My Introduction to West Side Story: How My Love For WSS Came to Be:

Although West Side Story is my all time favorite movie, my initial introduction to this great classic movie/musical was through the LP soundtrack to the original Broadway stage production of it, during the summer of 1962, while attending day camp out West...in Tucson, AZ, to be exact. A girl in the group I was with, who'd just received a copy of the 33 LP soundtrack of the original Broadway stage version of West Side Story for her birthday, brought it to camp one morning, and played it for the group. My love for the music and the story behind West Side Story took off instantly.

West-Side-Story mania was in the air that summer, as kids roamed the halls in packs, snapping their fingers and singing all the songs from West Side Story, which also rang through the bus to and from camp five days a week. It was rather cool.

When I arrived home at the end of that summer, I played my parents' copy of the LP soundtrack of West Side Story (the original Broadway stage version) on their Hi-Fi whenever I could, and, much to my parents' dismay, I would also bang around with the various West Side Story songs on the piano, as well.

Around Christmastime of 1968, during a national re-release of it, I got to see the film version of West Side Story, as a high school senior. Since I was still a teenager in high school, I identified with the Jets, the Sharks and their girls regarding kids being kids and so on, but when I got a bit old, was out of high school, and began seeing the film West Side Story in (now mostly defunct) independent repertory art movie houses in and around Boston, I developed an even deeper appreciation for it...the fact that it was a real work of art, as well as having a beautiful story behind it. Having said all of the above, West Side Story, as a film, still tugs at my heartstrings all these years later.