WSS is coming to Chicago on tour, as a degenerate
Sondheim fan, I await this with considerable
eagerness. I am also a hopeless fan of gangster movies
and stories, and an occasional client. But the gangs
romanticized in WSS are so abstract and stylized it is
difficult to think of them in the same category as
those in the Sopranos, Wiseguys, or the Godfather
movies. For one thing, it's really inconceivable to
attempt to imagine Tony's crew or the Corleone family
doing a fabulously homo-balletic Jerome Robbins
choreographed dance. The level of violence is quite
different and much lower. In that innocent era, there
is one shot fired in WSS and far from being a casually
gory murder of the sort that decorate the Mafia
stories, it is catastrophic tragedy; two more deaths,
also tragic, are racked up in a knife fight. Finally,
gangs of juvenile delinquents in Hell's Kitchen are
really quite a different animal from the Mafia.
A final note: the original treatment of WSS called for
the gangs to be Irish and Jewish rather than Polish
Puerto Rican. Don't laugh at the idea of Jewish hoods.
My wife's father's family and to a much lesser extent
my mom's, were a bunch of minor Jewish thugs. They
were minor bookies, mostly, although one of them was
important enough to be called before the Kefauver
Committee; but the Jewish killers in Murder, Inc. --
no relation! --, headed up by Louis "Lepke"
Buchalter, were no laughing matter ("Lepke," the
Yiddish diminutive for Louis, is the only top level
hood to go to the chair), nor were Benjamin ("Buggsy")
Siegal, who gave us Las Vegas, Mickey Cohen of LA, or
Meyer Lansky, or the Detroit Purple Gang.
Sergio Leone's very great but very flawed Once Upon A
Time In America is a magnificent tribute to the Jewish
mob, and should not be left out of consideration of
any discussion of romanticizing gangs.
--- Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> West Side Story
>
>
> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
>
> Jump to: navigation, search
> This article is about the musical. For the 1961
> film, see West Side Story
> (film).
> For The Game's song, see Westside Story (song).
> West Side Story
> Music Leonard Bernstein
> Lyrics Stephen Sondheim
> Book Arthur Laurents
> Based upon Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
> Productions 1957 Broadway production
>
>
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