WHILE GENERALLY QUITE faithful to its original source, West Side Story did undergo alterations on its way from the stage to the screen. Some met with the approval of the original authors while others did not.

⋆ Instead of an overture, the original show opened with the curtain rising and the Prologue starting. For the film, an overture preceded the opening montage and Prologue. It consists of the following parts:

⋆ Gang whistle (three times)

⋆ “Tonight Quintet”

⋆ “Tonight”

⋆ “Maria”

⋆ “Dance at the Gym—Mambo”

⋆ “Tonight Quintet” conclusion

⋆ The aerial montage after the overture was not (and likely could not have been) part of the original show. For the film, it is accompanied by ambient city sounds, more gang whistles, and bongo drums.

⋆ The Prologue is approximately double the length that it had been on the stage. For a fee of $7,500, Leonard Bernstein was contracted to write new music for this sequence, which would not include more than four minutes of music already composed for the Prologue for the stage.

⋆ The lyrics of “The Jet Song” and “Gee, Officer Krupke” were both changed (i.e. censored). In the former, “The whole ever mother-lovin’ street” became “The whole buggin’ ever-lovin’ street.” In “Krupke,” the original lines went, “My father is a bastard/My ma’s an S.O.B./My grandpa’s always plastered/My grandma pushes tea.” (“Pushing tea” is 1950s slang for “sells marijuana.”) In the movie rewrite, “My father beats my mommy/My mommy clobbers me/My grandpa is a Commie,” and Grandma was allowed to keep selling herb.

⋆ On a related note, Tony’s friends-for-life pledge to Riff, originally “Sperm to worm,” was softened to “Birth to earth.”

⋆ Another substitution in “Krupke” came with swapping “slob” for “schmuck.” The latter term, while it has come to mean an obnoxious or useless person, was once a fairly scabrous Yiddish epithet.

⋆ Both the Jets and the Sharks lost and gained some members. Among the Jets, Diesel was retired in favor of Ice and Joyboy. The Sharks’ Anxious, Nibbles, and Moose became, for the film, Loco, Rocco, Del Campo, and Chile.

⋆ Another character added for the film: Madam Lucia, who owns the bridal shop where Anita and Maria work.

⋆ In the play, Riff was paired with Velma and Action with Graziella. For the movie, the two Jets swapped romantic partners.

⋆ In a number of places, the characters were given additional lines of dialogue, intended to flesh out their characters and motivations. Some were written in Ernest Lehman’s “final screenplay,” while others were added on the set and penciled in by the script supervisor.

⋆ On the stage, “Tonight” was followed by “America.” On film, the two songs switch places, a change which Jerome Robbins did not endorse.

⋆ “America” was given something approaching a complete overhaul, with a new set of lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. While Anita and the other Shark girlfriends sang the number on the stage, the movie expanded it to also include Bernardo and the Sharks. The controversial reference to “tropical diseases” was deleted, and the musical argument between Anita and Rosalia became a back-and-forth between Anita and Bernardo. Many of Anita’s original criticisms of Puerto Rico were transformed into praise for America, which Bernardo then countered with put-downs.

⋆ In a move that met with general approval, “Cool” and “Gee, Officer Krupke” swapped places, before and after the Rumble. Riff, not Action, leads “Krupke,” with “Cool” now sung by the new Jet, Ice.

⋆ “I Feel Pretty” was shifted to occur before, not after, the Rumble, a move appreciated by some and disputed by others. The time change necessitated new lyrics to indicate “gay” and “today” rather “bright” and “tonight.”

⋆ A number of changes in the “Tonight Quintet,” including Anita’s reference to Bernardo being “hot,” which the Production Code people found unacceptable. (Now, instead, he’s simply “here.”) Maria now sings part of the first chorus of “Tonight” instead of Tony, and many of the lines sung by the Jets and Sharks have been swapped and/or redistributed. Riff’s exchange with Tony becomes an exchange with the new character Ice, and the reference to Diesel has been removed (as was that character).

⋆ On the stage, Act I ended after the Rumble. Originally, the plan had been to have the movie break for an intermission as well, followed by a short entr’acte set to “I Feel Pretty.” Ultimately, it was decided to continue the dramatic momentum and discard the intermission entirely. For the 2004 DVD release, the intermission break was reinstated, along with the entr’acte. It occurs after Tony strolls into the playground following the war council at Doc’s.

⋆ Instead of Consuelo (in the original production), “Somewhere” is now sung by Tony and Maria.

⋆ In the only major deletion of stage material, the “Somewhere” ballet was eliminated.

⋆ The “Taunting” scene between Anita and the Sharks is longer, and even more harrowing, than on the stage. One of the added lines is Rita Moreno’s unforgettable “Don’t you touch me!”

⋆ In the show, Doc’s line to the Sharks, when he finds them about to rape Anita, is “What’ve you been doing now?” For the film, it became “What are you doing now?” After a preview audience began to laugh at that point, Wise asked Ernest Lehman to write several alternate lines, one of which was “How could you do such a terrible thing!” Then he rejected all of Lehman’s options and had Ned Glass (Doc) redub the line as, simply, “What are you doing there?”

⋆ Maria’s final speech, to the assembled Jets and Sharks, contains a few changes, including the addition of “Not with bullets and guns—with hate!” What had been “I hate now” in the original script became “I have hate!”

⋆ An “exit” medley was added for the lengthy credit sequence that ends the film. It consists of the following:

⋆ “Somewhere”

⋆ “Tonight”

⋆ “I Feel Pretty”

⋆ “Maria”

⋆ “Somewhere” conclusion