DALLAS, TX.- George Chakiris initial turn in the spotlight lasted only a few seconds, if you could even find the 15-year-old.
He made his big-screen debut in 1947, credited only as Choir Boy in Song of Love, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production starring Katharine Hepburn as 19th-century German pianist and composer Clara Schumann. So it went for nearly a decade: a long list of blink-and-you-miss-it moments in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire alongside Marilyn Monroe, Brigadoon, White Christmas usually as a dancer or chorus boy, constantly in the background, almost always uncredited. Theres no business like show business. (He was in that movie, too, somewhere.)
I just dreamed of being in the movies, Chakiris says now. I had no idea how to do that. How would you even get that? But the desire was strong. And it was deepened by that time with the choir at Metro. ... It was tremendous fun, a thrill to be there, to see Marilyn on the other side of the scene, just to be around those people. It was thrilling.
Never more so than when he was cast as Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, in Jerome Robbins and Robert Wises 1961 film adaptation of the Broadway smash West Side Story for which Chakiris, blending into the background not so many years earlier, won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor.
This summer, Heritage Auctions is honored to present more than two dozen pieces from The Collection of George Chakiris during the July 25-26 Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction, among them some of his most treasured West Side Story memories.
For the first time, Chakiris offers the public the opportunity to own the plaque sent by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when he was Oscar-nominated for West Side Story. Chakiris, who bested Jackie Gleason, Peter Falk, George C. Scott and Montgomery Clift, famously gave one of the shortest speeches in Academy Awards history: I dont think Ill try and talk too much. I just want to say thank you very, very much. Thank you.
The thing I remember is the afterparty, Chakiris says, laughing.
This auction also contains the Golden Globe trophy he received on March 5, 1962, as the Best Supporting Actor of 1961, alongside other trophies and honors collected throughout his long, storied career.
Here, too, is his script from West Side Story in which he didnt scribble a single note, as hed memorized the entire thing long before landing the job. As Chakiris points out in his handwritten note on the screenplays title page, he knew every line because hed already spent a year and a half on a London stage playing Riff, leader of the rival Jets, portrayed in the film by Russ Tamblyn.
When I did Riff for a year and a half, I was watching Ken Le Roy as Bernardo, Chakiris says, referring to the actor whod also played Bernardo in the original Broadway production. It was osmosis: Youre not trying to remember everything, but you cant help it.
Bernardo was as grand, immortal, thrilling and tragic a role as any young actor could wish for that moment when a kid becomes the worlds biggest song-and-dance man and turns the spotlight into a sunrise. Chakiris and Rita Moreno, who played his girlfriend, Anita, each won Oscars and Golden Globes for their performances, which included their thrilling version of America that wasnt in the original stage production, in which Chita Riveras Anita had the song to herself. Chakiris and Moreno have remained dear friends since sharing accolades and awards.
In September 1961, Variety raved that the films most colorful performance, perhaps, is offered by George Chakiris, leader of the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, and brother of femme lead played by Natalie Wood as Maria. A month later, Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times, George Chakiris is proud and heroic. In 2004, when reviewing the two-disc home-video restoration, Roger Ebert counted among the great things in the film the powerful performances by Rita Moreno and George Chakiris.
Upon being nominated for that Oscar, Chakiris says, I didnt think of it in terms of career advancement or anything. None of it ever crossed my mind. I just knew it was a nice happening. I appreciated it, but I didnt appreciate it as fully as I could have had I been more aware and smarter at the time.
This auction contains perhaps the most iconic item from West Side Story: the leather wristband worn by Bernardo and his fellow Sharks throughout the film, which had been absent from the stage productions.
As Chakiris tells it, during rehearsals for the London production, Jerome Robbins kept the actors playing the Sharks and Jets separated: He told us he didnt want us to socialize with each other, on or offstage. He also asked the cast members to get the book The Shook-Up Generation, Pulitzer Prize winner Harrison Salisburys 1958 treatise on juvenile delinquency and teenage gangs.
When it came time to film the big-screen version, actor Andre Tayir showed up one day wearing an archers wristband, which hed bought at a sporting goods store. His fellow Sharks were so enamored of the strap that costume designer Irene Sharaff another Oscar-winner for West Side Story purchased enough for the entire gang. Chakiris says they just felt fantastic, this extra bit of tough-guy business further separating the Sharks from their fair-haired nemeses vying for control of the Upper West Side.
As Chakiris once explained, We all felt wed put one over on the Jets.
To the actor, though, the most meaningful piece of this auction is something seldom seen by the public: set design artwork painted by Boris Leven, winner of the Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Color) Academy Award for his work on the film. The piece depicts what would become the turning point in the film, when Anita goes to Docs Drugstore to see Tony and is instead harassed by the Jets called awful names, tossed around, almost assaulted until shes rescued at the last moment by the stores namesake proprietor. Chakiris has had it since the film wrapped and kept it close until now.
When we finished working on the film, Robert Wise had a number of those in his office, Chakiris says. He said, Come in, take the one you want. So I took that one, as it is a scene that I particularly like the scene with Rita and the guys in the drugstore, where they attack her. I love having something from the film that involved his [Levens] gift, his talent. He was amazing. There were so many amazing people.
Chief among them was a kid named George Chakiris, whose extraordinary collection of Hollywood treasures leaps across the auction block in July.