West Side Story

Other mistake: When Anita sings, "and the natives steaming" her fingers get caught in the fringe of her dress. (00:50:05)

Other mistake: During "Cool," Baby John spins around and when he stops with his arms spread out, his right foot stumbles a little. (01:58:15)

Other mistake: During "Cool," there's a shot where they're doing a sort of knee turn, and you can see Tucker Smith in the background spinning too many times (you can see him start to stick out his arms to stop himself). (01:58:20)

Other mistake: During the dance at the gym, Maria doesn't snap each time she should have. Natalie Wood was unable to snap, so it was dubbed (as well as her singing, which was dubbed by Marni Nixon).

Other mistake: During "Cool," there's a shot where they're doing a sort of knee turn, and you can see Tucker Smith in the background spinning too many times (you can see him start to stick out his arms to stop himself). (01:58:20)

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Doc: Why do you kids live like there's a war on?

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Trivia: Rita Mareno was unable to hit the low notes in the song "A Boy Like That"; the entire song had to be dubbed. Natalie Wood was not told that all of her songs were going to be dubbed until after filming was completed; she went through the production thinking it would be her voice used in the songs when the film was released. Dubbing the songs after filming was completed posed an unusual problem. Normally when a song is dubbed, they play it during filming so that the actors can mouth the words so that they match the lyrics. The songs in West Side Story were dubbed after filming was completed, so it was the singers who were brought in that had to match their lyrics to the actors mouthing the words (from the documentary "West Side Memories", 2009).

BocaDavie

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Question: In the original musical of West Side Story, the song "Officer Krupke" is sung some time after the rumble when Riff was killed. Why was it changed to before the rumble?

Answer: Actually there were a number of changes made in the movie adaptation compared to the original stage version. There were cuts, new additions, and changes to music, lyrics, dialogue, and characters. A few of the musical numbers were switched around because it was felt the storyline flowed better on screen, for different reasons. Some examples are "Gee, Officer Krupke" and "I Feel Pretty" which are cheerful, light-hearted songs and were moved to before "The Rumble", and "Cool" was moved to after "The Rumble" which gives that song's lyrics gravitas.

Super Grover

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