- May 23, 2023
- Posted by: AliensFaith
- Category: OBJECTIVE PRESS
The singing, dancing and acting superstar originated some of the best roles in musicals – yet none of it would have happened had she not fallen through a table at the age of nine
The one and only Chita Rivera answers the phone at her home in New York, but she sounds an early warning: we could be joined at any moment by a third party. That would be Dolores, the hell-raising alter ego of the 90-year-old Broadway megastar, who makes a series of arresting interventions in Rivera’s new memoir. “It’s Chita right now,” she says with a sly chuckle. “But Dolores could pop in at any second.”
Dolores, Rivera’s birth name, is what her mother called her whenever she caused trouble. When Rivera was in rehearsals for West Side Story in 1957, she began to use the D-word to distinguish her gutsy, unpredictable side, in contrast to the usual strait-laced nature that led Chicago lyricist Fred Ebb to dub her “Miss Dove”.
