Chatting up Chita Rivera (…and Dick Van Dyke)

It was a bit overwhelming to interview Chita Rivera and Dick Van Dyke together on Sunday afternoon before the start of the 13th Annual Los Angeles Tony Awards Party at Skirball Center. These are two absolute living legends who I am just wild about. I have every season of The Dick Van Dyke Show on DVD and am in awe of the career Miss Rivera has had in the theater.

Van Dyke, 83, was hosting the Tony party and Chita, an amazingly youthful 76, was being honored and they are still so damned cute together nearly five decades after starring together in Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway.

I wondered what it was like to be together again on Tony night.

Dick: “It’s incredible. It really does seem like yesterday. I’d be anywhere for her any day, any time.”
Chita: “Actually, you kind of feel like you can do what you did all those years ago. You just feel like you can because we’re both still doing it.”

Chita’s career in theater has been legendary and yet, it seems she wasn’t always given the recognition she so deserved and was more than once passed over when show with roles she created onstage were made into feature films. She was the original Anita in West Side Story, the original Velma in Chicago and also starred in Bajour, Nine, Mr. Wonderful, Merlin and Bring Back Birdie on Broadway. She won Tonys for The Rink and Kiss of the Spider Woman and her most recent Tony nomination came three years ago for Chita Rivera: A Dancer’s Life.

Chita got one of the ultimate showbiz awards five years ago when she was a Kennedy Center Honoree but you get the feeling that she’d much rather be onstage performing – like she was at Disney Hall on Saturday night – than being the center of attention at an awards show.

“It’s weird,” she said of the tributes. “It’s really very nice but when you’re a workhorse, the honor really is being able to do it every night in front of people and if they’re satisfied. Sometimes, you get a little shy when you hear people say really nice things about you, you know?”

I wondered if Chita truley feels appreciated now.

She does.

“It’s really nice. It kind of makes you want to get out there and continue to do it that’s all. It makes you want to not get sick, be in good health and just get up and do it.”

Van Dyke gave his opinion of Chita being honored with the Julie Harris Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday: “What I always thought about lifetime achievement award is you say, ‘Wait a minute! I’ve got more. I’m not through more.”

Added Chita: “That’s right! That’s very true!”