A career defined by kids

By Jerry Fink

Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Rita Moreno may be best known for her Oscar-winning portrayal of Anita in “West Side Story.”

But millions of fans remember her as Millie the Helper and Otto the Director on the children’s TV show “The Electric Company.”

Moreno, 77, is the first actress to win an Oscar, an Emmy (“The Muppet Show,” “The Rockford Files”), a Grammy (“The Electric Company” album) and a Tony (“The Ritz”).

There are many surprises in Moreno’s past. She was dubbing Spanish-language versions of American films at 11 years old and made her Broadway debut in “Skydrift,” with a young Eli Wallach, at 13. Her film credits include “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The King and I” and “Carnal Knowledge.”

Moreno and Leonard Gordon, her husband of 43 years, live in the hills above Berkeley, Calif.

“We have a view of San Francisco, of the bay, the bridges,” she says. “If that weren’t bad enough, we also have the sunsets. It is just staggeringly gorgeous.

“We sit out there on our little balcony with a martini, playing Gershwin, and I hold my husband’s hand and I say, ‘Lenny, think of it — the Jew and the Puerto Rican.’ I think, ‘My God, it’s a long way from Washington Heights in the Bronx to here.’ ”

Moreno opens the annual New York Stage & Beyond Series on Friday at UNLV.

She was a little late calling the Sun recently from Massachusetts, where she was enjoying the colorful foliage.

How and where are you?

I would have called when I was supposed to but we got lost. We’re up in Stockbridge, Mass., where the leaves are turning. I’m going to do a talk in Springfield in a couple of days and we thought we would come up in advance and do one of the things we love best, which is to just get in the car and drive around and look at the trees turning and to go to museums. They have some spectacular museums in this area.

How do you keep busy?

I do my cabaret show here and there, mostly just here and there because I don’t want to have to deal with the stuff that’s part and parcel of doing concerts. I don’t want to have to trek around all kinds of highways and byways with costumes and too much music. I always do my cabaret show in San Francisco every couple of years. Also every couple of years I do a play at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, which keeps me in touch with theater, which I truly love, but I no longer love eight times a week for a year.

It’s not what I want to do anymore, mostly because I have two grandsons I’m nuts about and doing Broadway means being away for too long a period of time, not with the two little boys here. They live five minutes away from us. They stay with us twice a week, come every morning for breakfast. My husband and I deliver them to school during the school year. We’re very hands-on grandparents. We love those little souls. They’re five minutes away, so it’s the best of all worlds. We have a beautiful house that we built. It has a room just for the boys, with toys and all kinds of stuff. They love staying at Grammy and Grandpa’s. If our daughter moved to Arkansas, we’d find a way to get there, too. We’re very close. We’re a tight little family. I don’t think I could live without being with her and with the children. That’s what life is really all about.

You were one of the stars of one of my favorite TV shows in the ’70s — “The Electric Company.” I used to watch it with my sons.

Wasn’t that a marvelous show? Was that not one of the best shows ever for children? It did such a successful job of teaching children to read. Our daughter, at the time, was a reluctant reader. She was a graduate from “Sesame Street” and it was “The Electric Company” that got her interested in reading. To this day she’s a voracious reader, and I do credit the show for seeing her through that. That show also got my husband’s Jewish auntie to start learning to read in English.

There were some great performers on the show, like Morgan Freeman.

And Bill Cosby. You may not remember but one of the kids on the show was Irene Cara, of “Fame.” I don’t know if you’re aware but a couple of box sets are out. I did the wraparounds for “The Best of The Electric Company.” They’re on the market now. If you know anybody with children, by all means get them the box set. It’s such fun.

Did you realize when working with Morgan Freeman that he was such a great actor?

Not a clue. But we were all doing what really amounted to burlesque. Who knew? I knew this much, he was very funny and clever and very cool, but I had no idea he could do serious drama. I saw him after he left in (the pop-gospel musical) “The Gospel at Colonus” and I nearly wet my knickers. He was astonishing.

You started performing when you were 13. I didn’t realize you were a child star.

I was a child performer, not a child star. I started when I was 5, in Puerto Rico, where I was born. I started dancing to records to an amused grandpa when I was a very little girl. Then my mom brought me to the United States and a friend of my mom’s saw me bopping around in the apartment and said I needed to take dance lessons. My mom’s friend was a Spanish dancer. She took me to a dance teacher and I began as a Spanish dancer when I was 5 1/2 years old. I still play the castanets. So I’ve been doing this a long time.

Tell us about the show at UNLV.

It includes a lot of Broadway tunes and a couple of wonderful numbers in Spanish, one gorgeous classic with castanets. The one that ends the show is a sparkling salsa in which I play a number of percussion instruments — and there are a lot of wonderful anecdotes. I think it’s an elegant act.