If you look up “living legend” in the dictionary of Latino Hollywood, you’ll find a big, full-color picture of Rita Moreno. Listing her credits could take a year and a day, from Singin’ in the Rain a full sixty years ago this year through her Oscar-winning performance in West Side Story–and that was fifty years ago this year–right up through The Electric Company thirty-five years ago and a recurring role in The Rockford Files throughout the Seventies and a don’t-screw-with-me nun on Oz ten years ago and a dangerous matriarch in the underrated but fondly remembered Cane just five years ago.
You’d think a woman who’s about to celebrate her eight-first birthday on December 11th might think about slowing down? Just a little?
Don’t be ridiculous. On Wednesday November 28, Rita Moreno returns for a second season as the smart-ass mother-in-law “Dori Newman” in Happily Divorced, the TV Land sitcom starring Fran Drescher.
A full biography of Ms. Moreno is the subject for a full book (not a bad idea, actually!). At the moment, we just wanted to welcome her back for a new season and stand in awe of a career that’s spanned more than sixty years, with no end in sight.
And just for fun, enjoy this seven-minute portrait from 2011 about Rita and her one-woman show, “Life Without Make-Up.”
What a woman.
