Oscar Rewind: When Rita Moreno Made History and Thanked No One

It was the evening that cemented her place in historical past, and Rita Moreno virtually skipped it.

In February 1962, Moreno, then 30, was within the Philippines, capturing “Cry of Battle” — a black-and-white World Conflict II movie by which she performed the English-speaking chief of a band of Filipino fighters. So when she discovered that she had been nominated for her first Academy Award — for finest supporting actress for her efficiency as Anita in “West Aspect Story” — she took a second to have a good time. After which, she acquired pragmatic.

As a star of “Cry of Battle,” she would nonetheless be wanted on set — 7,300 miles from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the place that 12 months’s Oscars ceremony would happen in April.

“I used to be completely optimistic Judy Garland was going to win for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg,’” Moreno, now 90 and nonetheless vivacious and irreverent, mentioned in a current cellphone dialog from Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., the place she was on a visit along with her daughter.

However then she gained a Golden Globe — and had a change of coronary heart. She purchased an airplane ticket.

“I flew into California considering, ‘Hey, if there’s one iota of an opportunity that I could win, I have to be there,” mentioned Moreno, who was up in opposition to Garland, Fay Bainter (“The Kids’s Hour”), Lotte Lenya (“The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone”) and Una Merkel (“Summer season and Smoke”).

It didn’t harm that the movie she was nominated for — “West Aspect Story,” Robert Smart’s adaptation of the Broadway musical — was a success each on the field workplace and amongst critics, or that it had racked up 11 nominations, together with finest image. The New York Occasions movie critic Bosley Crowther referred to as it “a cinema masterpiece.”

However main as much as the ceremony, Moreno was so pessimistic about her possibilities that she practiced her “loser face” and made up speeches about how “it was a awful film” and she or he “didn’t need it anyway.” However her coronary heart wasn’t in it. She did wish to win — badly.

So on April 9, 1962, when Rock Hudson opened the envelope, paused, then learn her identify — making Moreno, who’s Puerto Rican, the primary Latina actress to win an Academy Award — her saucer-size eyes and open mouth mentioned all of it.

“I didn’t anticipate to win,” Moreno mentioned, then added with fun, “Nobody who’s watched it may possibly argue with that.”

However as she walked to the stage in her Pitoy Moreno robe, with a voluminous black-and-gold skirt and black sleeveless prime, open-mouthed each step of the way in which, she had only one factor on her thoughts. (Properly, two: The primary, she mentioned, was “Don’t run; it’s not dignified.”)

“I keep in mind considering very clearly, ‘Don’t thank anybody,’” she mentioned. “They didn’t provide the half as a favor. They have been compelled to offer it to you since you did the perfect display screen take a look at.”

She delivered one of many shortest acceptance speeches in Oscars historical past: “I can’t consider it! Good Lord! I depart you with that.” It lasted simply seven seconds.

“I ran out of something to say as soon as I made a decision I wasn’t going to say thanks,” she mentioned. “And I’ve been making an attempt to make up for it with lengthy acceptance speeches ever since.”

However offstage, her evening was solely getting began: After accepting the award from Hudson, she bumped into Joan Crawford backstage, who was there to current the perfect actor award and, as Moreno put it, “drunk as a skunk on vodka.”

“She hugged me so exhausting she lined my face totally,” Moreno mentioned. “She was constructed like a linebacker. And he or she’s hugging me and the photographer is saying ‘Miss Crawford, I can’t see your face. Would you please uncover your face?’”

Backstage Moreno missed the evening’s different most memorable little bit of drama: A New York Metropolis cabdriver, upset that Bob Hope hadn’t been nominated for his function as a radio host in “The Huge Broadcast of 1938,” sneaked in, climbed onstage and introduced, “Women and gentleman, I’m the world’s biggest gate-crasher and I simply got here right here to current Bob Hope together with his 1938 trophy.”

He promptly produced a do-it-yourself statuette.

“Actually?” Moreno mentioned when instructed of the episode. “I don’t recall that in any respect! I have to’ve gained the Oscar simply earlier than that and been within the press room. That’s the one method I wouldn’t do not forget that. That’s unforgettable.”

Moreno didn’t linger too lengthy after her huge win, as she had a 15-hour flight again to Manila the following day. Her early departure additionally meant she missed all of the cellphone calls, flowers and telegrams that arrived for her in america. However a pal instructed her later that up and down El Barrio in New York — Latinos caught their heads out their home windows the second Hudson introduced Moreno’s identify — and screamed.

“I used to be disadvantaged of all of that wonderfulness as a result of I had to return and make this [expletive] struggle film in Manila,” she mentioned.

Her Oscar win, she mentioned, didn’t open doorways for her — it did the alternative.

“I keep in mind considering after the film got here out and after the Oscars occurred, ‘Wow, my profession is made,’” mentioned Moreno, who has gone on to turn into one in all a bunch of simply 16 to have gained an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. “However I grew to become this dark-skinned woman, which on the time was actually a typecasting factor that just about ended my profession.” (Her pores and skin was infamously darkened for the function, over her objections.)

Within the years main as much as “West Aspect Story,” she had perfected what she referred to as the “common accent,” specializing in “island woman” roles, spending her days in low-cut, off-the-shoulder blouses and hoop earrings, prancing shoeless amid palm bushes and cane backgrounds in studio images.

“I’d speak like this on a regular basis,” she mentioned, demonstrating: “Why you’re keen on me no extra? Why you want white woman? Why you are taking gold from my folks?”

After the Oscars, she hounded her agent to submit her identify for higher components, or to ask producers and administrators if they may at the least let her learn a scene — to no avail. One producer who declined to fulfill along with her, she mentioned, was blunt.

“My agent mentioned, ‘You’re Anita — he simply wouldn’t see you,’” she mentioned. “As a result of it wasn’t a component that was Latina; it was a component that had no nationality in any respect. That actually broke my coronary heart.”

She didn’t land significant movie roles, she mentioned, till years later.

“After ‘West Aspect Story,’ I couldn’t discover work,” she mentioned. “All of the Latina roles in movies have been so perfunctory. And I mentioned, ‘I’m not going to try this stuff anymore with the accents.’”

However within the a long time since, she’s remade her profession on her personal phrases, racking up a wide range of credit in comedy, tv and stage appearing, together with a brand new character, Valentina, in Steven Spielberg’s “West Aspect Story” remake, which was nominated for seven Oscars this 12 months.

She mentioned she was impressed that Tony Kushner, a screenwriter on the movie, “turned himself right into a pretzel making an attempt to get it proper.”

That included the casting of an Afro-Latina actress — Ariana DeBose, who’s up in opposition to Moreno for finest supporting actress on the Critics Selection Awards on Sunday — as Anita, the function initially performed by Moreno.

“I met her throughout rehearsals and I believed ‘Yay, Steven, you performed good, buddy boy,’” Moreno mentioned.

DeBose, who mentioned in an interview final month that Moreno has all the time been “extremely supportive,” has additionally earned an Oscar nomination for finest supporting actress this 12 months. If she have been to win, she and Moreno can be the third pair of actors to win for enjoying the identical function in numerous movies — and the primary girls and performers of coloration to take action.

“I’m past thrilled that Ariana has been nominated,” Moreno mentioned. “And when she wins, I’m going to burst into tears on behalf of each Hispanic who ever lived.”