six years of
postponement are as nothing to him. I’m still excited too. So is Arthur. Maybe I can
plan to give this year to Romeo – if Candide gets on in time.’
Candide had already become a problem child (see Chapter 1), but the intention
to revive plans for the Romeo musical was evidently serious enough for the press to
be told about them, and for the first time there was a working title too. Lewis Funke
reported in his Broadway gossip column on 19 June 1955:
Last week Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins, as formidable
an array of talent as any daydreaming producer would care to conceive of, took
from their idea bank a notion they have been saving for some time, looked it
over, and gleefully decided it was still as fetching as when it had been put away
because of other commitments. Note, therefore, the trio’s current high resolve to
11
Bernstein 1957, entry for 15 April 1949.
12
Copy in LBC.
13
Zadan 1974, p. 15.
be represented in the neighborhood with a new musical and note too, that for the
present the project is being labelled East Side Story. It will be modern in content,
dealing with young people in New York, and Mr. Bernstein, to be sure, will be
creating the tunes. Mr. Laurents is to be credited with the book and Mr. Robbins
with the staging and the choreography. As for the lyrics, they will be essayed by
Messrs. Bernstein and Laurents. Mark the venture as being in work with hopes for
production set for a year or so hence.14
From mid-1955 onwards, the show’s growing pains were regularly reported in the
press. On 18 September 1955, Funke wrote of further progress on East Side Story:
‘Anyone who made a record of the fact that Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and
Leonard Bernstein are going to do a musical together will wish to add that the early
steps are being taken … for what is tentatively being called East Side Story.’15
The Puerto Rican Solution
One of the most crucial ‘early steps’ had been taken a few weeks earlier, beside a
swimming pool in Beverly Hills. During the summer, Laurents and Bernstein were
both in California. On 25 August, they had a meeting which produced a turning
point in the genesis of the show, described by Bernstein in his log:
Had a fine long session with Arthur today, by the pool. (He’s here for a movie; I’m
conducting at the Hollywood Bowl.) We’re fired again by the Romeo notion; only
now we have abandoned the whole Jewish–Catholic premise as not very fresh,
and have come up with what I think is going to be it: two teen-age gangs as the
warring factions, one of them newly-arrived Puerto Ricans, the other self-styled
‘Americans.’ Suddenly it all springs to life. I hear rhythms and pulses, and – most
of all – I can sort of feel the form.16
Laurents recalled this meeting too:
Legs dangling in the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel across from the moguls
and the beauties in their cabanas, we discussed the recent phenomenon: juvenile
delinquent gangs. They were in the headlines of the morning’s Los Angeles
papers: ‘More Mayhem From Chicano Gangs’.17 Lenny began chattering away
14
Funke 1955a.
15
Funke 1955b.
16
Bernstein 1957, entry for 25 August 1955.
17
Laurents may have been using his imagination here. However, the Los Angeles Times
did carry a story on 22 August with the headline ‘Six Jailed in Fight Death’ reporting that
Robert C. Garcia, aged 20, ‘leader of a local gang known as the “Junior Raiders”, died at
Genesis 23
in half-Spanish (he dropped foreign phrases like names), but no comic strip light
bulb went off, no ‘Olé’ in a little cloud over his head. ‘We could set it out here,’
Lenny mused, hearing Latin music.
For Laurents, though, it had to be set in New York, but the new idea was certainly
promising: ‘it would have Latin passion, immigrant anger, shared resentment. The
potential was there, this could well be a Romeo to excite us all. We called Jerry.’18
By mid-September Laurents was finishing his movie assignment, just as Robbins
arrived to work on the choreography for the film version of The King and I. As with
Bernstein a month earlier, Laurents took advantage of the spare time with Robbins
on the West Coast to work on what was still provisionally called East Side Story
(though in his notes from the time Bernstein usually refers to it simply as Romeo).
Robbins remained in Hollywood while Bernstein and Laurents (now back in New
York) pressed on in his absence. Funke was on hand to speculate on progress in the
New York Times, evidently basing his report on information from Robbins:
Hardly a day passes without [Robbins] being informed by his partners, Leonard
Bernstein and Arthur Laurents, about their progress on East Side Story, the musical
on which they are working here until Mr. Robbins can personally join them. East
Side Story is coming along nicely, thank you, and it is likely to be a spring entrant,
with Mr. Robbins overseeing both the choreography and the direction. With The
Bells Are Ringing19 carded as a fall possibility, Mr. R. probably will not be at
home to new clients for a while.20
The result of Laurents and Bernstein’s labours during September and October
was a new six-page outline by Laurents (probably with help from Bernstein), entitled
Romeo. This is a document of great significance in the genesis of the show, since
several scenes are much as they were eventually to be set, but within a three-act
structure. Tony and Maria are still called Romeo and Juliet, and both of them die
at the end, but gone are the Catholics and Jews of the 1949 drafts; they are now
replaced by rival gangs of Americans and Puerto Ricans.
San Bernadino County Hospital following a fist fight with Rudolf M. Sena, 19, outside the
Johnson Community Hall’. My thanks to Mark Eden Horowitz for drawing my attention to
this article.
18
Laurents 2000, pp. 337–8.
19
Starring Judy Holliday, Bells Are Ringing (‘The’ was dropped) opened on 29
November 1956, with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by
Jule Styne; it was directed by Jerome Robbins, with choreography by Robbins and Bob
Fosse.
20
Funke 1955c.
Act I
Scene 1: Back Alley – Nightfall. Against music, we see two or three
shadowy figures beating up a boy. …
Scene 2: Crystal Cave – Later. A wild mambo is in progress with the
kids doing all the violent improvisation of jitterbugging. …
Romeo sees a lovely young girl, dressed more simply, more
innocently than the others … Romeo goes to Juliet and, as
they meet, the music goes into half-time. … Bernardo is
Juliet’s brother and Romeo’s opponent. Thus, the two lovers
learn, to their mutual dismay, that they belong to opposing
factions. …
Scene 3: Gang Hangout – Later. A shack of some sort … War Chieftains
from the two gangs (Mercutio and Bernardo and aides) are
to meet in Doc’s Drugstore at midnight. Mercutio, in song,
proceeds to give Romeo some advice about love: the older
bon vivante [!] (probably just old enough to vote if that)
to the neophyte. The gang joins in a razzing, possibly they
chase Romeo – who tries to duck them – in a number which
overflowsoutoftheset.Andattheend,hedoeseludethem.
Scene 4: Tenement – Later. This is in the Puerto Rican area and shows
the scrabbly building Juliet lives in, with a fire escape. … she
comes out on the fire escape and the ‘balcony’scene begins.
This should go from dialogue to song and back, ending in
song. … It might end with ‘Good night’ and ‘Buenas noches’,
the latter repeated lovingly by Romeo.
Scene 5: Street or outside Crystal Cave. Bernardo taking his girl, Anita,
home, before he goes to the Rumble meeting. Various points
can come up here: Bernardo’s hatred of the ‘American’ gang
and thus his hate for Romeo as beau for his sister (as opposed
to Anita’s feeling that love is love and it all ends anyway); note
of future disaster, heightened by Anita’s plea to B not to get
into bloody rumble. …
Scene 6: Drugstore – Midnight. … There must be some sharp note to
underline the prejudice that stands between Romeo and Juliet,
then Doc goes (his closeness to Romeo must emerge here,
too) leaving Romeo to close up, turn out the lights as he sings
softly of his love.
Act II
Scene 1: The Neighbourhood. This is a musical quintet which covers various
parts of the neighbourhood in space and the whole day in time.
Its theme is ‘Can’t Wait for the Night’; its mood is impatience of
different kinds, exemplified by five of the principals: Mercutio
Genesis 25
(with humor) and Bernardo (with anger) can’t wait for the rumble;
Romeo can’t wait to see Juliet; Juliet, at her bridal shop sewing
machine, can’t wait to see Romeo. Only Anita strikes a different
note: she is afraid of the night because of what the rumble may
bring. It should end with Juliet and thus go directly into:
Scene 2: The Bridal Shop – Late Afternoon. Everyone has gone except Juliet
… Romeo comes in and they arrange the mannequins as a bridal
party, almost like children playing a game, and marry themselves.
Here again, dialogue goes in and out of song. …
Scene 3: Outside the Park. Bernardo and his aides come from one side and,
after a moment, Juliet and Romeo from the other. Bernardo is
furious that his sister is with a member of the other gang. … Romeo
is going to take her home and no one is going to stop that – and no
one does. Alone with his aides, Bernardo says the hell with a fair
fight: get ready for a real rumble.
Scene 4: Central Park – Sundown. Mercutio and his gang are waiting for
Bernardo and his. They, too, are actually prepared in the event
that the ‘fair fight’should bust into a bloody rumble. … It does
break out into a fracas when Bernardo, almost beaten, whips out a
knife and stabs Mercutio. Romeo, horrified at what has been done
to his protector, grabs a broken bottle from A-Rab and plunges it
into Bernardo. There is a wild moment of mêlée – then everybody
clears because of the two still bodies on the ground. Both Bernardo
and Mercutio are dead. This is horrifying even to the kids. A clock
begins to chime as they slowly leave the scene. Romeo stares at
the bodies. A police whistle, a siren … music – the chase is on and
Romeo runs as – CURTAIN.
Act III
Scene 1: Juliet’s Apartment – Sundown. This is a very crowded place: room
made into rooms for all purposes: a curtained corner for Juliet
who is dressing up happily as her family sings a gay street song in
Spanish. … Romeo appears on the fire escape … His one drive has
been to find her and tell her it was a horrible mistake. But her first
reaction is: you killed my brother. … As he goes, Anita comes into
the flat and sees him. Anita’s attitude has changed. Bitter, angry
over the death of her lover, Bernardo, she tells Juliet to stick to
‘your own kind’. This is a duet for both girls. But Juliet’s confusion
resolves itself during the duet: Romeo is her own kind, for she loves
him. …
Scene 2: Love Ballet. As Juliet shins down the fire escape, other girls wind
down the other fire escapes, all going to meet lovers representing
Romeo. The dance goes from forgiveness to love to passion to

actual sex. It ends with –
Scene 3: The Hangout. Romeo and Juliet are in the positions the dancers
were at the end. Romeo sings a happy song to Juliet about what
their world will be and, in dialogue, they agree to run away together
and be safe with each other. …
Scene 4: Streets. Romeo running from the police who fire at him and wound
him. He escapes.
Scene 5: The Drugstore. The same jitterbugging tune is being played in a
muted way and the gang is going through the motions of dancing
to avert suspicion from the police. Doc comes up from the cellar
to get more bandages and medicine. Romeo is down there: he
has been hit badly. Doc goes down again and the gang vents its
bitterness against Puerto Ricans … Juliet comes in, seeking Doc,
and all the hatred is turned against her. The kids tell her Romeo
is dead and jeer at her extreme reaction. She almost faints and
instead of offering her water etc., they hideously offer her all
kinds of poison so she can kill herself for love and pay for the
evil she has done. This is done with macabre humor. All their
prejudice and hate and violence comes out in the taunting until,
able to bear no more, she grabs the bottle Benny holds and runs
out of the store. …
Scene 6: The Bridal Shop. This scene is almost completely in song. Juliet
has put on the wedding veil … her strangeness is explained by the
empty bottle of poison which she addresses for a moment. She is
becoming more and more delirious when Romeo comes in. He is
very weak but so happy to see her. … He doesn’t realize at first that
she has taken poison. But when he does discover the truth, it is too
late. She sinks to the floor, he cradles her in his arms, they both
start a reprise of their balcony song but they never quite finish. The
lights change, the walls disappear, the music soars upward and the
audience swoons.21
This scenario was sent to Robbins, who replied to Laurents and Bernstein on 15
October 1955: ‘I want you to know that I think it’s a hell of a good job, and very
much on the right track’, but he had several significant objections. First, there was
the division into three acts: ‘there’s not sufficient material in Acts II and III to stand
up by themselves. And it’s a serious mistake to let the audience out of our grip for
2 intermissions.’ Robbins then goes through scene by scene: ‘Act I, Scene 2. Would
like to suggest that the meeting between Romeo and Juliet be more abrupt rather
than an observing of each other from a distance at first. In general, suddenness of
21
Carbon copy in LBC.
Genesis 27
action is something we should strive for.’ Robbins was particularly concerned about
the depiction of Anita:
Act I, Scene 5. You are away off the track with the whole character of Anita. She
is the typical downbeat blues torch-bearing second character (Julie of Showboat,
etc.) and falls into a terrible cliché. The audience will know that somewhere a ‘my
man done left me’ blues is coming up for her.
When it came to the question of a ballet, Robbins, not surprisingly, took a critical
look at his collaborators’ proposal and found it wanting: ‘Act III, Scene 2. I am
starting to feel we’re in serious trouble with the so-called love ballet.’ He also made
some shrewd observations on the outline for the final scene, which left him confused
and unconvinced:
Act III, Scene 6. From the outline I’m inclined to feel that it’s all a little too goofy.
Juliet becomes Ophelia with the reeds and flowers and is playing a ‘crazy’scene.
I had to read the whole thing a couple of times to find out why Romeo died and I
also think it’s too right on the head placing it back in the bridal shop.
Robbins ends this robust and perceptive critique with some general comments,
emphasizing that there could be no room for any self-pity among the characters:
As for the overall picture, we’re dead unless the audience feels that all the tragedy
can and could be averted, that there’s hope and a wish for escape from that tragedy,
and a tension built on that desire. … It’s another reason why I dislike qvetchy
Anita so much. Let’s not have anyone in the show feel sorry for themselves.
Finally, he turned to potential difficulties with the effective integration of dance.

The solution he proposed was for some of the principals to be primarily singers,
and for others to be dancers:
About the dancing. It will never be well incorporated into the show unless some
of the principals are dancers. I can see, easily, why Romeo and Juliet must be
singers, but Mercutio has to be a dancer, maybe Anita, and for sure some of the
prominent gang members … with all the experience I’ve had it’s by far easier to
have the principals do everything. It’s a sorry sight and a back-breaking effort,
and usually an unsuccessful one, to build the numbers around some half-assed
movements of a principal who can’t move. Think it over.22
22
LBC.
Bernstein jotted down a music list, presumably dating from the same time as the
new outline, for a three-act version of the show:23
Romeo Numbers:
[Act] I
1. Opening & Rumble Song (canon?)
2. Mambo (& meeting routine) [ends with orch. ‘Maria’]
2A. Maria
3. Mercutio’s Song (Cool?)
4. Balcony Scene (‘Maria’? Dream with me? Goodnight 1000 times)
5. Anita’s Song (Dance?) (Girl number) (PR singing chorus)
6. Jitterbug number (mambo reprise?) (Perc. for war council?)
[Act] II
1. Quintet
2. Marriage Scene (E major tune)
3. Fight music (canon?)
[Act] III
1. Puerto Rican nostalgic music
2. Anita–Juliet duet
3. Love Ballet
4. Shack Song (Duet?)
5. Taunting Scene
6. Ophelia Scene
This is an intriguing document, suggesting that some musical ideas had been
sketched: the ‘E major tune’ for the marriage scene is a reference to the sketch of a
‘Love Duet’ originally planned for Candide24 but soon to become ‘One Hand, One
Heart’, although its first appearance was initially intended to be in the Balcony
Scene. Were the Quintet and ‘Cool’ already sketched by this point? Mention of them
by name suggests that possibility, and the music for ‘Cool’ certainly came before
the lyrics;25 but we also have Bernstein’s word for it that ‘Maria’ was only a sketch
at this stage:
23
LBC.
24
LBC.
25
Zadan 1974, p. 22, quoting Bernstein: ‘Steve [Sondheim] and I worked together in
every conceivable way – together, apart, sometimes with the tune first (“Cool” and “Officer
Krupke”), sometimes with the words first (“A Boy Like That”).’
Genesis 29
I had a song called ‘Maria,’ for which I had the title and some kind of lyric that I
had written which was there when Steve came in. I think it took longer to write that
song than any other. It’s difficult to make a strong love song and avoid corn.26
In conversation with Mel Gussow, Bernstein elaborated on this:
I had already jotted down a sketch for a song called ‘Maria,’ which was operable in
Italian or Spanish. It’s still rather Italian in character. I had a dummy lyric, a terrible
lyric. ‘Lips like wine… divine.’ Very bad. Like a translation of a Neapolitan street
song. … We sat for weeks trying to get the right lyrics for ‘Maria.’ And when the
idea occurred – and I’m sure it came from Steve – of the sound of the name, then
we were headed for home.27
It is also possible that the fight canon – which became the (abandoned) ‘Mix!’–
existed in some form. The potential music for the Balcony Scene in the list includes
‘Dream With Me’, a song that had been cut from the 1950 Peter Pan score,28 and the
mention of ‘Goodnight 1000 times’ is indicative of the lyrics that eventually ended
the ‘Tonight’ duet, but the idea for that was a long way off. Though it is likely that
some of the music mentioned in the ‘Romeo Numbers’ had been sketched, a more
pressing concern now presented itself: Bernstein needed someone to help him write
the lyrics.
Stephen Sondheim Joins the Team
Robbins was unsparing in his criticism of the three-act outline, but the result was
that all three members of the creative team now set their minds to starting work on
the show in earnest. At the same time, there was another important development: in
October 1955, Stephen Sondheim joined the project. Bernstein’s invented log first
mentions him on 14 November: ‘A young lyricist named Stephen Sondheim came
and sang us some of his songs today. What a talent! I think he’s ideal for this project,
as do we all. The collaboration grows.’29
Bernstein doesn’t mention that, in the few weeks before this, Betty Comden and
Adolph Green – the lyricists of On the Town and Wonderful Town– had also been
approached. West Side Story seems an improbable prospect for the brilliant wit of
26
Zadan 1974, p. 22.
27
Gussow 1990.
28
This rather beautiful song is included in the 2005 recording of the complete Peter Pan
music issued by Koch International Classics.
29
Bernstein 1957, entry for 14 November 1955.
these two old friends of Bernstein’s who also knew Robbins from On the Town. As
it turned out, they were unable to get out of existing commitments.30
According to Bernstein’s datebook, Laurents and Sondheim had their first
meeting with him on 18 October, a month earlier than the log entry. Sondheim adds
some interesting details: he heard about the project from Arthur Laurents at the
opening-night party for Ugo Betti’s Island of Goatson 4 October, and played for
Bernstein the following day, on 5 October:
I auditioned for him without Arthur, and it was the day after the Isle of Goats
opening.31 Remember, Lenny and Arthur had to wait for a week till Betty and
Adolph knew whether they could get out of Winter Wonderland(I think that was
the title). I was put on hold for that week, which is when I went to consult Oscar
[Hammerstein]. My first official meeting after accepting the job was with Arthur
alone, the next with both of them.32
For the next few months there were numerous working sessions, either with
Bernstein and Sondheim or with other collaborators. Bernstein’s datebook is
littered with meetings: 17 in November, 13 in December, seven in January (1956),
another seven in February, and so on until 14 May 1956, when there was evidently
enough of the score written for some of it to be tried out: ‘Romeo singers here.
Cheryl [Crawford], Dr. S[irmay]’. Crawford was the show’s co-producer at the
time, and Sirmay was a leading light at Chappell’s, which was to co-publish the
score.33 According to Crawford (in a letter to Arthur Laurents of 11 April 1957),
a demo recording was made at this time: ‘By May 30th we had recorded the
songs.’ In other words, during the spring of 1956, a substantial part of the score
was composed. Though very little of it had been written by the start of the year, it
is likely that much of Act I was complete by May 1956. Bernstein described his
collaboration with Sondheim in the warmest terms:
30
There is confusion about a ‘Romeo’ story plan that has been attributed to Comden
and Green (see, for example, Garebian 1995, p. 35). This is a document that was sent to them
rather than written by them – it is the six-page plan devised by Laurents (with Bernstein) to
which Robbins responded. Laurents’s plan for the book was progressing, so there was no
reason for Comden and Green to produce another one. However, when they were asked to
help with writing the lyrics, they were sent a copy of the latest plot outline so that they could
see what the project was about. Owing to their obligations elsewhere, Comden and Green
wrote nothing for West Side Story.
31
Betti’s Delitto all’isola delle caprewas
Originally written in 1946, Betti’s was produced in an
English adaptation by Henry Reed (published by Samuel French in 1960 as Crime On Goat
Island),, with incidental music by Norman Dello Joio. It opened at the Fulton Theatre on 4
October 1955.
32
Stephen Sondheim, e-mail to Mark Eden Horowitz, 4 September 2007.
33
Sirmay evidently liked the show, and not just as a publishing prospect: he was one of
the original backers, investing $500.
Genesis 31
When Steve came into the picture and we began working together, he became part
of the team and the contribution he made was enormous. It far exceeded even my
expectations. What made him so valuable was that he was also a composer and I
could explain musical problems to him and he’d understand immediately, which
made the collaboration a joy. It was like writing with an alter ego.34
Funke’s gossip column in January 1956 – before this flurry of creative activity –
gave an impossibly optimistic progress report, but Sondheim was now mentioned:
Postponed: That Leonard Bernstein–Arthur Laurents–Steve Sondheim musical

West Side Story is finished. But, says our man, you no longer are to count it
among this season’s entrants. The creators of this modernized treatment of the
Romeo and Juliet legend have the notion that they want unknowns for the leading
parts. Consequently they figure they’re going to need all the time they can get for
searching. Look for it, therefore, early next season under the direction of Jerome
Robbins.35
The score was very far from finished in January 1956: there was little or no music
for Act II until well over a year later. One reason for the further delay in both
composing the score and producing the show was Bernstein’s concurrent work on
Candide – a fraught and ambitious project that had been in progress since 1953,
eventually opening on 1 December 1956. Bernstein himself saw some value in
allowing West Side Story to lie for a while, or at least he did by the time he compiled
his log:
Candide is on again; we plunge in next month. So again Romeo is postponed for

a year. Maybe it’s all for the best: by the time it emerges it ought to be deeply
seasoned, cured, hung, aged in the wood. It’s such a problematical work anyway
that it should benefit by as much sitting-time as it can get. Chief problem: to
tread the fine line between opera and Broadway, between realism and poetry,
ballet and ‘just dancing’, abstract and representational. Avoid being ‘messagy.’
Thelineisthere,butit’sveryfine,andsometimestakesalotofpeeringaround
to discern it.36
34
Zadan 1974, p. 16.
35
Funke 1956.
36
Bernstein 1957, entry for 17 March 1956.
The Book and Lyrics Take Shape
As the plot, character and settings began to take on a surer sense of direction, Arthur
Laurents set to work on redrafting the book for the show, and produced a number of
different versions. At least eight drafts of the script survive.37 One of the three typed
scripts in LBC – undated, but probably from early 1957 – has a list of numbers
written in pencil by Bernstein on the verso of the last page:
[Act I]
Opening
Mix
Mambo
Maria
One
America
Cool
Quintet
Marriage
Rumble
[Act II]
Pretty
Ballet
Duet (A Boy Like That)
This presents a version of the book that has significant differences from the published
libretto, including a quite different ending from that proposed in the outline of
autumn 1955 (see above) and in the final version.38 Table 2.3 summarizes the most
significant differences between this early script and the published libretto.
37
There are eight versions in the Stephen Sondheim Papers 1946–1965 at the Wisconsin
Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison,
Wisconsin. I must record warmest thanks to Stephen Banfield for giving me copies of his
detailed notes on these scripts. See also Block 1997, p. 382, note 13. Block records the dates
of all eight drafts: January 1956, spring 1956, 15 March 1956, winter 1956, 14 April 1957,
1 May 1957, 1 June 1957 and 19 July 1957.
38
1958 LIB.
Genesis 33
Table 2.3 Summary of differences between an early typescript and the published
version
West Side Story. Typescript, 56 and 28pp., West Side Story [libretto] (New York:
[undated, ?early 1957], LBC. Random House, 1958), 143pp.
ACT I ACT I
Scene 1: An Alleyway – Late afternoon Scene 1: 5:00 p.m. The Street
A shallow brick or cement alley; trashcans in front A suggestion of city streets and alleyways. A brick
of a high wall. No music. wall. The opening is musical: half-danced, half
A-RAB … sings or whistles a few bars of My mimed, with occasional phrases of dialogue.
greatest day. Suddenly, two dark-skinned boys
plummet down from the wall, crashing him to
the ground. His cries are smothered in sudden,
percussive music. A third boy – dressed like the
others in the gang garb of the Sharks – appears
on the wall and perches there as a lookout. The
pummeling is stopped by his whistled signal: the
music cuts. One of the assailants takes out a knife,
bends over the still figure of A-RAB and makes
a sharp, quick movement. A shriek from the
orchestra which continues as the three attackers
run off. A comment from the orchestra, silence,
and then several boys – dressed like A-Rab – run
on from the opposite side. …
End of scene: End of scene:
DIESEL: You’re due for the khaki, Riff. If we’re ACTION: Tony ain’t been with us for over a
ever gonna rumble – month.
RIFF: Yeah, but you gotta dig what you’re doin’. SNOWBOY: What about the day we clobbered
(This leads into a number about rumbles based on the Emeralds?
the Moon music, formerly used for the opening of A-RAB: Which we couldn’t have done without
the scene. Its mood is bright and energetic; its tone Tony.
shows that the kids really don’t know what they BABY JOHN: He saved me ever lovin’ neck.
may be letting themselves in for.) RIFF: Right. He’s always coming through for us
and he will now.
(sings) Jet song.
Scene 2: Drugstore Fountain – Late afternoon Scene 2: 5:30 p.m. A back yard
A piece of a set. RIFF sitting on the one stool in On a small ladder, a good-looking sandy-haired
front of the section of the fountain seen; a good boy is painting a vertical sign that will say: Doc’s.
looking young blond boy drying glasses and …
whistling Greatest day behind it: TONY. Note:
The song itself can be introduced during this
scene.
RIFF: It’ll be a great night, you’ll see! RIFF: Who knows? Maybe what you’re waitin’
TONY: Maybe. Could be. Why not? for will be twitchin’ at the dance!
(Starts to whistle again as the light goes quickly.) TONY (sings): Something’s coming.
Scene 2(A): Bridal Shop – Late afternoon Scene 3: 6:00 p.m. A bridal shop
MARIA: Please, Anita. Make the neck lower. MARIA: Por favor, Anita. Make the neck lower!
MARIA: Because it is the real beginning of my MARIA: Because tonight is the real beginning of
life as an American lady. my life as a young lady of America!
Scene 3: The Crystal Cave – Night Scene 4: 10:00 p.m. The gym
Stage directions mention that ‘the tune the kids are GLAD HAND: All right, boys and girls. Attention
dancing to is called The Atom Bomb Mambo’. please!
TONY (worried): You’re not thinking I’m
someone else?
MARIA: No.
DIESEL: Hey lover boy! Aw. I’ll see you at RIFF: Tony!
Doc’s. DIESEL: Ah, we’ll see him at Doc’s.
TONY (sings): Maria. TONY: (Speaking dreamily over the music – he is
now standing alone in the light) Maria … (sings)
Maria.
Scene 4: Back of the Tenements – Night Scene 5: 11:00 p.m. A back alley
TONY (sings): Maria, Maria TONY (sings): Maria, Maria
MARIA: Ssh! MARIA: Ssh!
Duet: One hand, one heart Duet: Tonight

End of scene: America End of scene: America
Scene 5: Drugstore – Night Scene 6: Midnight. The drugstore
ACTION: 39 – 40 – where the devil ’re they – 41 ACTION: Where the devil are they? Are we
havin’ a war council tonight or ain’t we?
Cool
Cool
DOC: So soon, boychik, so soon? DOC: Why? I’m frightened enough for both of you.
Scene 7: 5:30 p.m. The next day. The bridal shop
ANITA: She’s gone! The old bag of a bruja has
gone!
End of scene:
MARIA: Now you see, Anita, I told you there
was nothing to worry about (Music starts as she
leaves the dummy and walks up to TONY) …
TONY: With this ring I thee wed. (Sings): One
hand, one heart
Scene 6: The Neighbourhood Scene 8: 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The neighbourhood
A musical quintet for the five principals … we Spotlights pick out RIFF and the Jets, BERNARDO
pick up one after another of them as they are and the Sharks, ANITA, MARIA and TONY
introduced musically. The time is from morning against small sets representing different places in
to late afternoon of the next day and each person the neighbourhood. All are waiting expectantly
expresses his reason for looking forward eagerly for the coming of night, but for very different
to the night’s events. reasons. Quintet [Ensemble].
Scene 7: Bridal Shop – Late afternoon
ANITA: Finish that tomorrow. Ampara has gone.
End of scene:
reprise of One hand, one heart
Genesis 35
Scene 8: A Street – Sundown
The Jets march on as the curtains close on the
previous scene, singing the Rumble song: Mix!
As they sing, the song becomes a canon. The
Sharks are singing against them, from behind
a curtain. This becomes a scrim and we can see
BERNARDO and his gang singing and marching
in a direction opposite to that of RIFF and his
gang. Both gangs march off, the voices fading
away as the orchestra takes over as a prelude
for the next scene.
Scene 9: The Park – Sundown Scene 9: 9:00 p.m. Under the highway
There is an orchestral prelude before the BERNARDO: Ready?
curtain. The music continues for a moment or CHINO: Ready!
two under the beginning of the scene.
RIFF: Your boy ready?
CHINO: Any time yours is. BERNARDO: Come on, you yellow-bellied
BERNARDO: Come on, you yellow-bellied Polack bas–
Polak bas– (He never finishes, for RIFF hauls him off and
(He never finishes, for RIFF hauls around him hits him. Immediately, the two gangs alert and the
and socks him. Immediately, DIESEL yells ‘Jets!’ following action takes on the form of a dance.)
– which becomes the first word of the Rumble song Rumble
[Mix!]; and CHINO yells ‘Sharks!’ which becomes
the first word of his gang’s part of the song, now done
entirely in canon with orchestra. The singing and
music are tense, hushed, as RIFF and BERNARDO
fight in a stylized balletic fashion.
TONY: Maria! TONY: Maria!
(Curtain) (Curtain)
ACT II ACT II
Scene 1: An Apartment – Early evening Scene 1: 9:15 p.m. A bedroom
I feel pretty I feel pretty
[Scene includes Maria’s mother and father, and End of scene:
a detective named Magill, all cut. Tony does not MARIA: But it’s not us! It’s everything around
appear in this scene and there is no mention of us
a ballet] Ballet sequence – Somewhere
Scene 2: A Street – Night Scene 2: 10:00 p.m. Another alley
KRUPKE: Yeah: you. A-RAB: They get you yet?
A-RAB: It is Officer Krupke, Baby John. BABY JOHN: No. You?
Gee, Officer Krupke

BABY JOHN and A-RAB: Bug You, Jack! ANYBODYS: Thanks, Daddy-o.
Scene 3: Police Station – Night
A police interrogation for boys and girls from both
gangs.
Two dancers representing Tony and Maria come

forth from the haze at the back as there is music
based on the Mambo theme … In dance she is
drawn away from [Tony] by her brother … The
dancing lovers are together for a moment …
Scene 4: Street – Night Scene 3: 11:30 p.m. The bedroom
A boy like that – I have a love
[End of scene:] End of scene:
A boy like that – Once in your life SCHRANK: And his name?
MARIA: José.
Scene 5: Drugstore – Night Scene 4: 11:40 p.m. The drugstore
TONY sings a reprise of Once in your life. A-RAB and some of the Jets are there as
The music from the previous scene has never ANYBODYS and other Jets run in. … The shop
really stopped: thus the number ends with Tony’s doorbell tinkles as ANITA enters. Cold silence,
affirmation of love. then slowly she comes down to the counter. They
DOC: Who wants advice when what he needs is all stare at her. A long moment. Someone turns on
money. the juke-box. A mambo comes on softly.
[later:] MARIA runs in breathless The Taunting breaks out into a wild, savage dance.
TONY: What have you done now??? DOC: Get out of here!
Scene 5: 11:50 p.m. The cellar
End of scene:
(TONY backs away, then suddenly turns and runs
out the door. As he does, the set flies away and the
stage goes dark. In the darkness we hear TONY’s
voice.)
TONY: Chino? Chino? Come and get me, too,
Chino.
Scene 6: The Docks – Night Scene 6: Midnight. The street
The actual locale of this scene depends on the
designer. The writing and form of this scene Somewhere
depends on how much it will be underscored and (Maria begins to sing – without orchestra)
how much will be sung. The rough line is that MARIA: Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.
MARIA comes in wild, angry, raging. She sings Hold my hand and I’ll take you there.
of her hatred for everything that has destroyed her Someday, Somehow…
love. … TONY enters, however, and her hate and (Tony has started to join in on the second line. She
anger are swept away by joy that he is alive and by sings harder, as though to urge him back to life,
her love for him. … DIESEL, BABY JOHN and but his voice falters and he barely finishes the line.
ANITA hurry on: the BOYS with a few dollars She sings on, a phrase or two more, then stops, his
they have scrounged from the gang for Tony and body quiet in her arms. A moment, and then, as
Maria: ANITA with a little bundle of clothes. she gently rests TONYon the floor, the orchestra
The lovers are happy even though TONY is too finishes the last bars of the song.)
weak to rise and take the money. HE and MARIA
reprise one of their love songs and are singing End of scene:
happily, unaware – as they all are – of the COP MARIA: Te adoro, Anton.
who has followed Diesel, Baby John and Anita, Epilogue
and is standing there, waiting.
Genesis 37
Act I, scene 1 of the typed script is set in ‘An Alleyway – Late afternoon’ and a
song, ‘My Greatest Day’, is mentioned in the stage directions, though there are no
lyrics given for it. The directions at the end of the scene refer to another song that
did not survive as a vocal number: ‘This leads into a number about rumbles based
on the “Moon music”, formerly used for the opening of the scene. Its mood is bright
and energetic; its tone shows that the kids really don’t know what they may be letting
themselves in for.’ The ‘Moon music’ was so called because the opening lyrics of
the sung version of the opening began: ‘How long does it take to reach the moon-a
rooney?’.
Scene 2 opens with Tony whistling the song ‘Greatest Day’, and there is a
note that: ‘The song itself can be introduced during this scene.’ A typescript in the
Sondheim papers39 includes the lyrics of this song, which began:
My greatest day was the day I was born

And the day I was eight
And the day I was five –
Also the day when I first blew a horn,
When I first stayed out late,
When I first learned to drive.
This was later revised to become the ‘Jet Song’. Some lines spoken by Tony later
in the scene were to prove a useful source, very late in the show’s evolution, for the
lyrics of ‘Something’s Coming’:
Tony: It’s right outside that door, around the corner: maybe buried under
a tree in the park, maybe being stamped in a letter, maybe whistling
down the river, maybe –
Riff: What is?
Tony (shrugs): I don’t know. But it’s coming, and it’s the greatest.
Scene 2(A) in this script is the first appearance of Anita and Maria in the bridal
shop. Scene 3 is set in ‘The Crystal Cave – Night’and the music is specified as ‘The
Atom Bomb Mambo’. At the end of the scene, the lyrics of ‘Maria’ are in place,
although they were to be revised (the third line – later ‘All the beautiful sounds of
the world in a single word’ – is here ‘The most beautiful, wonderful, marvelous
magic word’).
Scene 4 is the Balcony Scene. In the final show, this is where the ‘Tonight’duet
was to appear, but in this early script the song is specified as ‘One Hand, One Heart’.
This early version of lyrics for the Tony–Maria duet is by Bernstein himself. The
song opens with Tony’s lines:
39
This script is marked as ‘Revised March 15, 1956’.
What can they do?

I’m part of you,
And we are one.
One hand, one heart,

Your hand, my heart,
Your eyes make me see:
You’re the breath and life of me.
The scene ends with ‘America’, the lyrics only slightly different from those in the
final version.
Scene 5, the drugstore at night, includes all the lyrics of ‘Cool’. The Bridal
Shop Scene that follows this in the final version is placed one scene later, after the
Quintet. Scene 6 here is the same as the eventual scene 8: ‘The Neighbourhood. A
musical quintet for the five principals’. Then comes the scene in the bridal shop with
a ‘reprise of One Hand, One Heart’ at the end, including the lyrics:
Tony: One life, one love.

Maria: Your life, my love.
Both: One now, one to be – !
Scene 8 in the typescript was later deleted. The stage directions specify ‘A Street
– Sundown’ and a song: ‘The Jets march on as the curtains close on the previous
scene, singing the Rumble Song, Mix!’ The directions at the start of scene 9, set
in ‘The Park – Sundown’, mention an ‘orchestral prelude before the curtain’. The
setting was eventually to become ‘9:00 p.m. Under the highway’. As in the final
version, the curtain falls after Tony has cried out ‘Maria!’
Act II opens in ‘An Apartment – Early evening’, and ‘I Feel Pretty’ is mentioned
as the song. It also includes Maria and Bernardo’s parents, who are visited by a
detective named Magill; he has come to break the news about Bernardo being ‘in the
Catholic hospital’. The most interesting aspect about this cut passage of dialogue is
the language barrier: the parents speak in Spanish, and Magill has to use Maria as
an English-speaking intermediary. There is no mention of a ballet, and Tony/Romeo
does not arrive to see Maria.
Scene 2 is set in a street at night, as it is in the final version. The directions for
scene 3 are ‘Police Station – Night’. Its purpose is an interrogation of members of
both gangs, but this is intercut with an early version of the ballet sequence. Scene 4 is
where ‘A Boy Like That’ appears, in a version that matches the autograph manuscript
described in Chapter 3, including Tony’s reprise of ‘Once In Your Life’ (an earlier
lyric set to the music of ‘I Have a Love’) to cover the scene change. Scene 5 is
very different here, since it is not Anita who visits the drugstore but Maria, and it
is Tony who interrupts the taunting of her by the gang. The final scene is an outline
rather than a script. While, in some early versions, both Tony and Maria die, in this
Genesis 39
version they are both alive as the curtain falls: Tony is weak and badly wounded, but
here they receive gifts of money and clothes for their escape from members of both
gangs, all watched by an unseen ‘Cop’.
Another draft in the Sondheim papers is of what appears to be a slightly later
version of the script, ‘revised on 15 April 1957’. It has no lyrics, but mentions the
position of songs in the score. The most interesting are some of those in Act II. For
the first time, the placing of ‘Somewhere’is described – but it is given as a number
sung by Tony to Maria, prefaced by the lines:
We’ll go someplace where there are no streets. We’ll go tonight. I can get money
from Doc. We’ll go down the river, way down where it curves away and widens
and the buildings turn into fields, and there is only you and me and all the time
we’ve always wanted. (And tenderly, he sings to her…)
The place for a humorous song to be sung by the Jets is also clear, but at this point
it appears as the ‘comedy number: “I Agree With You, Judge” wherein the kids play
at being hauled into court and themselves reel off all the endless reasons for their
“delinquency” before the judge can say anything’. The end of the show, from Anita’s
arrival at the drugstore, is as in the final version. Though the music had not all been
written by mid-April, the script of West Side Story was starting to take on something
like its eventual shape.
Auditions and Producers
With Candide over and done with at the start of February 1957, a major problem
emerged for West Side Story: casting the ‘unknowns’ was proving to be something of
a nightmare for Robbins, Laurents, Bernstein, Sondheim and Cheryl Crawford (who
was still the show’s producer at this stage). Funke’s gossip column again reveals the
difficulties of finding the right kind of actors:
Quest: Considering the advertised tantrums and noises made by temperamental

tenors, you would think there are plenty of them in the woods, and out. But, lament
Cheryl Crawford and Jerome Robbins, such does not appear to be the case, at least
when you are looking for good young tenors. Miss Crawford who, with Roger
L. Stevens, is supposed to produce the musical West Side Story (Mr. Robbins
directing), has been listening to hundreds of young American tenors and so far has
not turned up a prospect for what is one of the leading roles in the Arthur Laurents–
Leonard Bernstein creation. Specifically, what is needed is a tenor who can sing,
act, and look as though he is 18. Colleges, singing societies and ‘all agents known
to man’ have been alerted. Help!40
40
Funke 1957a.
It is surprising to find that Bernstein’s invented log has no entries between

February and July 1957, since his datebook tells a quite different story. During
February there are 12 meetings with one or more of the collaborators noted in the
datebook, including Sondheim and Bernstein playing through what existed of the
score to William Paley on 26 February (a ghastly occasion: the show was met with
incomprehension and hostility; see Chapter 6). March meetings noted in Bernstein’s
datebooks included the first auditions (on 26 and 28 March), and these continued on
5, 11 and 15 April.
Just as the team was starting to cast the show, there was suddenly serious doubt
about whether it would happen at all when the vastly experienced Cheryl Crawford
quit as producer.41 Laurents recalled that ‘Cheryl Crawford and Roger Stevens were
going to produce the show, after it was turned down by everyone else’.42 She was no
stranger to ‘serious’ musicals: her Broadway credits already included three shows by
Kurt Weill, and Marc Blitzstein’s Regina. But she could not see how West Side Story
was going to work, and she was also struggling to find the financial backing.43 On
11 April she wrote to Arthur Laurents voicing alarm about the shape the show was
in. Her letter began starkly: ‘This is for your eyes alone. I think we are in trouble.
Although I want so much to be constructive and not destructive, it does no good to
shut my mind and trust to blind luck.’ She had misgivings about Laurents’s book
(‘you, the author, have not had a chance to really get at the material as an artist but
almost like a carpenter’) and was alarmed by the lack of new music: ‘On April 5th last
year I saw you and Steve. By May 30th we had recorded the songs. Since that date
I have heard one new song. That’s damn near a year.’44 In Crawford’s opinion, ‘the
story at present has no real depth or urgency’, and she felt that the main characters
were severely underdeveloped. After giving examples of ways in which she thought
Tony, Riff, Chino and others could be given greater depth, Crawford makes a more
general point about the characters in the show as representative of the needs and
wants of a whole generation:
41
Cheryl Crawford (1902–1986) co-founded the Group Theatre in 1931 and was
Executive Producer of the Actors Studio. She served as producer for Weill’s Johnny Johnson
(1936), the 1942 revival of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Weill’s One Touch of Venus(1943),
Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon (1947), Weill’s Love Life (1948), Blitzstein’s Regina (1949)
and Lerner and Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon (1951).
42
Zadan 1974, p. 16.
43
Hal Prince recalled that Sondheim told him, ‘“We have no show.” I said, “What
happened?” He said, “Cheryl Crawford walked out – she can’t find the backers for it”’(NPR
2007).
44
The May 1956 demo recording of West Side Story mentioned by Crawford remains
something of a mystery. Sondheim has ‘no recollection of any demo’ (e-mail to the present
author, 13 November 2008).
Genesis 41
I know that other individualities and backgrounds can be given beside those I throw
out and I don’t care as long as they are richer, giving more fabric and conflict.
Besides I think we want to say this is ‘youth’ today, not just juvenile delinquents
and young psychos. Their yearnings are strong and shared by youths all over the
world and in other sections of society. What is happening to kids seems to be one
of our most urgent problems today and although we’ve picked these special kids
their desires and conflicts should be representative of more. One of the typical
things about them is that they can’t wait. Can’t wait to be men, to have money,
to have everything they find desirable and attractive. If the characters are more
developed (and I have ideas about Maria too) then the story will get more exciting.
For instance, I now can’t accept Tony’s killing as inevitable.
I didn’t mean to write so much but I wanted to try to get some of my thoughts
down on paper since at the conference I could only voice my objection. So glad
I’m not an author!45
Laurents’s reply is dated ‘Thursday night’.46 He was caught in an invidious

position, since Crawford’s request for secrecy made it difficult for him to discuss
her criticisms with the rest of the creative team. But Laurents did not disguise that
there were pressing problems, above all the lack of music: ‘We do not have and have
never had anything near a complete score. In point of fact, we are without a second
act score. It would seem to me that this is a big problem which should be attacked
at once – and hard.’ He also felt unduly hemmed in: ‘I cannot go on rewriting to
please different people. I am so beleaguered by all this that it is difficult to have firm
convictions of my own: to write for myself. I begin to think Lenny has a point: if
you don’t write, you can’t be asked to rewrite.’ Worryingly, Laurents added that ‘the
whole atmosphere around the show is depressing and discouraging, the last thing
to stimulate creativity’. But he then went on to defend the essentials of the show
against Crawford’s criticisms, and in doing so provided an eloquent explanation of
his creative vision for West Side Story:
I think it is or should be a strong love story against a heightened, theatricalized,

romanticized background based on juvenile delinquency. I think the reality should
be an emotional, not a factual one. It is here, it seems, that we sharply diverge. I
feel that, in general, your suggestions tend toward a social opera about today’s
youth, with the minor story of two lovers. This is not the show we intended to do
and it is not the show that I, at any rate, want to do. Furthermore, I think it would be
a sure flop. Tension, anger, hate, etc. all the dark emotions may not be customary
in a musical, but I do not feel they will depress or repel an audience when they are
45
Carbon copy in the Roger L. Stevens Collection, Library of Congress.
46
11 April 1957, the date of Crawford’s letter, was a Thursday.
Thursday. Laurents’s letter must
either date from the same night, or from a week later, 18 April.
done in a theatrical, romantic style. When they are done in a social, documentary
style, I feel they will.
Laurents then responded to the specific points in Crawford’s critique, starting

with reservations she had expressed about the opening scene, and revealing in the
process that it was Laurents himself who was largely responsible for making initial
suggestions about musical numbers:
Your criticism that the story has no real urgency. I agree and am trying to fix that.
I also agree that the rumble might well be initiated in the Crystal Cave scene and
suggested that to the group at our last meeting. Jerry vetoed it. Furthermore, this
left a void for a musical number to end the [first] scene. All the ideas, every idea
for every musical number has come from me; I cannot think of one for the scene
without the rumble beginning; no one has an idea.
To Crawford’s charge that Tony’s killing was not inevitable, Laurents responded
robustly:
Neither is Romeo’s or Juliet’s. And I don’t think it matters. What does matter to
me is that the audience is convinced of his desire to be killed. That is character
and that is more important than all the sociological, crotch-scratching facts in the
naturalistic world. I apologize for my vehemence on this subject of naturalism but
it is something I am sick to death of in the theatre and is one reason why I wanted
to do a musical.
So there we are. I’m off to rewrite. I can only say I hope you feel better when
you read the latest revision. But I wish there were a score to go with it.47
Despite the compelling arguments presented by Laurents in his letter, it seems that
Crawford did not feel any better about the show. Nor did Laurents, when recalling
this unhappy episode almost twenty years later:
Cheryl was known as a lady of great morality, but not the way she behaved on
this show. For one thing she would say to me ‘You can’t listen to Jerry, he doesn’t
know anything about writing.’ And she would go to Jerry and say ‘You’ve got to
do something about Arthur!’ Then after the show was written, Roger [Stevens]
came to me and said, ‘Listen, I think Cheryl’s gone cold on the show but I’ll stick.’
And Cheryl called a meeting – we were six weeks away from rehearsal and since
everyone had other commitments, if we didn’t go on time, the show would never
be done. Cheryl announced that she thought the book was terrible and that it would
be insane to proceed. And I asked her how Roger felt, and she said, ‘Oh exactly the
47
Carbon copy in the Roger L. Stevens Collection, Library of Congress.
Genesis 43
same way.’ And I said, ‘Cheryl, you’re an immoral woman’, and we all got up and
walked out and went to the Algonquin to have a drink.48
Bernstein’s datebook includes a meeting with Crawford at 5 p.m. on 22 April (which

was Easter Monday). It was on this occasion that she announced her withdrawal
from the project. Carol Lawrence, who was being considered for the part of Maria at
the time, recalled Crawford’s reasons for giving up the project:
How could the show miss? In any number of ways – at least, that’s what some pros
thought. As Cheryl Crawford said when she backed out, ‘It’s got an operatic score,
four ballets … It’s about a bunch of teenagers in blue jeans, and people are reading
enough about them in their daily papers without paying good money to see a show
about them. It’s got a cast of total unknowns, and it ends tragically. Sorry fellas, it
will never work.’49
Cheryl Crawford’s place was taken within a couple of weeks by Robert E. Griffith50
and the young Harold S. Prince.51 Griffith and Prince had been stage managers for
Wonderful Townin 1953,52 and their recent production successes had included The
Pajama Game (1954) and Damn Yankees (1955). Prince and Sondheim were already
friends, and they discussed the situation on the phone. When Crawford withdrew,
Prince was in Boston with Griffith for the tryout of New Girl In Town. Prince spoke
to Griffith and called back within 15 minutes to say that they could come to New
York the next Sunday. In fact, Prince was already familiar with the score: ‘I knew the
show backwards and forward, though Bobby [Griffith] had not heard it, for Steve had
played all the music for me, unbeknownst to Lenny, since he didn’t want anybody
to hear it.’53 New Girl In Townopened on 14 May 1957, and the next day Griffith
and Prince got to work raising the capital for West Side Story ($300,000 ‘within the
week’54), and the show was able to go into rehearsal only a few weeks later than
originally planned.
At the time of Crawford’s departure the casting of the principals was not finalized.
Carol Lawrence was near the start of her career when she was eventually cast as
Maria. Her Broadway debut had been in Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952, since
when she had appeared as a replacement dancer in the Albert Hague musical Plain
48
Zadan 1974, p. 16.
49
Lawrence 1990, p. 38.
50
Robert E. Griffith (1907–1961) began his Broadway career as an actor in 1929 and
later turned to stage management and production.
51
Hal Prince [Harold S. Prince] (b. 1928) first worked on Broadway in 1950 as Assistant
Stage Manager for the revue Tickets, Please! and the hit musical Call Me Madam.
52
Griffith was credited as Production Stage Manager, Prince as Stage Manager..
GriffithwascreditedasProductionStageManager,PrinceasStageManager
53
Zadan 1974, p. 17.
54
Zadan 1974, p. 17.
and Fancy in 1955,55 then in the flop Shangri-La(which ran for just 21 performances
in June 1956). In March 1957 she joined the Ziegfeld Follies of 1957(starring Bea
Lillie) at the Winter Garden Theatre. The role of Maria offered her the chance of a
major break, but it was certainly not easy for Lawrence to get the part:
Over quite a long period, I auditioned thirteen times for the role of Maria in what they
finallycalledWest Side Story. Even then thirteen auditions was a lot, and today Actors
Equity would not permit it.56 But I was working in other shows and I could be patient.
Besides, maybe people were right – maybe West Side Story would never happen.
When I was called back for the thirteenth time, Larry Kert was there to audition
for the role of Tony. We had read for the roles together before, but this time I had asked
if we could take the scenes home and memorize them. Jerry Robbins had agreed. But
instead of asking us to sing a few songs, Jerry told Larry to go backstage and wait
there. Then he said ‘You,’ pointing to me but calling me ‘Maria.’
‘Seethatscaffoldingupthereoverthestage?’hesaid.‘Lookaround,findouthow
to get up there. Then stay there out of sight.’
It was an unusual request, but … I found a narrow metal ladder leading up
to who knows where, and up I went. Jerry called Larry onstage and told him to
findmeandtakeitfromthere.UpwhereIwas,IbegantofeelasifIreallywere
Maria, watching Tony search for me, but afraid to call out for fear of alerting my
family.AndLarry/Tonywasgenuinelydesperatetofindme.Bythetimehesawme
and climbed up to where I was, the two of us were almost breathless. We did the
Balcony Scene from there.
When we came down, Jerry said ‘You’ve both got the parts,’ and then went onto
other things. He was like that. I burst into tears of relief. The producer, Hal Prince,
said ‘No, really – you’re Maria!’ Then I cried for pure joy.57
It had apparently been a close-run thing. As the New York Times revealed a few
days before the Broadway opening, ‘almost to the end Miss Lawrence ran even with
a Lebanese girl whose voice was greatly admired’.58 By 3 June 1957, the New York
Times was able to report that the principal roles had been cast: ‘The cast is to include
55
Hague’s biggest Broadway success was Redhead (1959), starring Gwen Verdon,
Hague’s
directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. Hague (1920–2001) achieved celebrity in later life
as the music teacher Benjamin Shorofsky in Alan Parker’s film Fame!and in the subsequent
television spin-off series.
56
Actors’ Equity would not permit someone to audition that many times today without
being paid.
57
Lawrence 1990, pp. 38–9. In an e-mail to the present author (28 September 2009),
Stephen Sondheim wrote: ‘The reason that Carol got the part was that after many auditions in
which she seemed no more than a possible Maria understudy, Arthur suggested she read with
a Puerto Rican accent. We hired her immediately.’
58
Schumach 1957.
Genesis 45
Carol Lawrence, Larry Kert, Chita Rivera and perhaps David Winters.’59 All four were
to be in the show, but there are some intriguing names (and comments) to be found in
the audition lists annotated by Bernstein. On 7 May 1957, those auditioning included
Chita Rivera as Anita (no comment from Bernstein, but a tick next to her name), Lee
Becker as Anybodys (Bernstein thought she was ‘terrific’), Larry Kert trying for the
part of Bernardo (‘Great songs & performer. But looks? Read Riff better’) and Carol
Lawrence as Maria (‘Lovely soprano. Not quite Maria. Much realer with accent’);
all of them were eventually cast (though with Larry Kert as Tony rather than either
of the parts he read that day). Mickey Calin – the original Riff – obviously came a
long way during rehearsals: at his audition, Bernstein had noted ‘Wrong for R[iff].
No actor. Tappish dance, clean, good looking’. Also auditioned that day were three
others who were to make it into the original cast: Tony Mordente (A-Rab), Arch
Johnson (Schrank), Art Smith (Doc) and David Winters (Baby John).
Just over a week later, on 16 May, Lawrence was back again and Kert now
auditioned for Tony. But we also find Warren Beatty – later to achieve renown in
Hollywood – up for the part of Riff (‘Good voice. Can’t open jaw. Charming as
hell’) and Jerry Orbach – the future star of Promises, Promises (Chuck Baxter)
and Chicago (Billy Flynn) – trying for the part of Chino (‘Good read. Good loud
bar[itone]’). Suzanne Pleshette – who played Annie Hayworth in Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds (1963) and was Bob Newhart’s wife in the television sitcom The Bob
Newhart Show – auditioning for the part of Maria, was obviously having a bad day:
Bernstein notes simply that she was ‘hoarse’. Laurents recalled that ‘In casting West
Side, we had to make compromises, and I think most of them were made by Lenny
and Steve. People didn’t expect much acting in musicals then. We had to find people
who could move, who could dance.’60 True enough, although in terms of singing
the young cast made a good job of the music in the end. This was Larry Kert’s first
Broadway show, but Sondheim encouraged him to audition for Tony (after he had
been rejected as Bernardo, Riff and even as a chorus member). Chita Rivera had
taken a few small roles on Broadway since 1955, most recently as the standby for
Mehitabel in Shinbone Alley, a show in which Reri Grist and David Winters – both
to be cast in West Side Story – were also performing. The assistant conductor was
Frederick Vogelgesang, who was to perform the same function in West Side Story.61
As well as revealing some of the cast, Sam Zolotow’s article on 3 June in the
Times also reported that the show’s title had changed again: ‘Gangway!is the new
title for the Arthur Laurents–Leonard Bernstein–Steve Sondheim musical formerly
59
Zolotow 1957.
60
Zadan 1974, p. 17.
61
Shinbone Alley, with music by George Kleinsinger, lyrics by Joe Dalton, and a book by
Joe Dalton and Mel Brooks, was based on the Archie and Mehitabelstories by Don Marquis.
It opened on 13 April 1957 and closed on 25 May after 49 performances. Among the show’s
other credits are additional orchestrations by Irwin Kostal.
titled West Side Story.’62 On the same day the Herald Tribunegave a slightly different
version of the new title: it would ‘henceforth be known as Gang Way!’. This idea did
not last long, as Lewis Funke reported three weeks later:
Not the least of the thousand and one crises that afflict the preparation of shows is the
quest for a title. … For instance, take the musical that has been fashioned by Arthur
Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Steve Sondheim. For a year or more it was known
as West Side Story. Not so long ago the news went forth that henceforth the show
would be called Gangway!Now reports indicate that Gangway! is in decline.63
However, the title still appeared as Gang Way!in next morning’s New York Times,
which announced that rehearsals were starting that day, Wednesday, 24 June 1957.
At the very end of June, Bernstein was interviewed in the Washington Star and
talked, among other things, about his uneasiness with the show’s titles:
What Mr. Bernstein came to Washington with was a title problem. The new musical
… has been variously known as West Side Story and Gang Way!
‘I’m not happy about either of those,’ said Mr. Bernstein. ‘I don’t like that
“Story.” It sounds like a documentary or a class B movie. And the action doesn’t
necessarily take place on the West Side. Gang Way!is worse. It makes me think
of Sailor Bewareor Anchors Aweigh. In fact, we’re having a meeting tomorrow to
make a final decision on this.’64 …
‘This isn’t Romeo and Julietin modern dress,’ he explains. ‘But we do have
a Romeo and Juliet situation in that the boy and girl are kept apart by the feud
between rival gangs, one of Puerto Rican immigrants. The Puerto Rican influx in
New York figures in the story and has tremendous excitement, even violence.’ …
‘This has tremendous potential,’ he said. ‘If it comes off Broadway musicals
will never be the same again.’He paused to reflect, then added, ‘If it doesn’t, they
will be.’65
By the time this article appeared on 30 June the meeting had already taken place,
as the Daily Newsrevealed a day earlier: ‘The title of the new Leonard Bernstein
musical play, due at the National for three weeks starting August 19, has been finally
nailed down. It’s West Side Story.’66 A week later, Arthur Gelb in the New York
Times gave a reason for the change – and added details of the Musical Director: ‘A
62
Zolotow 1957.
63
Funke 1957b.
64
According to Sondheim (e-mail to the present author, 28 September 2009), Bernstein
suggested the title ‘Tony ’n’ Maria’.
65
Washington Star, 30 June 1957.
66
Washington Daily News, 29 June 1957.
Genesis 47
spokesman for the musical explained that Gangway was “felt to be a misleading
title.” … Max Goberman was signed last week as musical conductor.’67
A Conductor for West Side Story
Max Goberman was hired to conduct West Side Story seven weeks before the first
night of tryouts in Washington, and a week after Robbins, Bernstein and Sondheim
had started to rehearse the cast. He was to prove a good choice for dealing with such
a complex new Broadway score. Born in 1911, Goberman had studied the violin
with Leopold Auer and conducting with Fritz Reiner; he played in the Philadelphia
Orchestra before embarking on a successful conducting career. As well as West
Side Story, Goberman’s Broadway conducting credits included Bernstein’s On the
Town (1944), Morton Gould’s Billion Dollar Baby(1946), Frank Loesser’s Where’s
Charley? (1948), Arthur Schwartz’s A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1951) and Jerry
Herman’s Milk and Honey(1961). But there was more to Goberman. Something of
his energy – and his wide range of enthusiasms – comes across in a review by Ross
Parmenter in the New York Times describing a Goberman concert of Baroque music:
Max Goberman, the wiry little conductor with the pointed beard who leads
West Side Story with such dynamic intensity, is what some of the rough-talking
youngsters in the Broadway show might call a baroque buff.
Earlier this season, in breaks between Saturday matinee and evening
performances of the Leonard Bernstein musical, Mr. Goberman led the New York
Sinfonietta in two all-Vivaldi programs. Yesterday, a Sunday when he had the
whole day free, he turned to Handel, an even greater baroque master. And this
time the conductor did something he has not done in more than twenty years. He
appeared in public as a violinist.68
Goberman was the first conductor to embark on recording a complete series of the
Haydn symphonies (before his death, 45 symphonies were set down for his own
label, Library of Recorded Masterpieces, using H.C. Robbins Landon’s new edition
of the scores, which were also included in the original issues of the records) and on
an even more ambitious project to record all of Vivaldi’s concertos (which included
copies of the Ricordi editions) – a project that was even pursued in the orchestra pit
during performances of West Side Story.69
67
Gelb 1957.
68
Parmenter 1959.
69
Goberman studied the scores of Vivaldi concertos in the pit at the Winter Garden
during stretches of dialogue and wrote an amusing article on the subject. ‘The question
naturally arises in the minds of some people, “How does a theatre conductor (especially a
ten-time offender) get involved in this baroque music?” The answer to this is perhaps another
During rehearsals, conductor, composer and orchestrators did not always see eye
to eye. Irwin Kostal recalled that
the orchestra rehearsals were terrific, and also very difficult. The conductor was
Max Goberman … Max had a special clause in his contract forbidding Lenny from
conducting, even at rehearsals. One day we were rehearsing in the theatre second
floor lobby, under very crowded conditions, and Lenny, Sid [Ramin] and I were
sitting very close to Max as he was conducting. At the end of a never-before played
orchestration, Max turned around and facing the three of us said, ‘That’s without
doubt the worst arrangement I have ever heard,’ to which Lenny answered ‘Give
me the baton and I’ll show you how it should be done.’ Max answered, ‘No, no, it
says in my contract …’ Lenny interrupted him saying, ‘Now you do it in the right
tempo, and you’ll find it’s perfectly all right.’70
Goberman’s death in Vienna, on 31 December 1962, was barely reported at the

time: there was a newspaper strike in New York. Later tributes included one from the
musicologist Paul Henry Lang, who described him as a ‘devoted musician of sterling
integrity’,71 while Bernstein himself, at a New York Philharmonic concert in May 1963,
dedicated a performance of Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ from The Four Seasons to the memory of
his friend, describing Goberman’s work as ‘witty and lyrical’,72 epithets that can well
be applied to his conducting of West Side Story, to judge from the cast recording.
West Side Story in Rehearsal
As noted in the New York Times, rehearsals started on 24 June. Two weeks later, the
Herald Tribunedescribed the unusually long rehearsal period for West Side Story
– almost twice as long as the norm for Broadway musicals – and interviewed the
show’s new producers:
question, which goes this way. “How does an admirer of baroque music get trapped in the
theatre, especially ten times?” Part of the answer lies in those periods of a musical show that
do not call for music. It is amazing to discover the speed with which one can signal the last
note of a Ballet Sequence and resume studying the sequence and harmonies of a Vivaldi score,
while the characters on stage continue with dialogue or mayhem. Of course, one develops
another set of reflexes aimed at being aware of the next place where music must start. You
must be able to tear yourself away from a long basso ostinato in Vivaldi (even before it has
given in) to face a sometime obstinate bass player in real life and warn him to be ready to start
on time. This was standard operating procedure in the “Cool” number in Leonard Bernstein’s
excellent score for West Side Story’ (Goberman 1959).
70
Kostal, unpublished memoirs.
71
Musical Quarterly, 51 (3) (1965), 586.
72
Reported in the New York Times, 10 May 1963.
Genesis 49
The show will have eight instead of the traditional (for musicals) five weeks of
rehearsal, to give Mr. Robbins time for direction and choreography. It will open
in Washington ‘because everything there is air-conditioned, the people are used to
going to theater in the heat and you do good business there in the summer.’ Beyond
the ‘kind of fascinating’Oliver Smith sets, which Mr. Griffith considers ‘the most
exciting scenery Smith has done,’ the big offering in this ‘love story between young
people of conflicting racial backgrounds’is, Mr. Griffith said, that ‘it introduces forty
kids, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, who are loaded with talent.’
‘We’ll have every movie scout in town knocking on our door,’ Mr. Prince said
contentedly.73
Jerome Robbins ran notoriously arduous and demanding rehearsals, driving

his young cast beyond exhaustion. He ‘pushed everyone past the comfort level,
sometimes blind to everything but the task in hand’.74 Larry Kert called the rehearsals
with Robbins ‘a very painful experience’,75 and Carol Lawrence described Robbins’s
punishing methods in some detail:
Never have I worked with anyone more tyrannical than Jerome Robbins. When he
is working, it is the work that matters and not any of the people involved in it …
We learned very quickly that he demanded more of us than we ever thought we
could give – and that if we didn’t meet those expectations, we were out.
We rehearsed and lived by strict rules. We had to literally become our roles. We
were not allowed to call ourselves or each other by our real names. We had to use
the names of the characters we played. I was Maria, never Carol. The actor playing
my brother was Bernardo, not Kenny [Le Roy]. To keep us from slipping out of
character, Jerry would suddenly ask us questions about our parents – not our real
parents, but the parents of the characters we were playing, even if those parents
weren’t mentioned in the show. He trained us to imagine what it would be like to
be the characters we played, and to discover why we were the way we were …
We humane, civilized actors became the hate-filled, violent street gangs we were
portraying. If you think onstage was exciting, it didn’t compare to backstage! The
Sharks and the Jets lived! Violence and sexual intimidation, fights and injuries, you
name it – it was going on and getting worse … In rehearsal, Jerry was unmerciful
in his pursuit of perfection. The slightest mistake in a dance step, gesture or word
met a fate worse than death.76
Brutal they may have been, but Robbins’s methods certainly got results – even when
the cast was outside the theatre. The Washington Post reported:
73
Herald Tribune, 7 July 1957.
74
Jowitt 2004, p. 276.
75
Zadan 1974, p. 19.
76
Lawrence 1990, pp. 42–3.
Policemen along the 52nd St. beat are having a spot of trouble trying to decide which
passing youths are juvenile delinquents and which are merely singers and dancers on
their way to rehearsals for The West Side Story at the ANTA Theatre. Tough youths are
the theme of the show, and the members of the cast look and dress the part.77
By contrast, working with Bernstein and Sondheim was a much less gruelling
experience. Photographs show their smiling faces with the cast gathered around the
piano, and these suggest a very different atmosphere from the harsh method-acting
regime that was the norm in Robbins’s rehearsals.78 Bernstein seems to have been at
his most encouraging and supportive during these music calls, and Carol Lawrence
remembers that rehearsals with him were an oasis of calm after the stormy sessions
with Robbins:
The opposite style, and in this show the balance to Jerry’s, was Leonard Bernstein’s.
Here, too, was a genius, but one who was sensitive to the feelings, needs and
anxieties of human beings. Very often after Jerry took us apart, Lenny would put
us back together again. None of us was an opera singer, and we knew it,79 yet we
were singing opera. If Lenny saw that we were having difficulty with a passage
in a song, he would say: ‘Tell me, how does that note feel in your mouth? If it
doesn’t feel comfortable, I’ll change it.’ He would work with each of us on an
individual basis for hours, and we couldn’t take our eyes off his face, because so
many emotions were written there … He didn’t drive us: he led us by believing
in us. He is one of the gentlest, most thoughtful men I have ever known, and we
knocked ourselves out for him because we loved him.80
Chita Rivera, who auditioned six times before she was given the role of Anita,
remembered learning ‘A Boy Like That’ with Bernstein. It was a song she initially
foundverydifficulttopitch;Bernsteinwaspatientbutdetermined:
I remember sitting next to Lenny and his starting with ‘A Boy Like That,’ teaching
it to me, and me saying, ‘I’ll never do this, I can’t hit those notes, I don’t know
how to hit those notes.’ And he made me do it, and he taught me how to hit those
77
Kilgallen 1957.
78
These rehearsal photographs include a series by Friedman-Abeles printed in the
souvenir programme book for the original production, and earlier used for a photo story in
New York Times 1957.
79
The exception was Reri Grist, the original Consuelo, who went on to a highly
successful operatic career in Europe (including regular appearances with Karl Böhm at the
Salzburg Festival and the Vienna State Opera) and in New York at the Metropolitan Opera.
80
Lawrence 1990, p. 46.
Genesis 51
notes, and once I got past the fact that I was sitting on a piano stool next to Leonard
Bernstein, I was okay!81
Bernstein himself clearly played for a few rehearsals, and there are rehearsal
photographs of Sondheim sitting at the piano. But according to Sondheim, ‘I played
almost nothing for the rehearsals; most of them were played by Betty Walberg.’82
Walberg (1921–1990) was a pianist, composer and arranger who often worked with
Jerome Robbins (her later credits included Gypsy and Fiddler on the Roof). Her
name is also to be found in one of the manuscripts of the ‘Cool’ Fugue in LBC,
which includes a note written to ‘Betty’ by Bernstein.83
What were the cast singing at the start of the rehearsal process? A handwritten
music list by Bernstein, probably dating from May 1957, just before rehearsals
started, gives a running order, complete with the forces required for some of the
numbers.84
[Act I]
Opening: Dancers
Jet Song: Riff – Snowboy, Action, Jets
Crystal Cave: Dancers (Gangs – Atom Bomb Mambo)
Maria
Balcony
America: Shark girls (Shark boys?)
Cool: Riff, Jets
Quintet: Gangs too?
One
Mix (Rumble): Gangs
[Act II]
Pretty: Shark girls (2 or 4)
Somewhere: Dancers
Krupke: Snowboy, Action, (Baby John), Anybodys, A-Rab, (Baby John as
Krupke?), (Diesel as Krupke)
Boy Like That
Taunting: Jets
Finale: Maria, Tutti?
81
NPR 2007.
82
Stephen Sondheim, e-mail to the present author
author,, 13 November 2008.
83
‘Cool – Extra Variation, Insert A’. The note at the top of the first page of music reads:
‘Betty – don’t try to play the canon. Play the bass only.’
84
LBC.
In this list, ‘Mix!’(discussed in detail in Chapter 3) has been moved from the first
scene to the end of Act I. The final form of the Quintet as a large ensemble is hinted
at here with Bernstein’s suggestion that ‘Gangs too’ could be added. The Act II
Finale was to prove intractable, but at this point Bernstein was clearly envisaging
either a solo for Maria or something to be sung by the whole company. In the end,
neither of these things happened. But of the other songs, the ‘Jet Song’, ‘Maria’,
‘America’, ‘Cool’, ‘One Hand, One Heart’, ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘Somewhere’ existed
in some form, as did some of the instrumental numbers, and the ‘Opening’ (almost
certainly still in its vocal version). But many changes were made before the show
moved to Washington in the second week of August. The most revealing evidence
for this is to be found in Bernstein’s manuscripts, the subject of the next chapter.

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Chapter 2

On 18 September 1957,1 Bernstein wrote an invented journal outlining some key

The Earliest Plans

1. Hideout [Initiation: beat up Jews]

Table 2.2 Early plan for Act II music

Romeo Revived and Rethought

The Puerto Rican Solution

Laurents recalled this meeting too:

Romeo. The dance goes from forgiveness to love to passion to

Finally, he turned to potential difﬁculties with the effective integration of dance.

In conversation with Mel Gussow, Bernstein elaborated on this:

Stephen Sondheim Joins the Team

Postponed: That Leonard Bernstein–Arthur Laurents–Steve Sondheim musical

Candide is on again; we plunge in next month. So again Romeo is postponed for

The Book and Lyrics Take Shape

Duet: One hand, one heart Duet: Tonight

Gee, Ofﬁcer Krupke

Two dancers representing Tony and Maria come

My greatest day was the day I was born

What can they do?

One hand, one heart,

Tony: One life, one love.

Auditions and Producers

Quest: Considering the advertised tantrums and noises made by temperamental

It is surprising to ﬁnd that Bernstein’s invented log has no entries between

Laurents’s reply is dated ‘Thursday night’.46 He was caught in an invidious

I think it is or should be a strong love story against a heightened, theatricalized,

Laurents then responded to the speciﬁc points in Crawford’s critique, starting

Bernstein’s datebook includes a meeting with Crawford at 5 p.m. on 22 April (which

A Conductor for West Side Story

Goberman’s death in Vienna, on 31 December 1962, was barely reported at the

West Side Story in Rehearsal

Jerome Robbins ran notoriously arduous and demanding rehearsals, driving

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