Few major Broadway musicals of that time were not then made into films, although Broadway and Hollywood had seldom enjoyed a pleasant relationship. Far too many shows had been slashed, distorted, miscast, or dumbed-down on their way to the screen, and it was well known that producers tended to look down on movies even as they were willing to accept the cash. The income from film adaptations became more plentiful after 1946, when MGM paid a lofty $600,000 for the rights to Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. Later, it reached a heart-stopping climax when the rights to My Fair Lady sold to Warner Bros. for $5.5 million plus a share of gross profits. Forget about just the rights: this amount was more than the total cost of almost every film ever made before the early 1960s. The Music Man, for its part, was sold to movies for a cool million.

In contrast, and as it did with just about everything, West Side Story took a different path. In July of 1958 it was announced that the film rights had been sold not to a large studio but to an enterprising new independent company, Seven Arts Productions. The price was a startlingly low $350,000, with an additional 10 percent of the world gross after the film recouped its cost. Additionally, Bernstein and Sondheim agreed to an option wherein they would (for a joint $7,500) write three new songs, if the producers desired. As if to make this all seem even more nominal, Seven Arts also bought the rights to another show currently on Broadway, Two for the Seesaw. The price for that two-character comedy-drama was $600,000 plus percentage… and the work with the lower price tag turned out to be the one with vastly greater staying power. The news of the film sale was, at any rate, something of a false start, or perhaps it might be termed an overture. Seven Arts, although its name remained on the movie credits due to contractual considerations, was soon out of the picture entirely.

Why did the rights for West Side Story go for a pittance in comparison to those for My Fair Lady? In two words: perceived appeal. Movie producers were afraid of West Side Story, doubting any potential it might have to achieve financial success with a wide audience. Even on Broadway, it did not run nearly as long as a number of its less challenging contemporaries—under two years, as opposed to The Music Man’s run of well over three years and My Fair Lady’s record tally of six-plus. The crowds thrilled by West Side Story—the ones Carol Lawrence saw and heard at the premiere—were urban, savvy, open to innovative presentation and provocative themes. Those out seeking simpler amusement went, by and large, to other shows that were, to put it plainly, less of a downer. West Side Story told a sad and difficult story about people who most audience members did not want to meet—people who hated and killed each other. Nor, by the time of its closing curtain, were matters set aright. This was something that discerning theater audiences could accept for a fixed amount of time, while—then and now—the shows that run the longest are the ones with more “popular” inducements, the ones that the visitors flock to see after the New Yorkers have moved on. The low price of the film rights was also connected to the wobbly and sometimes nonexistent track record movie musicals had in confronting offbeat or “highbrow” themes. There was no guarantee that this one, as filmed, could be able to come through the Hollywood maw intact, and Bernstein’s music was not judged to have the instant appeal of tunes by a Richard Rodgers or Irving Berlin. The Robbins dances, for their part, bore no resemblance to anything in any previous musical. Being a work of quality and distinction did not necessarily ensure its commercial success.

One of the few ways to guarantee the film’s financial viability would be to come up with a box-office “name,” and that did not seem likely. It followed, logically, that casting did indeed end up as one of the thorniest and most demanding issues befalling West Side Story on its move to the screen. This journey ended up taking significantly less time than the eight-plus years of gestation prior to Broadway, but less time does not mean less conflict. On the contrary.

Broadway’s first Anita and Maria: Chita Rivera and Carol Lawrence on Broadway