R.I.P. Tony Mordente: ‘West Side Story’ Actor Dead At 88

West Side Story actor Tony Mordente , who starred in both the original Broadway production and the 1961 film, passed away Tuesday. He was 88.

Mordente is best known for playing a member of the Jets named Action in the 1961 adaptation of the hit Broadway play. He previously played A-Rab, a different member of the Jets, in the original stage production.

His passing comes just months after his ex-wife Chita Rivera , who famously played Anita in the original 1961 film, passed away earlier this year.

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Born in 1935 in Brooklyn, Mordente began dancing at the age of 13 when he began attending dance classes.

“My mother thought I had a little too much energy when I was 13, and it was also a matter of getting me off the streets,” he said in a 1963 interview .

He later enrolled in the American Ballet Theater School on scholarship where he was discovered by Michael Kidd, who cast him in the Broadway play Li’l Abner . Thus began his career in Hollywood.

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After starring in the Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise -directed adaptation of West Side Story , Mordente did some acting with appearances in The Outer Limits and Combat! before he found his calling as a director. He went on to direct dozens of television shows, including The A-Team , Riptide , 7th Heaven , M*A*S*H , and more. He also worked as a choreographer on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour .

Mordente and Rivera were married from 1957 to 1966. By all accounts, their relationship proved to be very controversial on the set of West Side Story .

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“A Jet marrying a Shark. It was quite a thing,” he once said in an interview, per The Hollywood Review .

Playbill also reported, “Chita, the original Anita, remembers very clearly being told that the Sharks and Jets were not allowed to fraternize. Well, not only did she fraternize with a Jet (Tony Mordente), they wound up having a daughter!”

He later remarried in 1978 to Jean G. Fraser, with whom he shares a second daughter.

Mordente is survived by his kids, Adriana Mordente and the Tony-nominated actress Lisa Mordente.

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