Broadway Icon Chita Rivera Passes at 91: A Legacy of Power, Passion, and Performance

Broadway Icon Chita Rivera’s Extraordinary Journey

Chita Rivera, who acted in more than 20 Broadway musicals over six decades, has died, according to her daughter, Lisa Mordente. The three-time Tony Award-winning Broadway superstar developed legendary roles — Anita in West Side Story, Rose in Bye Bye Birdie, Velma Kelly in Chicago, and Aurora in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. She was 91.

A Legendary Career

Rivera “was everything Broadway was meant to be,” recalls Laurence Maslon, co-producer of the 2004 PBS series: The American Musical. “She was unconstrained and curiously and capable as hell for decades and decades on Broadway. Once you saw her, you never forgot her.”

A Spitfire from the Start

You may imagine she was a Broadway baby from childhood — but she wasn’t. Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington, D.C., she told a group of onlookers at a Screen On-screen characters Society Establishment meet that she was a spitfire and drove her mother insane: “She said, ‘I’m putting you in expressive dance course so that ready to rule in a few of that energy.’ So I am truly thankful.”

The Breakthrough

Broadway vocalist she dances through her life in a new book
Rivera took to ballet so fully that she obtained a full scholarship at the School of American Ballet in New York. But when she went with a friend to an audition for the tour of the Broadway show Call Me Madam, Rivera earned the role. Goodbye ballet, welcome Broadway. In 1957, she won her breakout part, Anita in West Side Story, with a soundtrack by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.

“Hearing ‘America’ was fair mind-boggling, with that beat,” Rivera told NPR in 2007 for the musical’s 50th commemoration. “I just couldn’t wait to do it. It was such a difficulty. And, being Latin, you know, that was a nice sound.”

A Triple Threat

West Side Story allowed Rivera to display not just her athletic dance abilities, but her acting and singing chops. She reviews Leonard Bernstein educating her on the score himself: “I keep in mind sitting following to Lenny and his beginning with ‘A Boy Like That,’ instructing it to me and me saying, ‘I’ll never do this, I can’t hit those notes.

But she did hit them, and being able to sing, act, and move made her a prized Broadway product, said Maslon. “She was the first great triple threat. Broadway directors like Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse realized the necessity to have players who could do all three things and do them incredibly beautifully.”

Overcoming Adversity

And, from 1960 to 2013, she headlined several tremendous hits – as well as some big disappointments. In 1986, Rivera was in a tragic taxi accident. Her left leg was shattered, and the doctors thought she’d never dance again, yet she did – just differently.

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“We all have to be realistic,” she told NPR in 2005. “I don’t execute flying splits anymore. I don’t do backflips and all the stuff that I used to do. Do you want to know something? I don’t want to.”

A Farewell to a Legend

But her celebrity never waned. And the plaudits flowed: She earned three Tony Awards, including one for lifetime achievement, a Kennedy Center honor, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rivera didn’t do much television or movies – she was entirely dedicated to the stage, recalls Maslon.

“That’s why they’re called Broadway legends,” he continues. “Hopefully you get to see them live because you’ll never get to see them in another form in quite the same way.”

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