West Side Story "The Jets Are Gonna Have Their Way...tonight!"

West Side Story, the 1961 film adaptation of one of the best American musical plays of all time, is one of the most acclaimed movies in Hollywood history. Co-directed by Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and Jerome Robbins - the renowned choreographer who conceived, choreographed, and directed the 1957 stage play based on Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare - West Side Story earned 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture for 1961, Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno), and Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris).

Instead of merely adapting the Bard's tragic tale of "star-cross'd lovers" into yet another stage version of R & J, Robbins and playwright Arthur Laurents decided to transplant the story of forbidden love from 16th Century Italy to New York City in the mid-1950s. And instead of focusing on the rivalry between the feuding Montagus and Capulets, West Side Story took audiences into the shadowy war between two juvenile street gangs - the "American" Jets, headed by Riff (Russ Tamblyn) and the Puerto Rican "Sharks," led by Bernardo (Chakiris).

Caught in the middle of this battle for the run-down streets and alleys of the Big Apple's West Side are Bernardo's sister Maria (Natalie Wood) and ex-Jet co-leader Tony (Richard Beymer). Maria has just arrived in New York from San Juan and is expected to marry Bernardo's best friend Chino (Jose de Vega); Tony, in the meantime, is weary of the constant "rumbles" and harassing between the Jets and Sharks and is trying to "go straight."

But Tony's past with the Jets - particularly his loyalty to Riff - isn't something he can easily put aside, and after the film's big opening number ("Prologue and the Jet Song") which depicts (in song-and-dance) the constant battles between the two gangs, he allows Riff to convince him into going to a dance at the local YMCA, where the Jet leader plans to challenge Bernardo to a final rumble.