Rita Moreno: Great Sluts in History
“This idea lasts through my whole life: I always play a part. For so many years, I have to be a ‘smoldering sexy spitfire.’ Rita Moreno — funny and bold and golden as all her statuettes. The Hispanic heroine with all four gleaming prizes — Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy — big money, hot lovers, ‘perfect’ forty-five-year marriage, with a gold medal hanging around my necks and shelves filled with award statuettes but still, inside, who is she? Who am I? Rosita Dolores Alverio? Or Rita Moreno? Rita or Rosita? Who am I?” from Rita Moreno, A Memoir.
Even Spitfires Start as Little Girls
Born December 11, 1931 in Humacao, Puerto Rico, raised in Juncos, Rosita Dolores was the daughter of Rosa María (Marcano) and Paco José Alverio. Wikipedia states her father was a farmer, but seamstress mother Rosa apparently felt her husband was plowing more than fields. She transplanted herself and her five year old daughter from the “ice-cream houses” of Juncos to cold, gritty and gray New York City in 1936, leaving behind a three-year old son.
After being hospitalized in New York for chicken pox and terrified by not understanding a word being spoken around her, Rosita resolved to learn inglés perfectly, and to speak it without accent.
