It convinced me once and for all that my being Hispanic was my undoing, which a number of years later sent me into psychotherapy. But the powers that be just said, "We don't know what to do with her." So they dropped me.
If he'd been around more and had more roles for young people, I might have still been at MGM. Interestingly enough, it was Gene Kelly who put me in the role of Zelda Zanders, which had nothing to do with being Hispanic. They didn't know what to do with me because of the Hispanic name. And then I did Singin' in the Rain, and after that I was dropped from that contract. Q: What kinds of roles were you doing for MGM?Ī: I did a film with Lana Turner and Ricardo Montalban called Latin Mothers. By the time you were through doing a half hour, your eyes were bright red and running because the lights were so very strong. So if you were going to dance, you had to dance in a space of about four feet by four feet. In those days, they had one camera and they didn't have the zoom lens. Q: How did you break into live television for the Dumont Network?Ī: I did some singing and dancing. So a lot of people keep saying, "Oh, you were wonderful in Spider Woman," and I say, "Thank you." I think it's because Chita Rivera and I played the same role in West Side Story, Anita. I get credit for doing an awful lot of plays that I haven't done. It was a Broadway drama called Sky Drift based very loosely on Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. Q: You went to Broadway at a young age.Ī: I did my very first Broadway show when I was thirteen passing for eleven, looking nine. My first American experience was the big lady in the New York harbor. After about four to five months, when she'd earned enough money and learned some English, she went back to Puerto Rico to get me. She took a ship to New York City and stayed with an aunt in the Hispanic ghetto and got a job as a seamstress in a sweatshop. I think she was about eighteen, nineteen. Q: How did you come to New York from Puerto Rico in 1936?Ī: My mother obtained a divorce from my father. The entire interview can be screened at /Interviews. The following is an edited excerpt of Moreno's conversation with Miller. Moreno, who was recently inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, was interviewed in June 2000 by Marla Miller for The Interviews: An Oral History of Television, a program of the Television Academy Foundation. Here she discusses her struggles as an Hispanic entertainer determined to change America's tune. Her tenacity was such that Moreno would eventually triumph on Broadway, film and television, and become the first person in history to win a Tony, Grammy, Oscar and Emmy in competition.įrom her early appearances on The Jack Benny Show and The Electric Company to later roles on Oz and the rebooted One Day at a Time, television has provided Moreno with some of the most rewarding - and frustrating - experiences of her career. Pigeonholed as a generic "Latin" sexpot, Moreno fought long and hard for roles that would showcase her versatility as an actress, singer and dancer. But while that character's frustrations were played mostly for laughs, Moreno faced a real-life ethnic barrier that was anything but comic. “The real test will be if the raspiness comes back,” he says.In 1961's West Side Story, Rita Moreno sang "America" in her role as Anita, a Puerto Rican immigrant adjusting to life in New York City - and won an Oscar. “You can’t rule out the possibility that rest alone did this,” says Amin, Surgery, speech therapy, medicine for acid reflux disease and even plain rest are among the standard treatments for a condition like Cosby’s. Thanks for noticing how energetic my voice sounds.”Ĭosby – who frequently seemed to be straining so hard when she spoke that the veins on her neck would visibly bulge – may have undergone one or several different treatments, according to NYU speech expert Dr. “I am getting so many compliments about my voice, I intend to keep it this way. “There’s nothing like going to the doctor and getting a prescription that includes an enforced vacation (I went to Mexico), getting some vocal rest, and coming back with a tan to this arctic weather,” Cosby told the Post yesterday in a prepared statement. Since Cosby appeared on the air last week – after a three week “enforced” vacation in Mexico – her trademark rasp was gone and she was speaking in an unremarkable tone of voice.Ĭosby declined to say what exactly she’d done to get her voice back.īut she did say that she had been to a see a doctor before her three weeks off the radar. RITA Cosby, the MSNBC anchor, has found her voice.
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