You don’t find subjects much more disarming than Rita Moreno, whose seven-decade career on stage and screen is described in Mariem Pérez Riera’s celebratory documentary as both the essence of the American Dream and the tenacious attainment of it despite dispiriting obstacles. “You must never really believe anything about your fame and all that kind of bullshit,” says Moreno with characteristic unfiltered charm. “Yeah, it goes up and down. Right now, it’s up.” Built around an in-depth interview conducted soon after the star’s 87th birthday in her home in the hills of Berkeley, California, this archive-rich bio is a candid sit-down with a national treasure.
Produced for PBS’ American Masters series, where it will air after a planned theatrical run, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It covers the remarkable breadth of work that earned her the coveted full-house awards haul of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony honors. (Don’t make me say EGOT.) Her tireless capacity for self-reinvention has made Moreno an adored icon of Latina representation. Equal time is given, too, to the internal battle she waged to overcome a lack of self-worth instilled by racism, gender inequality, bad relationships and sexual violence. The film might be conventionally structured, but the singular ebullience and warmth of its resilient subject make it highly entertaining.
There are illuminating insights, whether you know Moreno from her Academy Award-winning turn as the conflicted Anita, tossing her skirt in the immortal rooftop dance to “America” in West Side Story, or her more recent success as the flamboyant Cuban grandmother on the reimagined One Day at a Time. The creator of that series in its original incarnation, Norman Lear, serves as an executive producer on the doc, along with Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose family, like Moreno, hails from Puerto Rico.
Striking a pleasing balance between Moreno’s own voice and those of her daughter, friends, professional colleagues and academics, the film traces her evolution from her humble origins as a barefoot kid, playing in the creek where her seamstress mother did laundry in Humacao on the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico, to her present-day full-time job of accepting lifetime achievement awards.
She’s been a beacon for generations of Latinx artists who may sometimes have felt the entertainment industry had no place for them. Among those who speak on-camera here about her influence are Miranda, Gloria Estefan, Hector Elizondo, Eva Longoria, One Day at a Time co-star Justina Machado and Karen Olivo, who played Anita in the 2009 Broadway revival of West Side Story.
A gorgeous whirlwind montage of clips going back to 1950 takes a sweeping view of Moreno’s experience across multiple genres and mediums, accompanied by Cuban vocalist La Lupe’s “Puro Teatro,” a torrid song that gained wider popularity after Pedro Almodóvar featured it in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The association seems apt, given the dueling forces of defeat and triumph that forged Moreno’s character. “I’m as big as you get,” she says, while conceding that her cardiologist husband of 35 years was a poor fit because he was embarrassed by the raucous eternal child in her. “I may be petite, but I’m big.”
Her mother took her on a storm-tossed sea crossing at age 5 to New York, where the young “Rosita” realized only after they set out that they were leaving her father, a farmer, and younger brother for good. She started Spanish dance lessons and made her professional stage debut a year later, dropping out of school at 16 to dance and sing in nightclubs, and becoming the family’s chief breadwinner. But her goal was always to get into movies, which happened when an MGM talent scout organized a meeting with Louis B. Mayer, who described her as “a Spanish Elizabeth Taylor” and put her under contract.
Those early years in Hollywood proved tough, with powerful men hitting on her as if she were property to be passed around, and the studio relegating her to simpering “native girl” roles, wearing makeup “the color of mud.” Even after what felt like progress at the time, a small featured role as a silent film star in Singin’ in the Rain, Moreno went right back to playing what she describes as “dusky maidens.”
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“Can you do it with an accent?” says Longoria, noting that the stereotyping continues. “Can you make it a little more spicy?” Morgan Freeman, who worked with Moreno in the 1970s on the PBS children’s series The Electric Company, observes that she required a lot of staying power because there really wasn’t much for her in Hollywood back then.
Many have questioned the depiction of Puerto Ricans in West Side Story, a work written by a white creative team. But the role of Anita nonetheless was a breakthrough in that Moreno was able to empower her characterization and overcome the stereotype with dignity. The section on the 1961 film is especially rewarding, with lovely anecdotes like the recollection of joking about giving losing speeches in the back of the limo with co-star George Chakiris on the way to the Oscars ceremony when both defied their own expectations by winning.
The doc deftly weaves in personal reflections throughout, notably by revealing how the scene in which Anita is physically abused by the rival street gang in Doc’s candy store reopened wounds for Moreno. She had been raped years earlier by her agent, but continued being represented by him because she was too insecure to believe anyone else would ever push for her. A turbulent relationship with Marlon Brando that lasted for years also did little for her self-esteem, followed by a suicide attempt when it ended. But she slugged it out with him in a clearly quite visceral scene seven years later in the mostly forgotten drama The Night of the Following Day, which proved cathartic.
Perhaps the one good thing that came out of the Brando years was Moreno’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement, which started a lifetime of activism for racial equality, the women’s movement, immigrant representation and LGBTQ rights. That compassionate humanitarian side of her was reflected in a key role in Tom Fontana’s gritty HBO series Oz, on which Moreno played a nun working as a prison psychologist.
While movie roles disappointingly reverted to ethnic clichés after West Side Story, television opportunities opened up, and clips from The Muppet Show (Moreno singing “Fever,” accompanied by hep-cat Animal on drums will never get old) and The Electric Company are so delightful they leave you wanting more.
Likewise input from playwright Terrence McNally, filmed before his death early last year, recalling how he wrote the part of Googie Gomez, a third-rate entertainer performing in a gay bathhouse, for Moreno in his comedy The Ritz, inspired by one of her party pieces. She won a Tony for the role, which she reprised in the 1976 film version — for many of us one of the first times we’d seen gay men depicted onscreen.
Pérez Riera and co-editor Kevin Klauber shuffle the wealth of material into a breezy narrative of highs and lows, complemented by Kathryn Bostic’s jazzy underscoring and appropriate song choices. In addition to Moreno’s engaging interview, the doc frequently cuts back to her One Day at a Time dressing room on the Sony lot, venting her indignation while watching the Brett Kavanagh Supreme Court confirmation hearings on TV; and to stop-motion paper-doll animation representing that “needy little Rosita” she would eventually cast off as she reached a point in her life where she has to answer to no one.
Columbia scholar Frances Negrón-Muntaner, founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive, reflects early in the film on how much more Moreno might have achieved without the hindrances placed in her path by perceptions of her race and gender. That thought returns toward the end, providing an explanation for the doc’s subtitle when Moreno is preparing in 2020 to accept a career achievement award from the Television Critics Association. She decides on an impulse to ditch the expensive gown she bought for the occasion and instead wear a sparkly T-shirt she picked up in Boston that day, emblazoned with the words: “Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.”
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (U.S. Documentary Competition)
Production companies: Act III Production, American Masters Pictures, MaraMara FilmsDirector: Mariem Pérez Riera
Producers: Brent Miller, Mariem Pérez Riera
Executive producers: Norman Lear, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Kantor, Regina K. Scully, Lyn Davis Lear
Director of photography: Pedro Juan López
Music: Kathyrn Bostic
Editors: Kevin Klauber, Mariem Pérez Riera
90 minutes
