West Side Story corrections

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West Side Story (1961) - 7 corrections

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "make changes" when viewing mistakes, and click "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

When the Jets are singing their first bit in the tonight quintet ('The Jets are gonna have their day tonight') If you listen carefully you can hear that one of them gets the words wrong and sings 'way' instead of 'day'. It's on the soundtrack too. [So he sings the wrong words. This isn't a mistake. Many people sing the wrong words to songs in real life.]

When Chino shoots Tony as he is running into Maria's arms, there is no evident bullet wound anywhere on Tony. If Chino shot him from the side, it would have been visible. If Chino had shot him from the back, it would have been visible. If Chino had shot him from the front, Maria would've gotten shot too. It is also worth noting that Maria doesn't seem to notice or care that Tony's been shot, and instead of becoming shocked or dismayed she treats the situation with a fairly nonchalant attitude. [This isn't a film mistake - it's a directorial choice. In the Fifties and Sixties showing the bloody impact of a bullet guaranteed a film would receive a restricted viewing certificate, similar to the R certificate of today. Watch any film of the era which had a gunfight in it, Westerns particularly - no bullet impact is shown.]

Doesn't it seem odd that when Tony is looking for Maria calling her name outside her apartment building that she is the ONLY Maria in that building in Spanish Harlem? [Perhaps any other Maria didn't recognize the voice so she didn't go out to see who it was.]

At the end of the song titled, "I Feel Pretty", Maria grabs the purple ribbon. The ribbon is not touching the ground, but in the next shot it is completely on the ground. [This is because she yanked it, so that it would wrap all around her.]

When Tony is singing "Maria" he's walking down a sidewalk near a bunch of buildings. Then in the next shot, all of a sudden he's on a fenced-in area that looks like a basketball court. [This is because it was supposed to show Tony going through New York, sort of, and he's supposed to end up outside Maria's window after walking through all of these places.]

At the dance when the gangs begin the circle walk, the girl in the blue dress walks the wrong way. She bumps into another girl, then quickly turns around and walks the other way. [Velma walks the wrong way because she automatically started to walk in the same direction as her boyfriend, Ice, before realising her error.]

In the prologue of the movie, two guys on the Sharks throw yellow paint on Baby John, Arab, Action, and Snowboy. In the scene where they are talking to Lt. Shrank and Officer Krupke, they are all clean. [It's not the same day, they've been able to go home and clean up.]