In the 1950s, before stardom, you were a dancer in several films including the musical number Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, performed by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. What was it like working with her?
Well, the dancers were all around her, but I can't say with her, so I had no direct contact. After it was all over, I had a wonderful impression of her, because during the filming, if they called cut for any reason, she didn't go to her dressing room, she didn't look in the mirror... She went right to her starting place to begin again. My point is that she was very quiet and very concentrated on her work. That's one of the things I noticed about her. She didn't draw attention to herself.
So, you didn't have any personal interaction with her off-camera?
No, I had a very brief one later on working on something else, but for Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, I was really just one of the guys behind her and doing what the choreographer wanted us to do.
Was that interaction that you are talking about in the other film you did with her, 1954's There's No Business Like Show Business?
Yes. I was in the chorus of that movie, where Marilyn was one of the stars. One day, at the end of a rehearsal day, for some reason, they invited us — all the dancers, the technicians, and everyone involved in the project — for a glass of wine, just to be kind to all of us. Marilyn arrived with a couple of gentlemen, and the girl who was my dance partner said to me about Marilyn: "Why don't I ask her to give you a kiss on the cheek?" And I said, "No, no, don't." Well, she did it anyway. She went over to Marilyn and said to her: "Would you please give that boy a kiss on the cheek?" And Marilyn, very sweetly, looked in my direction and said, "But I don't know him." So I thought that was something sweet about her, as well.
Is it true that you gave up a bigger role in film because you wanted to work with the choreographer on White Christmas?
Oh, yeah, I was one of the dancers in White Christmas. When I was first working on that movie, there was a big number that involved all four stars and maybe 16 or 20 dancers in the back. It was a big number and it was called Mandy. And so I worked on that, I was one of the dancers. Then, when we finished, the word was out that Rosemary Clooney was going to be doing a number with just four guys. I thought, and I'm sure all my friends thought the same thing, if there's just four of us, instead of 16, we might be more visible. At the same time, I had a really good friend who was working on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and he wanted me to go and audition for Michael Kidd. I gave a horrible audition and he didn't use me, of course, but I didn't want him to use me because I wanted to wait for the number with Rosie. My instinct told me to just wait for that number. I was hired ultimately to be one of the guys behind Rosemary Clooney in that musical sequence called Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me. Around Christmas time, in Life magazine, there was a two page color spread of White Christmas and all the different photographs of the stars and so on. There was one photo in particular of Rosie with the four of us around her, and the girls started cutting out that picture and sending it to Paramount. They wanted to know who I was.
Did that lead to anything?
So, the producer of White Christmas was getting a lot of letters of girls doing that and he thought: "You're this young guy who's getting this attention and nobody knows who you are. Maybe we should give you a screen test." I did a test, an acting test, in black and white, and I did a musical test, singing and dancing, in color. And they did sign me to a contract, but while I was under contract to Paramount, Joe Pasternak, who was a huge movie producer at MGM, borrowed me to do a small role in a movie he was doing with Cyd Charisse and Dan Dailey called Meet Me in Las Vegas. I ended up doing this small role, but I had such a great time being at Metro because, to me, the best musical films almost always came from MGM. To be a part of this movie felt tremendous. But one day, after I finished working on that, I drove and they let me park my car on the lot. I walked toward the soundstage where Cyd was still working, and coming toward me was Joe Pasternak's associate producer, a very, very nice man. We stopped and we chatted a little bit, and in the course of that conversation, he said that the film was getting a little long and that they were going to have to cut my number. My heart hit the cement, that was horrible news for me. Anyway, even though that number was cut from the film, it's since been restored. It was just me and a girl called Betty Lynn, who played my wife. We were a young honeymoon couple in Vegas, with no money and no room to stay in. And Dan Dailey, the star opposite Cyd, sings a song called It's Fun to Be in Love and gives us the key to his room. So this young couple has a place to spend their honeymoon. It was a very sweet idea. It was choreographed by Hermes Pan, who was a really important man. He worked with Fred Astaire all the time, for example. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if that number had stayed in.
Well, everything happens for a reason, and the important thing is that, at the end of the day, you managed to forge your path to success even if that situation didn't unfold as you expected.
Everything is circumstance and circumstance can to some degree predict what can happen or not happen in the course of somebody's career or life. At least I was happy to work for Joe Pasternak. He really liked me, he was so nice. And also, because I got to sing in it, I think that was the main thing that made a difference for me back then. I was a dancer but I was also a singer, so it allowed people to think of me in a more broad way and to cast me in different things in the future. For example, many years later, I did a play for Hal Prince called Company, and the primary talent for the character I played was not even dancing, but singing. So my point is, being a singer brought different opportunities to me, as well.
Also, there was a point in your career where you released some music, like albums and singles...
Yes, Capitol Records signed me to a recording contract. I think I made four or five albums while I was there, and some singles, as well. Some of the things I did performed really well, but the mistake that was made there was... I was working on a film in France and had occasion to talk to my manager on the phone. She was in New York, and we spoke. I don't remember what we spoke about, but at the end of that conversation, she said: "Oh, by the way, I've canceled your Capitol contract." Because I was focused on the film I was working on, I didn't notice what she said. It was a stupid move on her part, and I've always regretted it because I loved recording so much. I had such a great time as a singer, and I loved working at Capitol with great arrangers and good songs, but she brought that to an end, and that was an unfortunate thing for me. The thing is I was too engrossed in other things to even recognize what she had done. If I had thought about it, I would have made her put that Capitol contract back in place right away, but I wasn't smart enough to do that.
In 1961, you appeared in one of the most renowned classics of musical films, West Side Story. How did you come to be engaged in the project?
By 1957, I had been working as a chorus dancer in Hollywood for some years, but there wasn't much work for us anymore. So I decided to go to New York, where I had some friends who put me up on the couch in their living room so I would have a place to stay. There were two girls that were friends of mine and knew everything that was going on in the city. One of the things that was going on was that West Side Story was coming to its first year anniversary on Broadway, and they were also going to form a London company. So they told me to go to the Winter Garden Theatre and to ask stage manager Ruth Mitchell if I could audition. I did that. I met Ruth, she was very nice, and when she looked at me, she said: "I think you should read for the role of Bernardo." She then gave me a script and set up a time to audition for Jerome Robbins in about a week. I prepared for the role, and on one afternoon, during his lunch break, I met Jerome for the first time, and I read for the role of Bernardo. After I read for the role of Bernardo, Jerry then asked me to look at the role of Riff. I went back in the wings in the theater and looked at the role of Riff, and came back and read for that character too. To make a long story short, I ultimately was hired to play Riff in the London company. I did it for a year and a half. So that was my first connection to West Side Story, that's how it started.
But why did they end up casting you as Bernardo in the film?
First of all, none of us ever thought we would ever be near the film, but I got a letter from United Artists while I was still in the UK saying that they wanted to test me at a studio outside of London, and they asked me to do tests for both roles. I did that. It was a very exciting day. Then, some weeks went by and I got a call from Jerome Robbins at the stage door phone, and he said: "We liked your test, but we'd like to test you further. Could you get to Los Angeles so we can do that?" So, the management of the theater let me free for a few days and I flew to L.A. I met Robert Wise for the first time and I did another test for West Side Story, this time in the role of Bernardo. That was not my decision, of course, it was theirs, and I was happy to do anything they asked me to do. The next day, I went back to London to go back into the show. Many, many more weeks kept going by. Finally, I got the telegram telling me I had the role of Bernardo in the film. So even though I had played Riff on stage, for cinematic purposes, they thought I suited the role of Bernardo more. I was happy that they made that decision, of course, because it was a great role.
What was your experience filming the movie like?
It was beautiful. The management in the theater in London gave me a ten week leave of absence, ten weeks to work on the film, but I ended up working on it for eight months. It was all very exciting. Working for Jerry Robbins was tremendous. The first rehearsal, I met Rita Moreno and all the other kids. We became great friends with Rita, we still are. Of course, none of us knew when we were working on the film that it would receive the worldwide acclaim that it eventually got, but we still knew that we were working on something of quality. We had a lot of fun cause Jerry and Bob Wise let us laugh and play if we wanted to, that was very nice of them. Sometimes we would even ruin the takes. The atmosphere went between very hard serious work to other times when it was just great fun. The energy and the excitement and the feeling we all had about it was very strong.
Did you imagine that you would win the Oscar for your role in that film?
Oh, God, no. Nothing like that ever crossed my mind. I was just very happy to be working on something that we all loved so much. Then, the word started getting out that something really exciting and interesting was happening at the Goldwyn Studios with this movie, because people from different studios would see the rushes at Panavision and so they were beginning to see the result of some of the work, actually, on the screen. So everybody in town knew about it and was interested and came to visit. But I certainly never thought I would win the Oscar.
On that occasion, when you won the Oscar, you went on stage and said very few words. What would you add to your speech if you won it today?
I would start by thanking Jerry Robbins for casting me. I can't absolutely be sure of this, but my instincts have always told me that I was in the play and in the film thanks to him. I think he was the person that was on my side. I was nothing like Bernardo and nothing like Riff in real life. I'm just a quiet guy. So I think it takes imagination to look at a young person who's very shy and quiet and imagine that they could play the role of the tough Puerto Rican. Imagination is an important word in creative things. And again, I attribute the fact that I was involved in those projects thanks to Jerome Robbins and his creativity. I loved working for him.
In November 1981, Natalie Wood, your costar in West Side Story, sadly drowned. How did you receive the news?
It was horrible news. I think the first thing I thought was that I wished we could just turn back the clock and it wouldn't happen. She was so darling. Also, she was such a talented young actress and one of the most beautiful girls you could ever look at. She had been in the movies since she was a very little girl, so by the time we made West Side Story, I believe she was about 23, so even though she's still really young, she was already a major star. I think in the casting of the film, thus far, they didn't have any names, and so they felt they needed Natalie, not only for her talent but because they needed some security in the casting. I think they did exactly the right thing by casting her. But when the news of her passing came out, we were all devastated.
Going back to the early 1960s, do you think you made good decisions when choosing roles in Hollywood after winning the Oscar? Do you think they gave you the roles you were looking for?
Well, I was very naive. I didn't know what a career was because before I'd just been a dancer. I wasn't professionally minded at that time. What happened was, before we finished filming West Side Story, the Mirisch Company offered me a contract with them which, to me, sounded wonderful. So, of course, I signed that picture deal. If I had been smart and savvy, I would have waited and not signed anything with anybody and just take my time and really try to find the best way forward that I could. Once I signed with the Mirisch Company, the choices of films that I made for them were not my choices. They were choices that they made, and contractually, I had to fulfill them. If I was independent and thinking just for myself, I probably would have made different decisions and looked for projects that perhaps might have been better material. But at the same time, I was not unhappy with what was going on with me because I thought I was really lucky.
Is that the reason why you decided to continue your career in Europe?
Actually, the only movie I made in the United States was West Side Story. All the other offers were in other countries, like The Young Girls of Rochefort with Catherine Deneuve or Bebo's Girl with Claudia Cardinale. That didn't bother me at all because they were good projects. To me, when you're making a film, it doesn't matter the location of it, what matters is the quality. Just coincidentally, the offers came from those parts of the world. Those two movies were two of the best movies I got to make in my career. So I was happy with the films that I did make outside the US. I almost preferred them.
How did you end up acting in The Young Girls of Rochefort?
Well, I was in Los Angeles and Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand were here too. They wanted to meet me and so we met. I was in that film because Jacques wanted me and Gene Kelly to be a part of it. We had a really nice meeting. They played all the music from the film for me and they told me the story and I loved the sound of it. So that's how I came to be in it. Even today, when people say that they liked me in West Side Story, most of them always mention The Young Girls of Rochefort, because it's a film that was very popular, and still is, evidently.
What memories do you have of working with Catherine Deneuve?
First of all, she and her sister Françoise Dorléac were both in that film and they played twins. They're both very young. One of the first things I remember about Catherine was her beauty because on the first day of filming, they had to wear light makeup and I thought to myself it's impossible to photograph that face badly. I mean she's physically perfect. It's a very, very well-proportioned face. She's also funny, she's great to work with. Also, she and Françoise were wonderful with each other. They're both actresses, they're both in a film, there could be some sense of competition with them, but there never was. These two girls, as sisters first, really loved each other. They were very playful and I liked both of them a lot.
You worked on very few films from the early 1970s to the present day. What is the reason for that decision? Was it the lack of job opportunities or was it because you began to look for other directions?
Well, I started doing theater. That was a distraction, a good distraction, because I ended up really loving theater. But also, because I got lucky along the way, I never had to fight for anything. Things just came to me. So I never tried to make something else happen. And so it never occurred to me that after a certain point, the films were, I'll say, less interesting. But as long as I was working, for some reason, that didn't bother me. In the late 60's, I was still doing films. I did a film with Charles Boyer and Robert Taylor, another film with Lana Turner. And so I was doing things that mattered to me in certain ways, and with people, with artists whose careers as actors, I respected. For example, the movie with Lana Turner, The Big Cube... It's not a great film but it's kind of a cult film now.
It's very campy.
Yes, it is very campy. But it found its audience somehow mainly because the film starred Lana Turner, everybody's anxious to see Lana Turner. There was benefit in that for me too because I got to play a kind of villain in that movie, but also, I got to work with her. That's another wonderful aspect of what life in the business has been for me. I've got to meet some amazing people and work with these artists. I basically never stopped working between film and theater. So I never had to try to find projects to be in. That's why I said I never had to fight for things, because I was lucky. The downside of that, I suppose, is I think sometimes it's good to not fight, but think in that way, because it makes you think more of the quality of whatever it is you're working on. But because things came to me the way they did, I almost never had to think that way. There's a wonderful actress, her name is Kim Hunter. She played Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, a big movie still today...
Yes, with Marlon Brando...
Exactly. I can't remember the year, but late 70s, maybe 1980, I did a play with her at the Studio Arena Theatre in New York. It's a great play called Elizabeth the Queen. She played Elizabeth and I played the leading male role. My point is, I got to work again with a wonderful actress, not in film, but in the theater. Different experiences, but still working with great people.
What else did you do in theater?
I did a play called The Corn is Green, with a wonderful actress whose name was Eileen Herlie. It's a play by a Welsh playwright whose name is Emlyn Williams, a wonderful, wonderful play. And again, she was one of the people from English theater, a consummate actress. She played Laurence Olivier's mother in his film version of Hamlet. So it lets you know the quality of the people that I got to work with, because Laurence Olivier wouldn't have anybody there who wasn't great. And then, more recently, I got to do a David Henry Hwang play called M. Butterfly, which is a difficult play, but still a great one. I did that in London. My point is, I got to do other things. I did a miniseries for the BBC. It was called Notorious Woman...
You played Frédéric Chopin in that, right?
That's right. My point is, fortunately, you didn't have to be working in just a movie to be doing good work. There was a television series, there was the theater. So I kept moving. But, without me realizing it, the film offers did change. And I think that's inevitable with time, anyway, for anyone. I can't explain exactly why. Nevertheless, the most important thing for all of us as performers is to keep working because you need, along the way, as much as you can, to remind people that you're alive. You want the audience to maintain some awareness of you.
You talked about films and theater extensively, but let's talk a little bit more about TV. You made a lot of television appearances during the 1970s and the 1980s. Aside from the miniseries where you played Chopin, which one do you remember most fondly?
There were a couple, but the one I remember more strongly was one appearance on a show called Hawaii Five-O. It was so beautifully produced, and it just happened to be a really good script. If you start with good material, then you can hopefully have a good product, or a good film, or a good television show. It all goes back to how good the material is. On this episode of that show, I played the bad guy too. I also did a number of episodes of Dallas. For that particular season, Barbara Carrera was the main guest, and she was a villainess, I guess, because she was against J.R. They called me to be like an assistant in the story, I was working in cahoots with the character that she played. The fact is, I was hired to do one episode, and I ended up doing 11. It was a wonderful show, beautifully organized, everything was so well done. I loved working with Barbara. She was funny, she was great, she was beautiful. I had a really good time with her.
You also appeared in the last episode of The Partridge Family, where you kissed Shirley Jones and that brought the series to an end. Was this like a full circle moment, considering that she had presented you with the Oscar in 1962?
My manager at that time also managed Shirley Jones and David Cassidy and his brothers. Her name was Ruth Aarons and she managed all of us together. So when that episode came up, they all thought: "We should use George." We've all known each other really well over the years and socialized with each other on quiet nights at Shirley's house for dinner. I have a special relationship with Shirley. She's great as a professional actress, but she's just, in life, an extraordinary person. She's just down to earth and very practical. Anyway, when I was doing it, I didn't realize it was the last episode. I was just happy being a part of it and working with her. When you're around people that you like working with, the experience is always a good one.
In recent years, you have dedicated yourself to designing sterling silver jewelry. How did this passion come about?
I can never remember exactly how it started, but there's a university here in Los Angeles called Barnsdall, and in that university, they teach different kinds of modeling, sculpting, painting, jewelry, they teach different things. For some reason, I decided to take the jewelry making course. In the process of beginning to learn to make jewelry, I really fell in love with it. I remember the teacher advised us, maybe in the first class, because we're all beginners: "Don't try to do anything with gold, it's too much money, you'll be wasting it, you're just starting." She suggested we all start with silver. I fell in love with silver. So, I wasn't thinking about jewelry making as a career, I was just doing something I liked doing. Over time, I created a number of different pieces on my own, and then, in the small world department, I got very familiar with the jewelry area in Downtown Los Angeles and with the people who work in different aspects of jewelry-making. I met a Japanese distributor, he wanted to distribute my jewelry in Japan. West Side Story was huge in that country, so I benefited from that all these years too. We became friends and business associates, so I expanded, so to speak, because I had two manufacturers, one in Downtown Los Angeles and one in Thailand. I sell my jewelry on my website, but I also sell it at an incredible department store in Tokyo called Mitsukoshi.
In what way does this new profession relate to your career as an actor?
I think most people who are creative, they can be creative in different areas, and I found that I could be reasonably creative in making jewelry. The other thing too, even in the theater, in film, in television, is that everything we do is to please an audience. It's the same with jewelry. It's just a different audience for a different product. It's been a lot of fun, I've really had a good time doing it.
After talking about some of the things that you have done in your career, because you have done a lot of things, I want to know what's next. What are you looking forward to doing in the future?
I've done screenings of West Side Story and The Young Girls of Rochefort with a Q&A afterwards, and I've always appreciated that kind of experience. It's another very nice way to share time with an audience. So yesterday, you're asking this on a funny day because it was just yesterday, I met with an agent with an eye to creating that kind of evening for me now, An Evening with George Chakiris or something like that. So I'm looking forward to doing that, I hope that works. It's something I'd really love to do, and it makes sense at this stage in life to do something like that.