Rita Returns!

Rita Moreno will always be the answer to the trivia question “Who was the first performer to win the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy Awards?” — but she’s so much more. A consummate actress who moves between drama and comedy with ease, Moreno has also proved to herself to be a dynamic cabaret artist.

On Tuesday, January 16, she’ll be making her Café Carlyle debut with a new show titled Little Tributes. During a break from a pre-Christmas rehearsal in New York, I spoke with her about that endeavor, her amazing six-decade long career, the possibility of a one-woman show, and even her views on plastic surgery.

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THEATERMANIA: Why is your show called Little Tributes?

RITA MORENO: I’m just going to do stuff that I’ve loved forever and ever and ever. We have a bunch of songs from Broadway shows, but not the most obvious, and that’s kind of neat. We have two things by Kander & Ebb, songs from House of Flowers, and some Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin. I’m doing a two-song tribute to Peggy Lee, who’s been my goddess since I was 18 or 19; she is to me what Sinatra is to a lot of people. We have a soft-shoe number from The Pajama Game. And we’re going to end the show with the hottest salsa you’ve ever heard; I’m going to play maracas and cowbell. It’s a hot, wonderful, Puerto Rican Christmas song.

TM: Is this material that you haven’t performed before?

RM: It’s all brand new to me, which is why I’m peeing in my knickers. I’m so hysterically nervous about it! I’m starting to get all kinds of symptoms — headaches, kneck-aches. I’ve been waking up at 4am, trying to work out lyrics that I haven’t really quite learned yet. It’s crazy, but what can I tell you? I can’t do what I did at Feinstein’s a couple of years ago, so I have to come up with something new. I’m going to do the show at the Plush Room in San Francisco next year. That room is just magical. I think I was the first major person to play there, and I remember that they were trying to get other people interested. Karen Akers called me and asked, “What’s it like?” I said, “You will love it. The audience is there to serve, as it were, and they’re very sophisticated.

TM: Playing that room must be really special for you, since you live in Berkeley now.

RM: I’m the local diva there. I did Master Class at the Berkeley Rep, directed by Moisés Kaufman. It was an amazing production — completely different from the one that was originally done, though there was no change in dialogue of any kind. Terrence McNally [who wrote the play] saw it and was absolutely stunned. He said, “You made me cry.” I don’t think Terrence ever thought of me in a role like that; he’s always sort of put me in that Googie Gomez slot [the role in McNally’s The Ritz that won Moreno a Tony Award]. We broke box-office records with Master Class, and then we broke them again when we did 18 weeks of The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams is a challenge, but none of the reviews said “She’s too Latino.” I really became that lady; she’s so complicated, pitiful, self absorbed, and insensitive. You want to shake her. But she’s also hilarious, so wacky and cuckoo. Maybe I just understand really ultra-dynamic, passionate, unpredictable women like Amanda and Maria Callas.

TM: Did you ever see Callas during her performing days?

RM: Never, but I did an enormous amount of research. Berkeley Rep has a sensational dramaturgy department; I have a huge sheaf of papers on The Glass Menagerie on what was happening at the time. For Maria, I didn’t know what to do about the accent, but they had loads of videos for me to watch. In some of them, she sounds absolutely as American as I do right now, but then there was one she did in England where she has this conservatory-sounding speech. I think making her sound too American, no matter how accurate, would have been odd. So I chose a mid-Atlantic accent with a little bit of an inflection.

TM: Do you have something else on tap at Berkeley Rep?

RM: No, we have to come up with something. I do it every two years. Now that I’ve done those two big, heavy duty roles, I’m anxious to do something bawdy — maybe a costume play with my bosoms pushed up to my neck, lots of door slamming, and getting my bottom pinched. I don’t have much experience doing that, but I can be funny. And then, eventually, I want to put together a one-woman show through the auspices of Berkeley Rep, with Moisés directing and Tom Fontana doing the book with me. Tom and I worked together on OZ, and we respect each other. He has an edge that I like.

TM: What kind of stories would you be including in the show?

RM: I do have a political background that I’d like to include in the show. I was at the march on Washington; I sat about 10 feet from Martin Luther King when he gave the “I have a dream” speech. Diahann Carroll, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., Jimmy Garner — there was a whole planeload of celebrities there, and we literally were in a seating area right there in front of the man. I hope stories like that will enrich the show, and I want the songs to be applicable to the time or what I’m saying rather than just being shoehorned in. It’s a lot of work! Once I’m finished with the Carlyle, I’ll go back to Berkeley, and Les Waters, who directed me in The Glass Menagerie wants to do the interviews, just because he loves me. So we’ll put them on tape or video, then Tom and Moisés can see what direction they think the show should take.

TM: Do you think OZ created a new fan base for you?

RM: Oh, absolutely! You can’t believe it — these young people really love Sister Pete. I never dreamed that she’s have such popularity, but she became the heart of that prison. I loved with those astonishing actors; I think it’s scandalous that none of them ever even got nominated for Emmys. Those people were just amazing. Edie Falco was one of the security guards. She was like a little bantam cock — she’s really no taller than I am, maybe even shorter — but she was tough. When she told me she was going to do a show called The Sopranos, I said, “Oh, a sit-com?” She said, “No, not really.”

TM Would you go back to TV on a regular basis?

RM: It would depend. It’s the same reason I haven’t come back to Broadway: My family. I have two grandsons, an eight-year-old and a six-year-old. I turned 75 on December 11th, and I’ve just decided these last few years that I don’t want to miss out on the childhood of these little boys. So I have turned down a couple of Broadway shows, believe it or not. If this one-woman show does come to Broadway, it would be on a short-term basis. The boys come for breakfast almost every morning; my husband being a Jew, says they should have one good meal a day, inasmuch as our daughter’s starving them. And they stay over twice a week! They have everything there that they could possibly want — and they have their grandma and grandpa, too. We play with them, we read to them. I read the stories because I act them out, and they love that. It’s just a very happy way to be when you’re 75. Some people want only show business all of their lives at every moment — but my life is my family, truly, and then comes show business.

TM: Is this the life you would have envisioned for yourself when you started your career almost 60 years ago?

RM: No. All I wanted as a girl from Puerto Rico was to be a movie star — but I had no role models, so I wanted to be Lana Turner. Little did I know! Then, as I got older, I wanted to be Liz Taylor — we were both under contract to MGM at the same time — but all I did was play little Indian maidens! It broke my heart, because I had such aspirations.

TM: They’ve just re-released The King and I on DVD. Do you watch any of your old movies?

RM: No, and I rarely watch TV when I’m on it. I’m playing Vincent D’Onofrio’s mother in three episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Boy, is he a joy to work with. Warren Leight, the show’s writer, and Darnell Martin, who directed me in OZ and I Like it Like That, called me and asked if I would do it. I was sent the script of the first episode, and I literally had two scenes with one line each. I called Warren and said, “You have to tell me that there’s going to be more than this in the second and third episodes!” He said, “If you do the part, it will completely change everything. We’d love to have you.” In fact, they rewrote that first script so I had about four scenes in it. Of course, I look like the wrath of God. Honey, if you thought I looked wretched in OZ, wait till you see this. It’s a career-ruiner!

TM: But it sounds like that doesn’t really bother you.

RM: Well, it does, but not enough for me to turn it down. When I decided to do OZ, I knew that it was going to be “dirty lighting” and I’d be playing a nun, so I couldn’t put on a lot of makeup. I made a serious career decision at that time: “Okay, it’s either this or you spend the rest of your career asking for soft-focus, or you get plastic surgery.” I think I lost some jobs because I didn’t look so good, but OZ gained me a brand new respect from people in our business. Big-time producers, writers, and directors who I didn’t know personally would make it a point to say, “I just love you on OZ.” I was amazed and delighted at how many well-known folk in the business followed that show.

TM: So you haven’t felt pressured to have cosmetic surgery?

RM: No. All you have to do is look at my neck to see that I haven’t had work done! I think I’d be embarrassed if I looked too perfect at my age.