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In a 2013 interview, Brooks said Johnson and composer John Morris were crucial to the success of his films. ‘‘Without those two guys,’’ he said, ‘‘none of my movies would have reached the heights it did.’’ Alan Scott Johnson was born in Philadelphia. His father worked at a shipyard, and his mother was a homemaker and waitress who encouraged his interest in dance.

A devotee of dancer Jack Cole, Johnson left for Manhattan after graduating from high school and was 20 when he began his Broadway career, as an understudy in the original staging of West Side Story. He soon advanced to play one of the gang members of the Jets and served as the show’s dance captain, often filling in for injured performers.

‘‘He had to learn practically every single one of the Jet movements and be ready to go on at any moment, because everybody in West Side was getting the crap beat out of them when we did the rumble scene,’’ Charnin, one of the original cast members, said. ‘‘Not a week went by when somebody didn’t go out with a bruise, a sprained wrist or a sprained ankle. Alan was able to learn all of those moves and learned them very quickly.’’

Johnson went on to dance in Broadway musicals including Richard Rodgers’ No Strings (1962) and Stephen Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle (1964), and he choreographed The First, a Charnin-directed musical that premiered in 1981.

By then, he was largely working in Hollywood as a choreographer. He also directed To Be or Not to Be (1983), a nearly line-by-line remake of director Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 film comedy about a theatre troupe in Nazi-occupied Poland. Brooks, one of the stars and producers, backed Johnson’s second venture as a director, Solarbabies

(1986), a sci-fi flop featuring Richard Jordan and Jami Gertz.

Johnson, who is survived by a sister, received three Emmy Awards for choreography. For decades, he choreographed stagings of West Side Story, saying he felt a duty to ensure Robbins’ steps weren’t tampered with. By his count, he restaged about 25 productions from the 1970s to 2000, when he adapted its choreography for a series of popular Gap commercials.

As the taste of dancers and audiences changed, however, staging West Side Story

became increasingly difficult. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1997 that the rise of MTV meant many of his dancers had studied hiphop more than ballet. ‘‘They can do some incredible things,’’ he said, ‘‘but just ask them to try a double pirouette.’’ – Washington Post Do you someone who deserves a Life Story? Email obituaries@stuff.co.nz