When was rita moreno born

Until she achieved acclaim for her performance in West Side Story, Moreno was plagued with roles that propagated ethnic stereotypes, including "Latin Spit-fire" roles in such forgettable films as Jivaro, and Seven Cities of Gold After winning the Oscar she became one of a few Latinos to achieve international acclaim.

Her mother, Rosa Maria Mercano, married Paco Alverio, a small independent farmer, when she was just a teenager, but the marriage ended in divorce. In the s the pressures of the Depression and the side effects of the island's rapid industrialization forced Rosa to look toward the United States for sustenance. When she broke down, the other actors in the scene immediately stopped to comfort her and help her get through the scene.

The sequence sets up a critical plot element and is essential to the story. Moreno's late husband, Dr. Leonard Gordon, was an internist and cardiologist. The couple had one child, Fernanda Luisa Gordon aka Fernanda Gordon , who was delivered via an emergency Caesarean section.

A successful jewelry designer, Fernanda founded Nandiz Design. However, she was not the first Hispanic entertainer to win an Oscar. Was dancing professionally in a Greenwich Village nightclub at age 9, as arranged by her dance teacher, Rita Hayworth 's uncle.

In her memoir she describes how stunned she was when a handsome stranger, with his wife on his arm, very brazenly flirted with her. It was the s and the man was then-Sen. John F. Moreno also described her disappointment about one-time lover Elvis Presley being much more like "a baby brother" than a stud. Is one of 27 actresses to have received an Academy Award nomination for their performance in a musical; hers being West Side Story Following Debbie Reynolds 's death in December , Moreno is the last surviving main cast member of Singin' in the Rain Is one of 8 actresses to have won an Academy Award for their performance in a musical.

Acting mentor and friends of: Harold Perrineau and Dean Winters. Best known by the television-viewing public for her starring role as Sister Peter Marie Reimondo in Oz Became pregnant as result of an affair with Marlon Brando in , but she underwent an abortion. It is very important that women of this country be made aware of the dangers of osteoporosis in the sense that it is a silent and invisible disease with no symptoms whatsoever.

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Official Sites: Official Site Twitter. She became Rita Moreno, taking the last name of her step-father Edward Moreno and the first name of the star Rita Hayworth. Zanuck, who signed her to another 7-year contract with 20th Century Fox. Under pressure from Marlon Brando, by whom she was pregnant, Moreno got an illegal abortion and had to be rushed to the hospital shortly after to have the procedure properly completed.

Moreno attempted to take her own life as a result of her career frustration and her tumultuous relationship with Marlon Brando. Moreno became the first Latina to win an Oscar. Moreno married Dr. Leonard Lenny Gordon and was married to him until his death in at the age of She is also an Executive Producer on the project. I mean, about your fame and all that kind of bull[bleep] Yeah, it goes up and down; right now it's up.

Oh, a diamond on the floor! Not sure how it relates to Cuba, but it's cool. My mother muttered constantly in Spanish, you know -- [ Muttering in Spanish ] [ Laughs ] I even tell myself jokes sometimes -- not tell jokes, but I'll say something in a funny voice and I'll laugh at myself.

I remember with my mama going to the local creek to wash clothing, and all of the women there would sing and yell across to each other and tell stories, and -- [ Speaking Spanish ] You know -- and the kids would play in the creek.

When my mother got her divorce, we moved in with grandfather who used to make me dance to records -- not make me, I loved it. What really changed all that was moving to the United States for a 'better life.

My mommy and I took a ship called the SS which is really a hilarious name because in English it simply means 'stupid face,' which is not a good omen, by the way, because we immediately ran into a storm. It didn't take me long before I figured out, my mom was leaving Puerto Rico for good. Coming from Puerto Rico to New York was like experiencing a reverse Oz -- to go from that glorious place, green and colorful, to this.

I looked at this lady way up there, this green lady, and she seemed to be holding a giant ice cream cone. That's one of the reasons that Puerto Ricans encounter certain -- or, had certain tensions with other groups that were also competing for the limited amount of jobs that were available.

And the discrimination you faced based on what block you were walking down was very real. If you feel that you have no value, that's a very, very serious illness, and I went through that kind of feeling of unworthiness for years and years and years. Dancing lessons was the perfect panacea for me at the time, and so I started doing Spanish dance. And, you know, I didn't get the poignance of a moment like that, I didn't understand that maybe at least half of them were not coming back.

And when a talent scout did spot me at a dance recital and he was from MGM, I was crazy with joy and happiness. He went backstage and gave my mother his business card, and he said, 'Louis B. Mayer's in town. We met him in the penthouse at the Waldorf Astoria, but we had a hard time getting up there because we didn't know what a penthouse was, we didn't know what elevator.

We dressed me up, by the way, to look as much like Elizabeth Taylor as possible -- it was really fun, we got a, um, a corselette to make my waist small, because she had a tiny, tiny waist. She was my role model -- because there were no role models for someone like me -- in those days?

And I went in there and we met and he sized me up and he says, 'My God,' he said, 'she looks like a Spanish Elizabeth Taylor. Here's the funny thing: you work your ass off all your life, and then something like this happens and it didn't take anything but a connection with somebody. You know, I instantly took it to mean that, because I was Latina, that's inevitable, right?

When you're not treated well and you have that problem, uh, or that fear, that's always what you think of first. And this fellow that we're -- we'd like to fix you up with is kind of well known, and it might do you some good.

The host -- a man who ran a big whiskey distillery -- comes over to me, says, 'Come on, I'll introduce you to people. And he introduced me to Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Studios, a distinctly vulgar and crude man. And before I knew it, he actually said to me, 'You know, I'd like to [bleep] you.

The host of the evening, Mr. Distillery, Mr. Whiskey, comes over to me and he said, 'Why don't you dance with me? And before I knew it, he started to get a little bit of sweat beads on his upper lip and he started to breathe heavily, and he was really -- he wasn't pressing against me, he was grinding against me.

And went out into the garden where I found Mexican gardeners, because this was an afternoon party, tears again, started to say, 'I need your help, I have to go home. And they put one of their jackets on me and took me home to my little cottage in Culver City. And all of these characters were always treated like illiterate, immoral; they were always men's little island girls.