Rita Moreno: A Memoir

by Rita Moreno

  Sadly for my leftist, liberal friend Kenneth, his freedom of speech boomeranged. Her protest helped Whitehouse in her campaign against the BBC; it also shortened Kenneth’s television career. That was a shame, since he was a great interviewer; his interview with Laurence Olivier is a classic all by itself.

  If I had known the confusions of Kenneth’s childhood, I might have been more prepared for what happened between us. He was the child of a bigamist, believing for twenty years that his father was Peter Tynan, only to learn when his father died that Peter Tynan was really Sir Peter Peacock, a royal bigamist. Kenneth’s mother had to return his body to his legitimate first wife.

  That turned Kenneth’s life and identity around, and perhaps that’s why he became a sexual spanker. Or maybe it was simply “the English vice” reputedly picked up at the British public schools (which were in reverse of our public school in the States—they are the private schools). Either way, soon into our relationship, I learned that Kenneth had advanced beyond a playful spank. He was the perfect example of how a public persona was undone by a private perversion.

  I will say right here that I do not want, nor have I ever wanted, to include spanking in my lovemaking, playful or otherwise. Kenneth and I had dated quite a few times when he introduced the idea. We were having a rather sweet love affair until one evening when he produced a photograph album and invited me to sit on his lap and look at the pictures.

  The album turned out to be his spanking scrapbook. The photos were scenes of women being spanked in various positions by men. The pictures did not look cruel—just staged and, to me, odd. The women and girls did not appear to be in pain; they seemed rather neutral, patiently waiting for the next deserved whack.

  Accompanying the pictures were little stories written in white ink. These described the various scenarios: “The headmaster said, ‘You have been a bad little girl.’” “The doctor said, ‘Now I have to examine you. Stop squirming and lie still!’” The pictures were certainly united by a common theme: “Naughty girls need to be taught a lesson.”

  One pass through the scrapbook was enough for me, though these pictures weren’t as nasty as the activities that Kenneth later admitted practicing. When I politely declined to participate in Kenneth’s favorite pastime, he looked wistful. I knew that he really wished that we could continue seeing each other, but since this was such an essential turn-on ingredient for his sexual pleasure, we had to part politely.

  Or we might have, had I not already been caught up in the riptide of Kenneth’s divorce. His estranged wife, Ms. Dundy, found the backstage phone number while I was appearing in She Loves Me and would call to vent her fury about the divorce and to harass me. She had been spanked for years and then rebelled at the more advanced sadomasochistic dramas Kenneth had incited, but they had been tangled up in each other for too many years to easily let go.

  Elaine would shriek at me on the phone until I finally had to tell her off. “I’m not the reason for your divorce!” I’d yell. “Leave me alone!”

  The insanity of their relationship gave me flashbacks to my own obsessive, tormented affair with Marlon. For instance, during one well-documented marital fight, Kenneth had stood on a window ledge, threatening to leap if Elaine didn’t take him back. He tossed her manuscript out the window instead of himself. The next day, he reappeared with the book leather-bound (as she had also been) and begged for her love and forgiveness.

  Elaine and Kenneth, like Marlon and me, came together and splintered apart over and over again. And Kenneth, like Marlon, wanted total sexual freedom, but was driven to jealousy if Elaine was unfaithful to him. When he came home from an adulterous affair to find Elaine with a naked man in the kitchen, he threw the man’s clothes down the garbage chute.

  When Elaine finally divorced Kenneth, coming to court with two black eyes and a broken nose, she went on to write more books, including a famous biography of another man I knew well: Elvis Presley. Her book, Elvis and Gladys, chronicled the unnaturally close relationship Elvis had with his mother. Meanwhile, Kenneth Tynan repeated his pattern with his second wife, another successful woman writer, Kathleen Halton, whom he had already met when he was dating me. (Unbeknownst to me, he turned out to be a busy fellow.)

  As with his wife, Kenneth didn’t let go of me easily or quickly. For quite a while after our breakup, he stalked me and phoned me everywhere I went. One night I was enjoying dinner with friends in a pub when Kenneth called the restaurant and asked to speak with me. I looked out the window and saw him outside, his lanky frame wedged into one of those red London street phone booths as he gestured wildly in my direction.

  Our eyes met for a single agonized moment, and then I deliberately looked away.

  * * *

  After leaving London in 1964, I was cast as the female lead in the Broadway world premiere of the new Lorraine Hansberry play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. I couldn’t have been happier to land this role. Lorraine was a brilliant young playwright who had managed to defy stereotyping and overcome prejudice. She became the first black woman playwright to write a celebrated Tony Award–winning play, A Raisin in the Sun. She was also the first African-American to ever direct a play on Broadway.

  The production of The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was fraught with problems, however, and ended in tragedy. The play was still so new, so raw, that many of us in the cast felt that Lorraine would have made many changes throughout that first production if she had been able to do so. However, at age thirty-four, she was seriously ill with pancreatic cancer.

  During rehearsals, Lorraine appeared a few times. She made quite an impression on me, with that raucous laugh that was such a surprise coming from such a fragile, thin-boned woman. Too soon, however, she vanished to her sickbed, hoping to recover her strength in time for opening night.

  The play depicted life among a group of urban Bohemians in Greenwich Village and teemed with the issues of the day—too many issues—highlighting hot-button topics like racism, a dysfunctional marriage, politics, prostitution, suicide, and homosexuality. If there had been time, Lorraine may well have streamlined and refined the play, but with so little time to prepare the production, and little input from her, we could only hurtle from one emergency to the next.

  At the heart of the play is a contentious married couple, Sidney Brustein and the character I played, Iris Parodus Brustein, his wife. My original leading man, the first Sid Brustein, was Mort Sahl. He had seemed like such a brilliant choice, but he never did learn his lines, and then he vanished, too. With only days to go before opening night, a stalwart actor, Gabriel Dell, stepped in and tried to master that enormous role in the complex play.

  At the same time, Alice Ghostley, who costarred, was suffering from enormous personal problems in her marriage and was becoming odder and odder. When her marriage had reached a particularly low point, I invited her to be a houseguest to offer a retreat. I never expected how affected she had become. On one occasion she called me into the bedroom to show me the lint in her shoes. “See what they are doing to me?” I didn’t know who they were or what she was talking about. I drew a warm bath to calm her and when she came into the bathroom the toilet unexpectedly made a groaning sound. She squealed, “You see I told you, they’re after me.” Unsettling days!

  In the play, Iris and Sidney are not only at odds with society, but with each other. If I ever needed any reminders of what I had been through, the play afforded one every night. My sister in the play, embodied by Cynthia O’Neal, killed herself 109 times during the run. The effect of her tragedy was to reconcile me with my onstage estranged husband, Sidney.

  My character’s name, Iris Parodus Brustein, heralded the theatrical and tragic nature of the play: Parodus is a Greek word pertaining to the chorus that may come and go to herald the action. Knowing writers, the name was no coincidence, and it did seem as though a Greek tragedy was ensuing not only onstage, but off.

  As we approached opening night, everyone associated with the play was h
oping that Lorraine might somehow make it, but sadly, in the end she was too ill to attend. We opened to mixed reviews and extremely low advance ticket sales.

  All of the actors had already taken pay cuts, but Brustein is the only play in my memory where the cast members passed the hat after the curtain, hoping to collect enough money to meet the daily expenses of production.

  * * *

  Once again, true to the patterns in my life, it was during this low point in my career that I met Lenny Gordon, my second and greatest love.

  “Do you want to meet the most wonderful man in the world?” my friend Leah Schaefer asked.

  She had to ask me more than once, believe me. It took a lot of cajoling to get me to agree to be fixed up with another man, because I no longer had much faith that there were many wonderful men out in the world, waiting for me to meet them. After a lot of persuasion on her part, though, I begrudgingly agreed to meet this Mr. Wonderful at Leah’s apartment.

  There, I found myself face-to-face with a handsome, witty fellow who was a practicing internist at Mount Sinai. “A nice Jewish doctor”—a redundant phrase, no doubt.

  Lenny captivated me with his deep intelligence and funny, funny sense of humor. He made me rethink the word “nice,” which for me, normally, was the kiss of death where men were concerned. He walked me home that night and asked whether I would be interested in going to a New Year’s Eve party the following week. When I said yes, he looked so delighted that I found myself smiling back at him as brightly as he was smiling at me.

  “Great! Where shall I pick you up?” he asked.

  “How about Henry Miller’s Theatre right after the show?”

  After the show? Later, Lenny told me that he went home feeling completely perplexed. “I thought that you were either planning to see a play by yourself on New Year’s Eve, poor thing, or you were going to see the play with someone else and then dump him to meet me!”

  Lenny didn’t like either option. Nonetheless, he was waiting in the lobby at ten forty-five sharp, just as we had agreed. People were hurrying out of the theater so that they could go elsewhere to celebrate, but not Rita. He was confused but kept standing there.

  And what was I doing? I was backstage. As soon as the curtain hit the floor, I had hurriedly given the cast members a New Year’s kiss and rushed to my dressing room to tear off my costume. My hairdresser, Molly, pulled off my wig and was planning to style my hair as quickly as she could. I got rid of my theatrical makeup and eyelashes, then waited for Lenny.

  As the minutes ticked by and I continued to wait and wait, I thought, Well, now, isn’t that a fine thing, to be dumped on New Year’s Eve by the “nicest man in the world”?

  When Lenny still didn’t show, I flashed back twenty years to an adolescent date I’d had for the circus—my very first date. The boy who was my date had arrived so late that the interval between his expected and actual arrivals was excruciating. I was absolutely sure he wasn’t going to show up; I paced frantically, wringing my hands with anxiety. And then, of course, the young man appeared, out of breath, having run from his delayed train.

  Now I was experiencing a reprise of this emotional low—and on New Year’s Eve, yet. “Wonderful man, huh?” I muttered. “Great way to start my New Year.”

  At the same time, Lenny was frantically looking into the empty auditorium and asking the one female usher left if she could please check the ladies’ powder room for a petite woman with brown eyes and curly hair.

  “Nobody there, sir,” the usher reported.

  Am I really being dumped on New Year’s Eve? Lenny thought. Then another possibility dawned on him. Oh, my God! Maybe I’m at the wrong theater!

  He ran outside to check the marquee. There, as plain as the nose on his face, he saw: “Rita Moreno in The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.”

  Finally grasping the truth, he rushed to the stage door, where the relieved doorkeeper pointed to my dressing room. I was just leaving as Lenny caught up to me.

  “Wait! You’re the Rita Moreno?” he called.

  Well, I was charmed. You know why? Because he hadn’t known who I was. He was simply interested in me as a person!

  We arrived at the New Year’s Eve party at eleven forty-five, just in time to exchange a chaste kiss at midnight. Afterward, a smitten Lenny whispered to a friend, “I’m gonna marry that girl!”

  My stage name, Parodus, did forecast more drama. The play closed after 109 performances, and the playwright, the great Lorraine Hansberry, only thirty-four, died on the night of the final performance.

  And, of course, I had met the greatest love of my life, Lenny Gordon, to whom I would be married for nearly half a century.

  PART IV

  Reinventing Myself

  MARRIAGE AND MAMI-HOOD

  In the beginning of our relationship, I was very skittish with Lenny. I kept him at arm’s length both physically and emotionally. I didn’t feel good about that, but I was still having trouble believing that this was real—a mature, tender, reliable man who loved me as much as I wanted to be loved.

  About two months after we were dating, though, Lenny took me to the airport. I was flying to Paris to participate in a celebration of West Side Story’s first-year anniversary at the theater in which it had opened in France, the George V.

  In those pre–terrorist threat days, you were still allowed to accompany someone to the gate when you were departing. As a very discouraged Lenny escorted me to the gate, I stopped him and said, “Don’t give up on me yet.”

  “What?” he said.

  I repeated it. “Don’t give up on me yet. You know what I mean.” Then I turned and walked onto the plane.

  This wasn’t something that I had planned to say to him. It just came out. I finally understood that a part of me had been waiting for the sorts of bells and whistles that Marlon set off when I met him. But, as we’d driven in near silence to the airport, I had realized how much I would miss Lenny’s steady companionship when I was in Paris, and I dreaded leaving him. I knew he felt the same sense of loss that I did, even though I wasn’t going to be gone long.

  I think that was the moment when I realized that I’d grown up. Bells and whistles weren’t what I needed anymore. In fact, bells and whistles were now alarms, reminding me of unrealistic expectations. I wanted to be content, and to be loved in a way I could trust. Lenny, I knew, could help me live that kind of happier, more settled life.

  In 1965, Lenny and I were married in front of a justice of the peace at City Hall in New York. I wore a pretty, simple little dress. After the ceremony, we went out for Chinese food with his best man, Al Moldovan, and my best friend, Leah Schaefer, who introduced me to Lenny and has remained a friend forever. She made a very funny crack while we were eating that I’ve never forgotten: “The problem with going out for a Chinese meal after you get married is that you want to get married again.”

  I knew that I’d made a wise choice marrying dependable, sweet, thoughtful, wildly intelligent Dr. Leonard Gordon, who I knew would never betray me. He would protect me even if it meant throwing himself in front of a car for me. Oh! How did I ever get so lucky!

  When I first told my mother that I was going to marry a Jewish man, she had a little trouble adjusting, despite being impressed that he was a doctor. The very first time she opened the door to him, she said, “Are joo a Yew?”

  Poor Lenny said, “What?”

  “A Yew, are joo a Yew?” she said.

  And the poor man was so confused, he said, “Jes, I am!”

  Lenny’s family, on the other hand, was thrilled by our marriage. Lenny had been married once before, unhappily, and his family thought I was the cat’s meow, probably because I was so thrilled to have a family. All I had in the world was my mother and my brother Dennis. So when I inherited a family, these dear Jewish people who were so sweet and welcoming, it was marvelous.

  They were wonderful to me, always. I actually got them all to celebrate Christmas. That included Lenny.

&nbs
p; As a Jew, of course he never would have thought to get a Christmas tree, but I am a child when it comes to Christmas. I am an absolute infant! I decorate anything in sight. If you don’t move for five minutes, I’ll decorate you! It was killing me that I wasn’t going to have a tree. Lenny had agreed to a family gathering and meal on Christmas day to appease me, but, “You can’t call it Christmas dinner,” he said.

  I cried a lot as our first Christmas approached, because Lenny wouldn’t relent. “Christmas is a mercenary thing, a way for stores to make money,” he said.

  “I’m fine with that! Please, Lenny, let me just have a tree!”

  “No, no, no,” he said, no matter how much I begged him.

  I was miserable. Then, the night before Christmas, Lenny gave me this great big box and told me to open it. I thought it was odd that he was giving me a Christmas present, and even odder that he wanted me to open a gift the night before, but I did. And inside that box, there it was: a fake little Christmas tree, with the balls and tinsel and a little set of lights. It was the scrungiest thing you’ve ever seen, and it must have cost him all of twenty bucks. But it was a tree!

  I called Lenny’s family and said, “Don’t forget to come over tomorrow! I’ve got presents for you!”

  They did, and experienced their very first Christmas under my glorious tree. As a “gift” to Lenny I cooked a traditional Jewish meal. And Lenny’s aunt, Tanta Shirley, looked at the spread on the table and asked, “Vat, no toikey?”

  My mami, her fifth husband, Robert, and my brother Dennis arrived in time for the festivities. Lenny had flown them in as a surprise. For the first time since my childhood in Puerto Rico, I felt I had a family. The room was filled with the sound of klezmer music from the hi-fi, along with the disparate accents and the clatter of platter to plate. As I stood to offer a toast of thanks, I cried tears of pure joy! No few bottles of Manischewitz later, we all danced a tipsy salsa!