Chita Rivera
(1933-2024)

The legendary Broadway singer and dancer Chita Rivera has died at the age of 91.

She was born in Washington DC and won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet when she was only 9. After graduating she appeared in revue shows and created an impression in a Can-Can Calypso number. Following this she joined the cast of the touring version of Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam. Three years later she made her Broadway debut in Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls.

In 1956 she appeared with Sammy Davis Jr in Mr Wonderful (music and lyrics by Jerry Bock). Stardom came the following year when she was cast as Anita in Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story, kicking up a storm in the hit number (I Like To Be In) America…. during the run she married a fellow dancer, Tony Mordente and they had one daughter. She repeated the role of Anita in London’s West End (which is where I first saw her) but was replaced by Rita Moreno for the multi-Oscar winning 1961 film version starring Natalie Wood.

Three years later, at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket, Chita appeared as Rosie in Charles Strouse and Lee Adams' hilarious musical Bye Bye Birdie, which was inspired by the drafting of Elvis Presley into the US Army. I saw the show twice and someone I knew got my programme autographed by the entire cast (wish I still had it…).

In 1969 she appeared alongside Shirley Maclaine in the film version of Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields' Sweet Charity. I saw her on stage again in 1992 in Kander & Ebb's Kiss Of The Spiderwoman at the Shaftesbury (she had earlier starred as Velma Kelly in the Broadway production of their greatest hit Cabaret and won a Best Actress for their The Rink in 1984, fending off Liza Minnelli who was playing her daughter). Neither I nor anyone else in the Spiderman audience could have believed that she had broken one of her legs in twelve places in a car accident seven years earlier...

In 2009 Rivera received the Medal of Honour Award from US President Barack Obama alongside Sidney Poitier and only in April last year was her memoir Chita published.

Paying tribute on BBC Radio 2 Elaine Paige said that Chita was "one of a kind" and Andrew Lloyd Webber stated online "She redefined the words Theatrical Legend."

(Anthony Wills)