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Mistakes

At the gym during the dance, Baby John tells Riff, "Pick up" when Nardo and the Sharks come into the gym, and all the Jets stop dancing - except for Ice and Velma. Then in the next shot, Ice is suddenly in the big Jet mob, and Velma is off to the side with Graziella. See more...

Trivia

Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood barely talked to each other in real life. They would say "Good Morning" to each other as if they'd just met, and then start making out when someone said "action." Whenever they finished a scene, Wood would go straight back to her trailer. She wasn't this cold toward many of the other actors in the film. Her ability to cover this up shows her great acting skills. This fact is also mentioned in the West Side Story Special Edition DVD. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Directed by Robert Wise (add more)

Genres: Musical, Romance, Drama

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Trivia
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The songs "Cool" and "Gee, Officer Krupke" were switched around in the film version as the latter song felt too merry after Riff had just died. In most stage productions since the film's release the songs have appeared in the order they did in the film. [Not true. The official stage version licensed to professionals and amateurs follows the song order of the original Broadway production, not the film.]
Edit
During the song "I Feel Pretty," Maria throws a fan up into the air but it never comes back down. [If you watch that scene carefully, keep your eyes on the fan and watch the direction Maria throws it. She doesn't throw the fan "directly" up, but rather up *behind* her. So from our point of view, the fan goes *up-right*. The reason you can't see it come down is because the camera was not in frame for the fan falling on *that* side of the room. As she's dancing, you can't see it on the floor, because the sewing table where the other girl is sitting is blocking the view of the floor space in that corner.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit
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.]
Edit Time
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.]
Edit Time
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.]
Edit
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.]
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