I'm hoping to get down to Orange County this week to catch "Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life" which had been slated to play in LA but has inexplicably been cancelled. I thought about Chita Rivera during all of the "Dreamgirls" noise Jennifer Holliday was making about not being invited to the premiere or to be in the movie. If Holliday felt overlooked, she has suffered nothing in this regard compared to Chita Rivera. It was this stage legend, nominated for nine Tonys, who originated the Rita Moreno role in "West Side Story," the Catherine-Zeta Jones role in "Chicago" (each woman won an Oscar), the Janet Leigh role in "Bye Bye Birdie" and on and on. But instead of complaining, Rivera kept on working and ended up winning Tonys for "Kiss of the Spider woman" and "The Rink." She was nominated again last year for the autobiographical "A Dancer's Life."
Chita was interviewed for the current issue of Frontiers Magazine and I wanted to share what she had to say about, of all people, Rosie O'Donnell: "Rosie is one of my favorite people in all the world. I admore her honesty, her truth; she's a giver. she's just absolutely honest. If you want to know the truth, just ask her. She'll tell you. What you see is what you get and I don't think you could find a better friend than Rosie. She's got a lot of guts and my God, she's talented too."