West Side Story mines the tension of socially forbidden love, so what better polarity in 1961 than that between black and white? To spike the outrage, cast Tony as black, along with the Jets, and Mary (Maria) as poor white, along with the Sharks, and watch the sparks of miscegenation fly. I believe such a casting too explosive for 1961...or today, for that matter.
shareWhoa!!! Frankly, I don't think that idea would've gone over at all well, either then, or now. It wouldn't really work.
shareBut you have to wonder whether someone even broached the idea at an early production meeting, or at the bar five martinis after the production meeting. Did it even come up? For, certainly, the black/white dichotomy offered a ready tension unparalleled on the American landscape, simply virulent hatred. Explosive, really.
And on the matter of skin color, consider that, in WSS, for all the cultural disassociation depicted, no real color difference exists between Tony and Maria...nor much between the Jets and the Sharks, in truth (except, of course, for Chino whom WSS portrayed as the villain). Yet in the U.S., color matters as a marker of "otherness." Casting directors know this well.
One also has to bear in mind, that, while color matters as a matter of "otherness.", I do think that it's also a matter of culture, and for the fact that the newly-arrived Puerto Rican Sharks were not born and raised in NYC, much less the Continental United States, in general.
Yet, in real life, there are many ways for different groups of people to look. White European-Americans, whoever they may be, range in complexion color from extremely light-skinned to somewhat olive-skinned. African-Americans, on the other hand, range from being extremely dark-skinned to very light-skinned. Puerto Ricans and Spanish-speaking people, generally, also range from being very dark-skinned to being very light-skinned, as well.
West Side Story, although it's fiction, is closer to reality in that it does depict what's always existed, not only on the American landscape, but throughout the world, generally: An intense hatred for the unlike, if one gets the drift.
Remember that it was a musical first - Hollywood would not have wanted to make such a significant change to the original. Also keep in mind that it was a major studio effort - they weren't ready for a black/white romance. It was still illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many parts of the south. They weren't trying to shock or break new ground. They were trying to make money.
The conception of the musical started off back in 1947 as a romance between Irish Catholic and Jewish, but was put on the shelf. The authors came back to it in the fifties and introduced the gang element. If they had a larger purpose, it was to illustrate gang violence, not so much the intercultural romance.
And of course the tension between recent immigrants and more established citizens resonates today. Of course, the Sharks were Puerto Ricans and therefore American citizens, so the illegal immigration theme isn't really there.
Agreed, on your point of WSS's commercial viability and, yes, interracial marriage remained illegal in many Southern states until Loving v. Virginia (1967). I guess I'm curious as to whether the subject ever even came up. In May of 1961, antagonism erupted in the South over the "Freedom Rides" and that hatred splashed across the national press. The American Civil Rights Movement was growing and Hollywood played a part. (See, "To Kill A Mockingbird" (1962)).
Unfortunately, we've no way to know.
Actually, although it's not possible to know with certainty, there's quite a bit of documentary material around about the making of West Side Story. I read this book last year and found it pretty interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/West-Side-Story-Cultural-Perspectives/dp/0810876663?ie=UTF8&keywords=west%20side%20story&qid=1461152398&ref_=sr_1_7&s=books&sr=1-7
Also, one of the creative minds behind both the play and the movie is still with us - Stephen Sondheim. So if you were curious, you could write and ask him.
I tend to think that if black/white was considered it would have been while they were developing the play for Broadway. As I said in my earlier post, it started as Irish Catholic/Jewish back in 1947 (with no gang element). They decided that that particular culture clash had been done enough before and eventually settled on a white/Puerto Rican conflict. The gangs were added in the middle 50's as I recall. So they might have thought about black/white back then.
Once it was a success on Broadway, there was no way it was going to undergo such a big change in the transition to film. Too much commercial risk. Not only because black/white romance was controversial, but the switch might have turned off people who were looking for a pretty faithful film version of the play.
If I'm not mistaken, it took until 1967 with the very tepid "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" for a major studio to place a black/white romance at the center of a movie.
Thanks for the link, pontevedro. And, yes, I like your idea of writing to Stephen Sondheim. Why not, right? Because Arthur Laurents, WSS's book writer, apparently hired Sondheim to write lyrics. By all accounts, it was Laurents who changed the opposing ethnicities from Irish v. Jewish (Eastside Story) to Polish/Irish v. Puerto Rican (WSS). Thus, Sondheim had an inside look. Certainly, he would have been privy to any black/white cast discussions, no matter how offhand.
But, pontevedro, the theme of black/white romance runs somewhat deeper into Hollywood history than 1967's "Guess Whose Coming To Dinner." Consider the following (but for "Pinky," all black man/white woman):
Othello (1922) Dir. Dimitri Buchowetzki
Pinky (1949) Dir. Elia Kazan, John Ford
Othello (1952) Dir. Orson Welles
Island in the Sun (1957) Dir. Robert Rossen
All Night Long (1962) Dir. Basil Dearden
One Potato, Two Potato (1964) Dir. Larry Peerce
A Patch of Blue (1965) Dir. Guy Green
Othello (1965) Dir. Stuart Burge
To Sir With Love (1967) Dir. James Clavell
Admittedly, "Othello" accounts for three of the nine listed films, but then the play treats with more than just romance, as Othello marries Desdemona. (On the downside, no production of Othello cast an African American man in the title role until Lawrence Fishburne's portrayal in 1995) But, likely, at the time of its release, "Guess Whose Coming To Dinner" constituted the largest production, complete with A-list actors, that ever tackled the subject.
I was talking about major studio productions - most of the films you list are not. Several are British. But I'll give you Pinky, Island in the Sun, and Patch of Blue. But I'd also note that they're all a little different. In Pinky, it's a light skinned person passing as white. Island in the Sun is set on an island in the Caribbean, and of course the girl in Patch of Blue is blind.
Somebody may come up with something else, but I'd still say Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is the first major studio film set in the US where the relationship isn't excused away by one of the parties not knowing that the other person was black when the relationship starts.
But we're just quibbling about details. The studios began nibbling around the edges, but I don't think they would have been ready to face the issue straight on in 1961. And they certainly weren't going to take on what would have been a major departure from the musical play.
Agreed, on Hollywood's nibbling at the edges of black/white interracial relationships for several post-war years prior to "GWCTD," but I would argue the prominence of "A Patch of Blue" for, though the girl is blind, the audience is not. Thus, of course, we "see" the budding impropriety even of their early conversations--the social inequities--that she cannot; and we see the human equanimity that her blindness imparts. Point made.
I plan to pen a letter to Steven Sondheim on whether WSS ever broached the black/white cast dichotomy. Like you, I doubt it. But, more specifically, I am curious about the production assessment of skin tones, and the perceived need to neutralize skin tones between young lovers (or, at least, present the man as slightly darker).
We'll see.
This:
The conception of the musical started off back in 1947 as a romance between Irish Catholic and Jewish, but was put on the shelf. The authors came back to it in the fifties and introduced the gang element. If they had a larger purpose, it was to illustrate gang violence, not so much the intercultural romance.
At the time, Tony/Maria would have been considered a mixed race marriage... and pretty controversial. And while American service men have been bringing back Asian wives since WWII, in the 40s my Mom's white bread Mid-West Aunt married a Japanese American man and THAT raised quite a few eyebrows.
Puerto Ricans, like Cubans Venezuelans and Mexicans run the gamut of skin tones (as likely do other South/Central American and Latino-Caribbean islands, but I know personally either through in-laws, steps or friends the ones I've listed). This is due to the mix of Spanish and other Europeans with indigenous people (i.e. Taino in Cuba & PR; Aztec, Mayan, etc. in Mexico), and Africans due to the slave trade. My BiL and his sibling range from lighter than I, to almost African American dark (but a different tone) and my Step-Mom's mother was as dark as my BiL, yet my S-M is lighter than I (English/Irish/Scots/French
American from before the Revolution).
Undoubtedly, cultural disassociation provides fertile ground for "otherness." In addition, here, the post-war wave of Puerto Rican immigration to NYC displaced working class whites and sparked further resentment. An old story, really..
Certainly, friendoffilm, skin color varies widely within and without ethnicities, but especially among the New World peoples. Consider that Central and South Americans constitute a mixture of European (colonizers), West African (black slaves), and indigenous peoples. But my skin tone-related point focused, specifically, on the "color wheel." That is, the system of socialization that favors lighter skin tones over darker ones. (For example, historically, among African Americans the lighter the skin tone, the closer to "beauty" the individual appeared. In fact, some very light African Americans even passed for Caucasian, the ideal of "beauty.")
What I mean is this: in WSS, Robert Wise made fairly sure that no skin tone separated Tony from Maria--if anything, Tony is darker than Maria, which popular understanding could accept under the rubric of "tall, dark, and handsome." But not too dark. Because Tony as protagonist cannot dredge up in the audience any of the negative connotations that plague "dark," linguistically. (Dark or black-hearted for villainy; dark mood for gloomy; and dark/black hatted for evil, generally.)
WSS's producers knew what they had to avoid.