Rita Moreno: A Memoir (27 page)

*   *   *

What put my enraptured mami-hood over the moon was that I soon found work that fit seamlessly into being a mother. With Fernanda, I was watching the brilliant new children’s shows, like
Sesame Street
, and before you could say, “Alakazam!” I was appearing on them.

This was yet another instance where my perseverance paid off. I approached Jim Henson, the genius creator of the Muppets, and was as persistent as Animal: I threw myself at him and said, “I will do anything for you if you let me be a voice on
Sesame Street
! I will work for nothing!”

“Relax,” he said. “I’ll pay you.”

Soon I was happily engrossed in my new line of work, which felt like play. Yes, the hours were long, of course, and I suppose the work was hard, but in entering the world of children’s television, I crossed the line between work and pure pleasure. Across the border, I discovered a state of industrious ecstasy that climaxed in my series of outrageously fun performances.

In one performance on
The Muppet Show
, I sang “Fever” in my best torch-song manner in a hot tomato-red gown. I tossed my long dark hair in my best diva mode—“
Fev-
uh!” Then I gave Animal, the drummer, my very best Rita glare when he pounded his drums and tried to upset my sensuous decorum. In the end, I crushed his head between the cymbals with a resounding
clang!

I delivered my hottest 106-degree “
Fever!
” in a fury of Puerto Rican sensuality and rage, and that seemed to tickle the funny bones of all of the kids watching—and perhaps tickled the
other
funny bones of any dads minding the kids who were watching this performance.

I had even
more
outrageous fun doing my version of an Apache dance with one of the muppets. In this duet, I spun out into the bistro set clad in stylized French dancer mode, beret and all, and performed the French version of a sexist tango. In the classic Apache (
not
pronounced “
A-patch-ee
” like the Indian, but “
a-pash
”), the man throws and tosses around the woman, who dances away from him. In my version of the dance, I tossed and threw around the man and won my round—as well as an Emmy award.

I won a Grammy award as well, this time with
The Electric Company.
This show was a bold experiment, an ensemble show that aimed to improve kids’ reading skills by having unreasonable amounts of fun. One of my most popular routines was my Tina
Turner imitation, with kid backup singer/dancers. We all wore gold lamé and little plastic boots, and they moved in sync behind me as I delivered a hot but ridiculous: “un-” song: “Unbutton your love…
un
zip your lip and tell me that you love me.”

Best of all, the studio location was right across the street from our apartment on the Upper West Side. Fernanda came to visit me regularly on the
Electric Company
set. She loved that. I would take her visiting all the time to the
Sesame Street
studio as well. She had a wonderful and colorful childhood—and I had reached the pinnacle of happiness being her mother.

One other great perk of doing these children’s shows was having the opportunity to perform with some of the best performers around, like Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman. My God, it was like we were doing vaudeville while at the same time helping children improve their reading skills.

I call those years—from the early 1970s through 1977—my “bliss years,” because I had never been so happy, both at home and in my career.

Yes, Jim Henson paid me; the union insisted. But I gladly would have paid him.

*   *   *

By now, I was nearly forty years old—a dangerous age for an actress. In the business, I might as well have turned eighty. Lenny was very sensitive to that.

But his good intentions sometimes backfired. He believed in me enthusiastically as an actor, and couldn’t understand why I was not in constant demand and getting great parts—or any parts. We’d be driving somewhere and Lenny would notice all the billboards advertising some new movie or play. “For God’s sake,” he’d say. “I don’t understand what’s going on here! You’re
so talented! I don’t see why you’re not getting any work!” And he wouldn’t let up. Hearing this was unsettling. I’d roll it around in my mind. There are so many ways you can interpret a comment like that. I knew he wasn’t disappointed in me; he just wondered why Anne Bancroft, Shelley Winters, and Janet Leigh were “getting all the parts.” I questioned my relevance.
Is my career ending right before my eyes? Do I have the wrong agent? Is my manager on top of things? Wait—but Lenny is my manager.
(Not long after his retirement from medicine Lenny used his free time to help with my career. He soon assumed the role of manager.) Exhausted from all my mental computation and emotional roller-coaster rides, I’d usually just agree with Lenny’s comment, get quiet, and stew.

I did hit another high point in what I now believe is the more or less permanent rhythm of my professional life, with its perilous descents and soaring heights. The year was 1975, and I’d like to linger there a moment.

I was somewhere between a perilous descent and a soaring height, when in 1975, I was offered the delicious role of Googie Gomez, the awful lounge singer extraordinaire in Terrence McNally’s hilarious farce
The Ritz.

I met Terrence for the first time at a James Coco party. James was a hilarious and adorable man who threw great parties. He and I were costarring on Broadway in the Neil Simon comedy
The Last of the Red Hot Lovers.

At that party, as Lenny and I mingled with guests, James sashayed by, took my hand, and dragged me off to a bedroom. There sat Terrence on the edge of the bed talking to other guests. Jimmy said, “Rita, do that crazy Latina woman for Terry.”

I’d developed my Googie character in a hundred “idle” hours in dressing rooms and at laid-back parties with showbiz friends.
Who was Googie? She was
the worst
Hispanic cabaret singer of all time. Her gestures were operatic, her eyelashes were a mile long, and her makeup was applied with a trowel. Her slinky gowns suffered continual wardrobe malfunctions. Finally, though, it was Googie’s mispronounced English—which I owe to Mami—that placed her in the Terrible Performer Hall of Fame: “I hada dring, a dring about joo, babie….”

I believe I launched into the Player King speech from
Hamlet
for Terrence: “Es-pick the es-pich, I pra joo….”

Terrence wrote a play called
The Tubs
, which he first set in a bathhouse like the continental baths where Bette Midler got her start. There is something inherently crazy-funny about a sex-bomb singer in a gay bathhouse, wriggling and crooning to a bunch of gay guys in towels.

Terrence wrote Googie into his play big-time after seeing me at Jimmy’s party. Despite my being unavailable for the play’s world premiere at Yale, you can bet that I, Googie, was available for Broadway. I flung myself into Broadway Googie with even more energy than usual, bringing down the bathhouse and winning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

I was ecstatic! Winning the Tony Award in 1975 made me one of the few performers in history to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy,
and
a Tony!

For the awards ceremony, I wore an elegant, slinky, long-sleeved beige gown with a matching turban. My acceptance speech was over-the-top in more ways than one: I was wriggling, giggling, whooping, and hollering. I raised my arm and gave a victory fist. I had everything but a pie pan to bang.

I was full-out Googie, and my Rosita also popped out of the clock like a cuckoo, crowing, “Rita Moreno is thrilled, but Rosita Dolores Alverio of Humacao, Puerto Rico, is
undone
!”

And then she, Googie Gomez/Rosita, couldn’t resist saying, “I am
not
the supporting actress of
The Ritz
. I am the
leading actress
! Listen, honey, honey—the honly thing I support in tat cho is my beads” (pronounced
beeets
).

I was forty-four years old, still in my prime. But now I can say it: I went too far on that stage. No wonder the Tonys’ producer was displeased with me. He had a right to be.

In 1981, I was fortunate enough to be cast with Carol Burnett in an Alan Alda movie,
The Four Seasons
, a romp of a film featuring an endangered species: middle-aged couples and aging actresses. I became fast friends with Carol Burnett during the shoot. The movie worked even better offscreen than on-screen, because we all laughed nonstop as we were making it. But the sad truth is that finding work in Hollywood—or anywhere as an actress—was now very difficult. I was no longer a “hot chick.” Nobody remembered, much less cherished, my Oscar turn in that violet dress, and my kiddie-show fame did not translate into grown-up prestige.

I had battled racism and sexism all my life. Now I had to battle the worst enemy of all: ageism.

Growing old in Hollywood is a serious deficit. If you can’t pose in a bikini and run a seven-minute mile without your thighs trembling, you are
done
. Frankly speaking, m’dear, I think we are expected to either kill ourselves by age thirty-six—as so many actresses have done—or shrink quietly away into the shadows, clutching our cardigans and wearing sensible shoes.

I wanted none of
that.
But I also refused to compromise and make myself look younger than my age. For one thing, I already looked younger than my age. Blame heredity. I was actually rejected for the few roles that existed for women over fifty. In 1990, I went to see the great television producer Norman Lear to discuss
the part of Charles Durning’s wife in a pilot Norman was producing. He took one look at me and said, “Durning’s wife? Are you kidding? You look like a kid!”

“But, Norman, I’m sixty.”

“Getoutta here!” he said with a twinkle.

But I went to my car and cried—I looked too good for my age. Yet another problem.

On top of that, these roles were limited to small, unimportant mom or nana parts. Meanwhile, I continued turning down gang roles and the usual stereotypes.

I was beginning to wonder whether I’d ever find steady work again.

THE ACCUSATORY BANANA

V
ery early in our marriage, while discussing hopes and dreams for the future, Lenny offered without missing a beat, “And we can travel, have a little getaway in the country, you’ll quit show business, I’ll retire from practice….”

“Wait a minute. Uh, what—what about show business?” I interjected.

And in the most casual tone he continued. “Oh, we can talk about that later, not important right now….”

There had always been a certain amount of power push-pull in my marriage, as Lenny and I tried to balance my desire to work and be independent with his desire to be the family provider and protector. While these roles had satisfied both of us during Fernanda’s early childhood, I was growing increasingly restless as Lenny continued to try to control everything in my life.

I let the first warning bell go off without comment, but now I heard a gong. I call this “the Infamous Banana Incident.”

One morning, Lenny walked into the kitchen while I was peeling a banana. He watched me pull on the stem for a second, then snatched the fruit out of my hand and said, “That’s not the right way to peel a banana.” Then he opened the drawer, took out a paring knife, and began to cut the stem. For whatever reason, this was the one time out of many when I was being shown the Lenny way, the “right way,” as opposed to the Rita way, the wrong way, that I chose to plant a flag, declare it my territory, and demand, “
Off!
”

There ensued a twenty-minute argument in which Lenny continued to insist that there were right and wrong ways to do things. Flummoxed by the sheer absurdity of this heated argument, I asked him whether he was listening to himself, only to have him restate his position once again.

A flash of heat went through my body—the same primal reaction I’ve always had when frightened or cornered. The inherent stupidity of our argument left me, an otherwise articulate person, sputtering in rage and frustration.

The banana argument continued, and then he did it for the first time: Lenny pointed his finger at me and wagged it. I have always perceived this gesture as judgmental, accusatory, and self-righteous. Now the alarms were blaring. This was not about peeling fruit, how to adjust the thermostat, or what lights to turn off; this was about our marriage, give-and-take, cutting some slack. If I couldn’t carve out some space for myself, it did not portend well for our future together.

I had to leave the room. “We’ll finish this discussion later, when we both calm down,” I said.

*   *   *

“He’s a finger wagger!” I reported on the phone later that day to the most unlikely of marriage counselors: Marlon.

There was a big pause. Then Marlon said, “He actually did that? He wagged his finger at you?”

“Yes! And it just made me crazy!”

“Huh. Anybody did that to me, I’d take him by the neck and throw them down the stairs!” Marlon said. “You’ve got to make him stop.”

“How, for God’s sake?”

“Tell him! Just tell him him how it makes you feel.”

At the time, the irony was lost on me that Marlon had done more than wag his finger at me, and more than once. I did what Marlon suggested and told Lenny that I felt belittled, accused, and angry when he behaved self-righteously. He took it well, I thought, but went on to substitute the finger with a closed fist and the knuckle from the pointing finger sticking up, unmistakably conspicuous.

I had to laugh. In one of my dreams I took the ultimate revenge: I bit it off. His finger, that is.

*   *   *

In our seventh year of marriage, Lenny and I discussed divorce for the very issues that had begun to be entrenched during in the Banana Accusation. Lenny adored me and I adored him, most of the time, but Lenny had the “Lenny way” to do most things and was not tolerant of the Rita way of doing things—nor, for that matter, of anyone else’s way.