Real-life gang fight in San Bernardino inspired “West Side Story”

The play and film “West Side Story” is well known as the story of a fictional turf war between white and Puerto Rican street gangs in Manhattan.

However, “West Side Story” was inspired by a real-life gang fight in 1955 in San Bernardino, California, about a half-mile north of Route 66.

The historic Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino a few days ago posted on Facebook a nearly decade-old article by the San Bernardino County Sun newspaper about the historical link to the movie and play. The URL to the article appears to be dead, but a sister paper, The Press-Enterprise, also published the article.

“West Side Story” earned six Tony Award nominations during its first run on Broadway in 1957. The film version in 1961 and won a staggering 10 Academy Awards. High school and regional theater groups continue to revive it. It’s a major touchstone in American culture.

The historical link to San Bernardino is worth recounting because a new version of “West Side Story” just hit theaters and is getting great reviews. It’s directed and produced by Steven Spielberg; maybe you’ve heard of him.

The new version of “West Side Story” brings additional poignancy with the recent death of the play’s lyricist, Steven Sondheim, at age 91.

Nigel Simeone’s book “Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story” uncovered the play’s San Bernardino links:

… The creative team was stumped for a focus and had stalled in their work. Then by chance, they read a newspaper’s three-paragraph account of an Aug. 20, 1955, brawl outside Johnson Community Hall in San Bernardino.
Two Hispanic gangs, the Raiders and the Bullies, fought over some long-forgotten dispute. That light-bulb moment gave the project new life and inspired the romantic tragedy’s Latin accent.
“If they hadn’t seen that newspaper story, I’m not even sure (the musical) would have gotten finished,” Simeone said in an interview. “It was more than a turning point. This was a mess that hadn’t been worked on in six years. It’s a seemingly insignificant moment that had a colossal impact.”

Johnson Hall is at Wilson and Ninth streets, about a half-mile north of 66.

By the way, the reason the Mitla linked to the article is because many surviving members of the Raiders street gang met twice a month at the restaurant.

More about the spark for the story:

According to their separate biographies, on Aug. 22, 1955, Bernstein and Laurents were both in Los Angeles, working on other jobs. They met poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Talk turned to “East Side Story.”
There, Simeone said, they noticed in the morning’s Los Angeles Times a brief story from San Bernardino headlined “Six Jailed in Fight Death.” Details jumped out and struck a Eureka! chord: a fight outside a teenage dance … youth gangs, which in the mid-1950s were first being seen as a social worry … Chicanos, reflecting the increasing influx of Hispanics into a largely Caucasian America.
Bernstein and Laurents contacted Robbins and “what if” discussions excitedly took place: What if the setting moved to the part of Manhattan where Puerto Rican immigrants were being met with hostility by entrenched whites? What if Romeo/Tony was white, and Juliet/Maria was Hispanic? What if the teen lovers met at a school dance?

On Aug. 20, 1955, members of the Raiders and Bullies street gangs showed up to a dance at Johnson Hall. Robert “Webet” Garcia, 20, showed up a little drunk and a lot of attitude, and he ended up picking a fight out in front of the hall. No one was sure what prompted fists to begin flying.

Garcia got kicked twice, then was stomped on his chest while he was down. He fell unconscious. His buddies took him home, laid him in his bed, and he died an hour later. A preliminary autopsy indicated a bruised heart. Several young men were booked into the county jail but soon released because it was determined the attack on Garcia was self-defense.

Freddy “Leo” Luque, leader of the Raiders, lost an eye in another fight and later spent 18 months in jail for accidentally paralyzing someone with a shotgun blast. He became a carpenter and expressed remorse for the fight that killed Garcia.

“I’ve learned one thing, and this comes from being in construction, a mistake is not a mistake as long as you can fix it. When you can’t fix it, it is a mistake. The fight was a mistake because it took Robert,” he said.

(Excerpt of the 1961 theatrical release poster of “West Side Story” via Wikipedia)