By Stephen Cole***Even though she was 91, I never thought we could lose that towering inferno of a star called Chita Rivera. My love for Chita went back to the original cast albums of Bye Bye Birdie and Bajour, but my association began much later.
It all began when I went to London to rehearse my musical After the Fair. The producer of Dodsworth (and later Grossinger’s) set it up so that I would see a musical version of Casper at the Shaftsbury Theatre and meet the director, with the idea of me rewriting the show to bring to America. I went, I saw and really didn’t care for this Casper musical, which relied on puppets for the ghosts. I told the producer that I was not interested and that he should not bring the show to the US. He didn’t speak to me for about nine months. Then, in November, I got a phone call from his office. He was there with the director of Casper and they wanted me to reconsider coming on board as writer. The director was so complimentary about my work that I had no choice but to say I would meet with him. He was going to be in Atlanta directing his version of A Christmas Carol and I was flown down to have dinner.
On the flight I vowed to myself that I would not rewrite that Casper musical. I told myself that the only way I would become 
involved would be if they let me write a completely new Casper musical. I knew that they would say no to that and I would have had a nice dinner, see some of the Atlanta sights, and go home. I would stick to my guns.
At dinner I stuck to my guns, fully expecting to be out of there before dessert. “Of course you can write a whole new musical!” S**t!
“Well, then,” I improvised. “I want to jazz it up a little and invent a glamorous villain, a kind of Cruella DeVille…and her name will be…” I paused and picked up the bottle of Montverde wine… “Magdalena Montverde!”
“Sounds great,” came the reply.
So now I was getting everything I wanted, including being able to bring on Matthew Ward, the composer of After the Fair to write the music. Damn! I was getting everything I wanted and dessert was great too!
Now, when you write a character in a show you sometimes think of the ideal actor to portray the role as you write it. They guide your hand and ear, as it were. You see them and hear them, as the words come out on the page. Most of the time, I heard Ethel 
Merman, but Magdalena Montverde was created for one star. In my mind it was always Chita Rivera. I wrote songs and dances and jokes with her voice and body in my head, hoping that whomever wound up playing the role would be able to channel that energy and sass.
Then I wrote the special material for a Drama League show—a tribute honoring the career of…drum roll…Chita Rivera. That evening at the Hotel Pierre in New York, in my tux, I met Chita’s manager, who is also her brother, Armando and I said, would Chita ever be interested in doing a new show…say…uh…Casper?
“You mean like the ghost?”
“Yes. But she would not be a ghost. She would play a very old hostess of a TV reality show with a fabulous facelift. So tight you could bounce quarters off her cheeks.”
Armando laughed and told me to send the script. Send the script? It was February. I had just begun to write the show less than a month before.
“I’ll send it over on Monday.”
The next thing I knew the producer and I were in an elevator at the William Morris office going up to take a meeting with Biff Liff, 
Chita’s agent. Timing, they say, is everything. Timing and enough money. This time, we had both. Chita had the summer free and the money was right. That day the producer called Variety and let the story out.
CHITA RIVERA TO STAR IN CASPER!
Now all we had to do was finish the show, which would be opening in June. Hell, it was only March! Revisions to suit a dancing star were begun immediately.
From the start, Chita was the antithesis of Hal Linden, the first star I ever worked with. He played the title character in my musical of Dodsworth and when my collaborator Jeff Saver called Jerry Bock to ask about Hal, Jerry said, “What do you wanna know? He’s a pain in the ass!”
This was not Chita.
She was not only the hardest worker in the room, never taking breaks, always learning lines and practicing her steps—putting the young cast members to shame. She was a collaborative delight. Except for that one time. Early on in rehearsals Chita balked at one line of dialogue and my HLPST (Hal Linden Post Traumatic Syndrome) kicked in. It was just a silly joke line that pointed up how really old the character was. Someone mentioned the boy-band “NSYNCH, and she was to say, “I wouldn’t know NSYNCH from in bathtub.”
I begged and pleaded and said, “If you just say the line on opening night and it doesn’t get a laugh, we can cut it. I promise.” She looked at me through her hooded “I’ve been through Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse” eyes and agreed.
Opening night. She comes out and says the line and twenty-five hundred people guffaw. She finishes the scene, comes backstage where I am waiting and bows down to the floor in front of me, as if I am the Queen.
“Now I’m going to milk it.” And she turned that one laugh into three. That’s genius.
From then on, we were joined at the hip and I would bring her new lines an hour before the show and they would go in and be letter perfect. When we needed to work on new dances or change songs and it seemed that it might be against union rules, Chita would just do it. It was the show and the work that mattered, not the overtime.
Years later, in Australia, she killed singing a comedy lyric I wrote (using only Australian slang) and then after that, when we all were trying to get Chita and Dick Van Dyke together in a new show, she flew David Krane and me to LA and drove us to Malibu to meet and sing our opening number for Dick Van Dyke. It was as day we would never forget. All because of Chita
The song David and I wrote was called “Where Have You Been All These Years?” and 
contained a funny comparison between Chita and Dick, which she gave me… she said they were like “Tequila and Milk” and when I asked why, she said, “well Tequila is dark and rich and sensual” “And milk?” “White!”
Chita and I were like that too. She was that dark, rich and sensual drink with a splash of hilarious.
Chita Rivera spoiled me forever, but also passed on to me that intense professionalism and perfectionism, mixed with a great sense of fun.
She was a Goddess.
