R.I.P. Tony Mordente: ‘West Side Story’ Actor Dead At 88

West Side Story actor Tony Mordente, who starred in both the original Broadway production and the 1961 film, passed away Tuesday. He was 88.

Mordente is best known for playing a member of the Jets named Action in the 1961 adaptation of the hit Broadway play. He previously played A-Rab, a different member of the Jets, in the original stage production.

His passing comes just months after his ex-wife Chita Rivera, who famously played Anita in the original 1961 film, passed away earlier this year.

Born in 1935 in Brooklyn, Mordente began dancing at the age of 13 when he began attending dance classes.

“My mother thought I had a little too much energy when I was 13, and it was also a matter of getting me off the streets,” he said in a 1963 interview.

He later enrolled in the American Ballet Theater School on scholarship where he was discovered by Michael Kidd, who cast him in the Broadway play Li’l Abner. Thus began his career in Hollywood.

After starring in the Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise-directed adaptation of West Side Story, Mordente did some acting with appearances in The Outer Limits and Combat! before he found his calling as a director. He went on to direct dozens of television shows, including The A-Team, Riptide, 7th Heaven, M*A*S*H, and more. He also worked as a choreographer on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.

Mordente and Rivera were married from 1957 to 1966. By all accounts, their relationship proved to be very controversial on the set of West Side Story.

“A Jet marrying a Shark. It was quite a thing,” he once said in an interview, per The Hollywood Review.

Playbill also reported, “Chita, the original Anita, remembers very clearly being told that the Sharks and Jets were not allowed to fraternize. Well, not only did she fraternize with a Jet (Tony Mordente), they wound up having a daughter!”

He later remarried in 1978 to Jean G. Fraser, with whom he shares a second daughter.

Mordente is survived by his kids, Adriana Mordente and the Tony-nominated actress Lisa Mordente.