ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
A Broadway legend has died. Three-time Tony Award-winning actress, Chita Rivera, died today after a short illness. She was 91. The original Anita in "West Side Story," Rivera appeared in more than 20 Broadway musicals over six decades. Jeff Lunden has this appreciation.
JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: She was one of the last true Broadway stars, and she created indelible roles - Anita in "West Side Story"...
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CHITA RIVERA: (As Anita, singing) Anita's gonna get her kicks tonight.
LUNDEN: ...Rose in "Bye Bye Birdie"...
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RIVERA: (As Rose, singing) An English teacher, an English teacher, if only you'd been an English teacher.
LUNDEN: ...Velma Kelly in "Chicago"...
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RIVERA: (As Velma Kelly, singing) Come on, baby, why don't we paint the town and all that jazz.
LUNDEN: ...And Aurora in "Kiss Of The Spider Woman."
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RIVERA: (As Aurora, singing) But you're caught in the web of a spider woman, in her velvet cape. You can scream.
LAURENCE MASLON: She was everything Broadway was meant to be.
LUNDEN: Laurence Maslon co-produced the PBS series "Broadway."
MASLON: She was spontaneous and compelling and talented as hell. For decades and decades on Broadway, once you saw her, you never forgot her.
LUNDEN: So you'd think Chita Rivera was a Broadway baby from childhood. But she wasn't. Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington, D.C., she told an audience at a Screen Actors Fund interview that she was a tomboy and drove her mother crazy.
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RIVERA: She said I'm putting you in ballet class so that we can rein in some of that energy.
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RIVERA: So I'm very grateful.
LUNDEN: Rivera took to ballet so completely that she got a full scholarship to the School of American Ballet in New York. But when she went with a friend to an audition for the tour of a Broadway show, Rivera got the job - goodbye ballet, hello Broadway. In 1957, she landed her breakout role, Anita, in "West Side Story," with a score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.
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RIVERA: (As Anita, singing) I like the island Manhattan.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, vocalizing) We know you do.
RIVERA: (As Anita, singing) Smoke on your pipe and put that in.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) I like to be in America. OK, buy me in America.
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RIVERA: Hearing "America" was just mind-boggling with that rhythm.
LUNDEN: That's Rivera from a 2007 interview with NPR for the show's 50th anniversary.
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RIVERA: I just couldn't wait to do it. It was such a challenge. And being Latin, you know, it was a welcoming sound.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Automobile in America, chromium steel in America, wire-spoke wheel in America, very big deal in America.
LUNDEN: "West Side Story" allowed Rivera to reveal not only her athletic dancing chops, but her acting and singing chops. Leonard Bernstein taught her the score himself.
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RIVERA: I mean, I remember sitting next to Lenny and his starting with "A Boy Like That," teaching it to me and me saying, I'll never do this. I can't hit those notes. I don't know how to hit those notes. And he made me do it.
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RIVERA: (As Anita, singing) A boy like that who'd kill your brother, forget that boy and find another. One of your own kind - stick to your own kind.
LUNDEN: And being able to sing, act and dance made her a valuable Broadway commodity, says Laurence Maslon.
MASLON: She was the first great triple threat because by the late '50s, early '60s, Broadway directors like Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse saw the need to have performers who could do all three things and do them really well.
LUNDEN: And from 1960 to 2013, she headlined some big hits and some big flops. But in 1986, Rivera was in a serious taxi accident. Her left leg was shattered, and the doctors said she'd never dance again. But she did - differently, she told NPR in 2005.
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RIVERA: We all have to be realistic. I don't do flying splits anymore. I don't do backflips and all the stuff that I used to do. I - you want to know something? I don't want to.
LUNDEN: But her stardom never diminished, and the accolades flowed. She won several Tony Awards, including one for lifetime achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rivera didn't do much television or film. She was completely devoted to the stage, says Laurence Maslon.
MASLON: That's why they're called Broadway legends - because hopefully you get to see them live because you'll never get to see them in another form in quite the same way.
LUNDEN: For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
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