Norman Lear’s Act III Productions, which produces One Day at a Time, initiated the documentary for American Masters. “She is still with it and so insightful, so smart and savvy, that to give her the opportunity to help us understand her story was just a blessing.” “The goal was to have Rita do as much of the telling as possible,” Kantor said. The biography explores the successes and struggles of Moreno’s career, combining interviews, archival footage, animation and contemporary sequences of her daily life as a working actor. “Telling stories like that of Rita Moreno is very much in our DNA,” Kantor said.ĭocumentary filmmaker Mariem Pérez Riera directed the 90-minute film, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.
She studied dance and was cast in her first Broadway role at 13. Moreno was born in Puerto Rico and relocated to New York City with her mother at age 5. As an original member of the cast of The Electric Company, the PBS sketch show for children, Moreno shared a Grammy for its soundtrack album. Her performance as Googie Gomez in the 1975 Broadway production of The Ritz earned her a Tony. She became the first Latina to win the Academy Award, in 1961, for her role as Anita in West Side Story. Moreno has won Emmy, Tony, Academy, Peabody and Grammy awards for her prowess in entertainment - a sweep of the major awards for American entertainers.
“She gets to the highest possible level, and she does that just through hard work and tenacity and skill and never giving up.” “Rita, despite all of the things that were thrown her way - the sexism and the racism and the bias and so on - she grabbed the gold ring,” Kantor said.
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Moreno’s roles on One Day at a Time, the contemporary TV sitcom about a Cuban-American family, and in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story make 2021 “a perfect time to tell her story,” said Michael Kantor, series EP.