American Treasures: ‘West Side Story’

The Jets and the Sharks face off in Steven Spielberg's 2021 update of "West Side Story." Twentieth Century Studios

Hollywood tends to ruin its remakes of classic movies with clumsy attempts to update them and make them “relevant.” Two examples are the cheesy 1976 “King Kong” and Amazon’s current desecration of “Cinderella.”

So, like many others, I cringed when I heard that Steven Spielberg was filming a new “West Side Story.”  The 1961 original is a national treasure. How many ways would they find to mess it up? Before answering that question, here’s some background.

The Making of ‘West Side Story’

In 1949, the great choreographer Jerome Robbins approached composer Leonard Bernstein with an idea: How about updating “Romeo and Juliet,” replacing Shakespeare’s feuding families with Jewish and Italian gangs in the slums of New York? They could call it “East Side Story.”