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Rita Moreno (6/13/1962)

December 6, 2019, 11:00 pm

Rita Moreno, 1963 (Source: wikimedia.org)

Actress Rita Moreno’s career spans seven decades. In this conversation from 1962, the venerated performer talks with Studs Terkel about her Puerto Rican ethnicity and how it relates to her role as Anita in the 1961 movie version of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Ms. Moreno appears in Steven Spielberg’s re-envisioned West Side Story, due out in December 2020.

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Meet the Host

Studs Terkel (1912-2008) radically redefined the concept of radio interviews. For 45 years starting in 1952, WFMT was his homebase. His daily radio show was a pillar of WFMT’s programming, with its eclectic and astute mix of music and conversation. Studs juxtaposed interviews with the many of the 20th century’s most significant figures with the voices of uncelebrated, working people from Chicago. As a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Studs helped established oral history as a popular and socially ambitious literary genre. Some of his titles include: Division Street, Hard Times, Working, Race and And They All Sang (Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey). Studs was also a recipient of the National Book Award.

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Rita Moreno (6/13/1962)