The first Broadway show I ever saw was Bye, Bye Birdie. It took me about ten minutes to develop a lifelong crush on Dick Van Dyke. Tall and lanky, all loose arms and limbs, looking acting like a clown trapped in an attractive man’s body, I didn’t want to be just like him. I wanted to be him. Because of the great advantages of that transference was that would make me able to dance with the woman alongside of him, a mesmerizing, bewitching, spark emitting dynamo named Chita Rivera. Of course, having loved movie musicals even at an early age, I had seen lots of people dance up on the big screen. But to dance like that in person, without stopping while singing, and when done, keep right on going without asking for a five-minute recess was jaw dropping.
To whirl yourself around like that yet with so much control, at a staggering speed to match her astounding grace was almost too much for this kid to comprehend and yet I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It was like getting a brain freeze from too quickly inhaling your favorite flavor of ices from Lemon Ice King of Corona, but you keep on licking anyway. By the time Rivera finished her big number, “Spanish Rose,” I fell under her spell that was never broken for the next fifty years. I never missed another Broadway show she starred in and caught her cabaret acts whenever I could.
Rivera’s paramount talent and electrifying radiance made her a towering presence, and yet it wasn’t her extensions or razor-sharp footwork that generated universal awe. It was the spark in her eyes, the joy on her face, the commitment of her body to treat choreography, not as if she was dancing for her life, but as if dance was what was making her feel most alive. If producers could have bottled that exuberance, it would have been sold out by intermission.
Rivera also had a voice made for live theater, especially at a time before every one was miked as if serenading Allegiant stadium. It wasn’t lilting like Kelli O’Hara but piercing with just enough rasp to make each note indelibly stick. Even in shows that were flawed, she made a mark. Go Google “Don’t Ah Ma Me” from Kander & Ebb’s musical The Rink, and marvel at her take down her daughter played by Liza Minelli with a shot from guns, mile a minute diatribe that would daunt even the most erudite of Gilbert & Sullivan acolytes. The show may have been clunky. Rivera still won a Tony.
But the reason why I never met anyone who ever said, “I don’t care for her” (that would put a quick end to that friendship), is that offstage, she was a buoyant delight. I was working as a waiter at Joe Allen’s, the iconic theater restaurant, while she was dating Mr. Allen, so she was a regular visitor. Rivera was only 5’3” but it was as if someone had trained a pin spot to catch her the moment she walked into the room. Back then, everyone working at Joe’s was an actor/singer/waiter/dancer – what used to be known as a “gypsy” before that term got terminated – and Rivera always acted as if she was one of us, asking about go-sees we’d gone on, giving advice on everything from head shots to audition songs. Her perennially stoic beau had to shoo us away to have any privacy, not because we annoyed her, but because she was so eager to be with us. Rivera was the ultimate ‘gypsy.”
Proof of that devotion, led to her becoming a hero to everyone who has every stood on a stage in front of 1500 strangers, when prior to the opening of the musical Chicago, there was an Actor’s Equity strike that shut down Broadway, mainly instigated by the salaries of those singers, understudies, and swing actors (who served as a replacement of several parts at once). Verdon and Rivera who would lead rallies almost daily in Shubert Alley until the strike was settled. Neither one of these supreme talents ever forgot what it was like to be in the chorus, dreaming of being center stage.
Consequently, though Broadway’s 1975 season was usurped by the game changing A Chorus Line (though Chicago’s current revival is now the second longest running musical in Broadway history), the original production’s opening night was one of the most thrilling nights I’ve ever spent in the theater, not only because these two legends danced and entertained as if lives were at stake, but because they managed to fill the balcony with “gypsies” in a constant state of cacophonic euphoria watching their idols do what they did best onstage.
Even in 1993, at age 60, after what was predicted to be a career ending traffic accident causing a compound leg fracture, there she was on stage, seducing us once more, as we prayed for a Kiss of the Spider Woman. She won a Tony for that one too (having been nominated ten times). And at 82, while her footwork was now minimal, she still held an audience in thrall in Kander & Ebb’s musical version of The Visit.
Her biography was fun and juicy. Her cabaret act delicious and naughty. No wonder the internet is now blanketed with pictures bemoaning her passing. You can search every florist shop from Boston to San Diego and you will still never find a single bloom more glorious than this Spanish Rose.