Rita Moreno as the Developing World
Who’s Rita Moreno!?!? Rita Moreno is everything. She’s a Puerto Rican in West Side Story, a Burmese slave in The King and I, a South-East Indian in Father Knows Best, an American-Indian in a thousand D-Grade Westerns, a Middle Eastern princess in a thousand D-Grade Aladdin ripoffs and a plain ole white girl in Singing in the Rain (because Gene Kelly cast her and doesn’t see colour. Cause he’s awesome. He was also probably cool with gay guys. If they copped a feel of his ass during dance rehearsal I’m sure he would just flash them a dimpled smile and shrug like ‘no worries.’ Because he knew it was perfect and he was very gregarious. We are getting off track.) She’s an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, Tony winning star. That’s right, Rita Moreno is an EGOT. The only Hispanic EGOT. She’s known as La Pionera (The Pioneer) in the Latin American community because she was the one that broke down the door for Hispanics in Hollywood - and she dealt with a lot of racist degrading bullshit doing so.
Rita Moreno is also, thankfully, a hilarious interviewee. Check out this great interview where she looks back on her life, discusses the racism she suffered in Hollywood in the 1940s/50s/60s, how she felt playing bad stereotypes of Latina women, how she felt having to play every other ethnic minority under the sun because of her skin colour, and what she thinks of the role of Hispanics in Hollywood today. When Hollywood needed an actress to play someone from the Developing World, they went to Rita Moreno - and she had to camp up the accent and suffer the cliche costuming and dialogue to appease her bosses with humility.
NOTE: Oh, also for good measure, she was in a deep intense relationship with Marlon Brando for 5 years. That also probably took a lot of humility.
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