Natalie Wood and lovely Richard Beymer, to the mercurial Jerome Robbins and passionate Rita Moreno, with whom Chakiris remains friends. I know exactly where my gratitude belongs, Chakiris writes, and I still marvel at how, unbeknownst to me at the time, the joyful path of my life was paved one night in 1949 when Jerome Robbins sat Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents down in his apartment and announced, 'I have an idea.'