MUSICALS!: West Side Story (1961)

Macintosh & Maud Haven't Seen What?!

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CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of racism, brownface, abuse, knives, injury, dance injuries.

Klaudia Amenábar of RuPalp’s Podrace and Mystery Spotcast joins us this week to discuss one of the most iconic films of all time. It’s a 10-time Oscar winner with a soundtrack that might have outsold the Beatles and has spurned hundreds of performances in revivals and in high school theaters across America. Unfortunately, it’s also kind of a hot mess, especially because our directing is so disjointed that it makes two fairly good actors turn their compelling romantic leads into utter cardboard cutouts. In fact, any time where we’re not dancing with breathtaking choreography we might as well be watching paint dry. It’s up to our queen Rita Moreno and our king Leonard Bernstein to pull us through, and do they ever. Get ready for a rumble as we discuss 1961’s West Side Story this week on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!

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Intro and outro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.

Excerpts taken from the film West Side Story (1961) are © 1961 Metro-Goldywn-Mayer Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Clip taken from the episode “The Spanish Sketch” from The Jack Benny Program with Jack Benny and Rita Moreno, originally aired on February 12, 1963.