March 24 (Bloomberg) — The 50th anniversary production of “West Side Story” will arrive on Broadway just in time — for year 52. Credit Arthur Laurents for both the revival of the landmark show and the tardy party.

“It wasn’t feasible,” said Laurents, who wrote the book for the show, for which Leonard Bernstein composed the score and Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics.

It’s shocking that this 1957 masterwork’s golden anniversary passed without so much as a whimper, let alone a rumble, on Broadway….

`Not Adorable’

“They’re not adorable street kids,” Laurents said. “They’re killers, each and every one of them. They’re vicious and they have to be played that way.”

In his production, he says, he’ll also emphasize “the real difference between the Puerto Ricans and so-called Americans, not just what color they’re wearing,” Laurents said. “Look at all this immigration stuff now — if that isn’t about race, I don’t know what is. It’s a national issue.”

As for the love story of Tony and Maria, Laurents wants hot- blooded passion, not sanitized stick figures.

``When they sing ‘Tonight,’ it’s like Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy,” Laurents said. “It’s hard for them to sing because they’re so sexually involved. They’re all over each other.”

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…Senator Edward Kennedy, abandoning old friend and ally Bill Clinton and wife Hillary , is set to endorse Barack Obama’s presidential bid. The recognized patriarch of America’s most prominent political family has signified his intention to campaign actively for Obama in what is seen by some as a major setback to the Clinton campaign.

But honestly, apart from his home state of Massachusetts, how much does an endorsement from Ted Kennedy still count ? To be sure, the illustrious Kennedy name still carries a lot of clout in Democratic circles. And Ted Kennedy has been a major figure in party politics for over four decades. But the Man-Who-Would-Never-Be-President, in his twilight years, has lost a lot of his charisma. He waffled on whether to remain neutral in the Democratic race, and it was only after his niece and JFK daughter, Caroline Kennedy, made a public pitch for Obama that he got on the bandwagon.

Sen. Kennedy can firm up support for Obama from the unions and Hispanics, his traditional political base, but the days when the Kennedy name alone could swing huge voter blocks are long gone. Thanks, in large part, to a long history of scandal that has kept the Kennedy name in the front papers of tabloids for years. A lot of the credit goes to Ted Kennedy, at times a tragic, even noble, figure and at others a complete and utter buffoon. As famously observed by the late journalist Michael Kelly:

“Edward Kennedy was once the handsomest of the handsome Kennedy boys, with a proudly jutting chin, a Nelson Eddy jaw and Cupid’s-bow lips under a thatch of chestnut hair. When he is dieting and on the wagon, there is a glimpse of that still, which makes it all the harder to see him as he more often is. There is a great desire to remember him as we remember his brothers….”

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Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the December 1999/January 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Norman Jewison was born July 21, 1926 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The son of a shopkeeper, Jewison got his BA at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and after moving to London, where he wrote scripts and acted for the BBC, he returned to Toronto and directed live TV shows for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation(1952-1958), then musicals and variety in New York (including much-heralded specials for Harry Belafonte and Judy Garland), before embarking on a film career.

Jewison’s initial offerings were harmless pieces of fluff like Forty Pounds of Trouble (1963), The Thrill of It All (1963), Send Me No Flowers (1964) and The Art of Love (1965). Suddenly in late 1965, the 39 year-old director decided to get serious, replacing the legendary Sam Peckinpah on the dynamite Steve McQueen vehicle The Cincinnati Kid, the story of an itinerant poker player in New Orleans. Jewison’s work kept growing from there. He followed Kid with the political satire The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! in 1966, then made what some consider still to be his finest film.

In 1967 the United States was a very different place than it is today. No other film captured this quicksilver moment in time better than In the Heat of the Night, the story of a Philadelphia detective (Sidney Poitier) reluctantly recruited by a redneck southern sheriff (Rod Steiger, Oscar-winner) to aid him in a murder investigation. The film broke more racial and social taboos than can be listed here, and ushered in a new genre in American film, one where African-Americans took center stage, where black was beautiful. Although it helped give birth to the blaxploitation genre of the 70’s (which many critics revere), In the Heat of the Night’s influence can also be felt in the films of Spike Lee, and many other filmmakers who, over the past 30 years, have dealt with race, culture clash, and the socioeconomic realities which create an underclass in our society. It also spawned a highly-successful TV series, and won five Oscars, including Best Picture.

Jewison followed this landmark film with another classic, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), again starring McQueen, this time with Faye Dunaway as his love interest. Gaily, Gaily (1969) was writer Ben Hecht’s story of his apprenticeship on a Chicago newspaper. Jewison then brought two landmark Broadway musicals to the screen: Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), scoring big hits with both. These were followed by the science-fiction classic Rollerball (1975), starring James Caan, and the fictionalized Jimmy Hoffa biopic F.I.S.T. (1977), starring Sylvester Stallone and written by a first-time screenwriter named Joe Eszterhas. Jewison next helmed two scripts written by another young tyke named Barry Levinson (and his then-wife Valerie Curtin):…And Justice for All (1979) with Al Pacino, and Best Friends (1982) with Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn.

Jewison scored another breakthrough when he dealt with the race card once again, bringing Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play to the screen as A Soldier’s Story (1984). Starring Howard E. Rollins, Jr. (who also played the Poitier role in the TV series of In the Heat of the Night) as a black army officer investigating the murder of a sadistic sergeant at the tail end of WW II. It co-starred many new faces, including Robert Townsend, David Alan Grier, and this kid named Denzel Washington in a pivotal role. We’ll come back to him later…

Jewison brought another play to the screen brilliantly with Agnes of God in 1985, followed by another triumph with the romantic comedy Moonstruck in 1987, an Oscar winner for Best Actress (Cher), supporting actress (Olympia Dukakis) and screenplay (John Patrick Shanley). Next came In Country (1989), a post-Vietnam drama starring Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd, another play adaptation in 1991 with Other People’s Money, starring Danny de Vito, the romantic comedy Only You (1994) with Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey, Jr., and the fantasy Bogus (1996) with Whoopi Goldberg and Gerard Depardieu.

1999 brings Jewison full circle, completing his film trilogy about race in America. The Hurricane stars that kid Washington we mentioned earlier, in the true story of former boxing champ Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was wrongly convicted on a trumped-up murder charge, and served more than 30 years in prison. The Hurricane marks a welcome return to the cinema of social consciousness that Jewison helped give birth to 33 years ago. The story is so fantastic, it’s almost hard to believe that such a miscarriage of justice occurred not only in this country, but in this day and age. Denzel Washington delivers his finest performance to date as Rubin Carter.

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Was there one film that really grabbed you as a kid, where you said “This is for me”?
Well, I started in the theater, as an actor, then got into live television with the BBC in London, so television was like a miracle to me. But when I was a kid, I used to go to the movies for 10 cents on Saturday, then I’d act out the whole movie for a penny! (laughs) I guess it was an obsession with storytelling. I remember Gunga Din as one of the great movies for me. And I also remember Rosemarie, with Nelson Eddy playing a Mountie! I thought that was so romantic and wonderful! I guess we’re all searching for those things that touch us. As you get older, you get a little more particular. I think directors are a little like orchestra conductors. We get better as we get older, as long as you still have all your marbles and are still committed. But I don’t know if they believe that in Hollywood. (laughs)

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