WEST SIDE STORY: THE JETS, THE SHARKS, AND THE MAKING OF A CLASSIC

BOOKS

RICHARD BARRIOS | RUNNING PRESS

Once it’s on film, it’s there forever!” Jerome Robbins would tell his West Side dancers as he put them through take after punishing take. The legendary choreographer’s perfectionism led to costly overruns that eventually saw him fired – though the fact his Romeo And Juliet update now enjoys classic status goes some way towards vindicating conduct despotic enough for cast member Russ Tamblyn to label him “a fucking pain in the ass”.

With the help of quotes like that, stunning photos and six decades of hindsight, film historian Richard Barrios charts the complete history of how West Side Story travelled from stage to screen: a saga of “turmoil, tumult and horseplay” that survived a race against the bulldozers to get New York’s decaying tenements on camera,

Natalie Wood’s undisguised antipathy towards co-star Richard Beymer, and the hoofers’ peculiar penchant for shaving each other’s crotches.

Robert Wise’s comprehensive casting notes are a particular boon, revealing as they do that everyone from Warren Beatty to Leonard Nimoy was considered at one point or another. That the film marked a high point for virtually all those involved is also brought home by a survey of their later careers: a sobering read that reaches its nadir with Beymer and Tamblyn’s 1969 reunion in marijuana-fuelled B-movie Free Grass.

A premature chapter on Steven Spielberg’s upcoming remake aside, this is as comprehensive a West Side Study as one could wish for. Fingerclicking good! Neil Smith