Rita Moreno was on Late Night with Seth Meyers recently, and I feel it must be noted that Rita danced her way to the seat next to Seth, wearing glittery diamond earrings and three diamond brooches on the lapels of her jacket (two on one side, one on the other). And these were not demure-sized brooches, either. It’s those kinds of details and overall energy that I love about Rita, the whole “look how fabulous I am!” vibe. She pulls it off without being cocky because she’s so damn talented, and committed to spreading joy by complimenting strangers and making friends at the supermarket. But we’re all complicated people, and Rita has always been candid about times in her life when she wasn’t so sure of herself, one of them being her eight year on-off relationship with Marlon Brando. Marlon was a great actor, but a terrible boyfriend, as Rita illustrated with a story about finding a pair of lady’s panties (not hers) in Marlon’s house, which prompted her to go on a date with Elvis Presley as revenge. What a love triangle!
“I’m going with Marlon Brando,” Moreno, 92, said on the Thursday, November 21, episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers, stressing it wasn’t a full-fledged relationship. “Well, going with because it was, like, eight years on and off. So, one time, I find a lady’s underwear in his house and I go home brokenhearted, hurt, angry [and] just destroyed.”
She added, “I should have known better, but I didn’t.”
The next day, Moreno received a phone call from Colonel Parker, Presley’s longtime manager.
“He says, ‘I handle Elvis Presley and he say you in the restaurant of the 20th Century Fox and he liked what he saw,’” Moreno recalled, adding a fake Southern drawl as Parker had. “You know, he liked brunettes and I was brunette then, and I said, ‘Yeah?’ He said, ‘Well, he’d like very much to meet you. Would you like to meet him?’”
Moreno subsequently “thought of the underwear” she found at Brando’s house and decided to accept Presley’s offer.
“Marlon found out and went crazy because, of course, despite the underwear in his house, he was entitled, I was not,” the Oscar winner continued. “He asked me to come over and he was in a rage. … We’d been going out, at that point, for six years together and he said, ‘How dare you?’ and he’s carrying on like he’s completely innocent. The best part is he’s so angry, he started to throw chairs. It was wonderful.”
Moreno and Brando, who died in July 2004, were together on and off between 1954 and 1962.
“He and I had had a relationship for almost eight years. Ultimately, it was exciting to be with Marlon,” she previously recalled during a 2022 Actors on Actors interview for Variety. “Oh, my God, it was exciting. He was extraordinary in many, many ways, but he was a bad guy. He was a bad guy when it came to women. I was such a different person then. I had all the makings of a doormat.”
She added, “I could read him like a book and that’s why he loved me, and that’s why he mistreated me in so many ways.”
She’s such a treasure! Reading it is one thing, but Rita is a gifted storyteller so I highly recommend watching the clip as well. She knows her beats, voices, facial expressions, and they’re all so vivid that she pulled me out of the trance of gazing at her ginormous array of diamonds (and that takes real talent!). I appreciate Rita’s honesty in how she was in her relationship with Marlon. We think of her as feisty and confident, but in these moments she doesn’t shy away from revealing qualities that may make her less proud. How human. And now not just human, but — drumroll please! — BARBIE! Yes my friends, Rita Moreno has officially been given the B treatment, and the results are stunning. Just as Mattel collaborated with Stevie Nicks on her doll last year, so did Rita contribute with hers and insist that the outfit they replicate be the gown she was wearing when she won her Oscar for West Side Story in 1962. They did a phenomenal job, from the skirt’s pattern, to the bangs (no bangs-trauma here!), to the signature beauty mark underneath her right eye. Another lovely feature, that I imagine was also a request from Rita, is that the text on the box is printed in Spanish first, with the English after. Que maravillosa.
photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon/Avalon, JKP/Avalon, IMAGO/Jennifer Bloc/Avalon, Getty
Imagine how much time women waste on men like this.
ha! just reading enough Reddit posts nothing has changed since the dawn of time.
But if given the option to waste some time with Brando and Elvis. Yeah, I would waste a few months. But not years.
I recommend her documentary – was on Netflix or AMZ? Always loved her but talk about newfound appreciation!
Her lavender dress in West Side Story is my favorite movie dress of all time. She is so perfect, and it is so perfect.
(Growing up I was like, why can’t I be Rita Moreno? And the answer was: because you’re a sturdy Scandinavian blonde 10-year-old on a farm in Wisconsin. But man, she was IT.)
neither is good enough for her, #queen
I just love hearing all of these old Hollywood stories.
Rita is a treasure. Such a talent.