Word: wood
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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GARY: The show that everybody thought was doomed from the start has come through in fine form. West Side Story maintains all the pace, punch, and color of the Leonard Bernstein-Jerome Robbins Broadway original. Stars Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood...
Nevertheless, by sheer theatrical intensity, the film transcends its specious materials. Under Robert Wise's driving direction, its set pieces are socko and incessant. Natalie Wood has the right dark glow as the Latin heroine; Richard Beymer is winsome as the hero, and as a tan teen Tybalt and a nubile Nurse of anything but the usual Shakespearance, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno are strikingly slummy. On-screen as onstage, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics sting like a tongueful of tamales. Leonard Bernstein's music, as usual spinelessly eclectic, fails (as the whole film fails) to merge...
...story begins with Natalie Wood fighting off her high school steady in a roadster parked by a reservoir in Kansas. She says, "Don't;" he doesn't. Instead, he drives her home to Mother who tells her that nice girls "don't go too far." His father tells him to "be careful." At this point, Inge inserts a series of plot complications that illustrate all the Freudian home truths. Eventually, she goes out of her mind, and he goes to Yale, where he marries an Italian waitress. Many morals could be drawn from this oh-so-revealing analysis of sexual...
Even if it were possible to disregard the ineffable cliche quality of Inge's screenplay, it would not be possible to overlook Natalie Wood's abysmal acting. If Sandra Dee stands at the nadir of movie acting, then Miss Wood sits on her shoulders. Her only commendable scenes are those in which she runs through the grass or jumps up and down gleefully with her girlfriends. When it comes to words or sentences, she does not succeed so well...
...beat Harvard in a preliminary by two points, and the Crimson are favored, although both have weaknesses. Nobody knows how Ford will do from race to race; two weeks ago he won the Jack Wood Trophy at M.I.T., and then finished sixth in the Danmark Trophy competition a week later. B.U. has been weak starting, and may find the scramble at the gun too much...