Carole D’Andrea, who portrayed the Jet girl Velma in the original 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story and then in the classic 1961 film, has died. She was 87.
D’Andrea died March 11 of heart failure at her home in Santa Monica, her daughter Andrea Doven told The Hollywood Reporter.
She was married to Tony winner and Mad Men star Robert Morse from 1961 until their 1981 divorce.
D’Andrea was one of only six actors from the original Broadway cast of West Side Story to appear in the 1961 feature; the others were Tony Mordente, Tommy Abbott, William Bramley, Jay Norman and David Winters.
Born on Aug. 28, 1937, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Carole Ann D’Andrea graduated from Altoona Area High School, where she was a majorette. When she was about 16, she turned down a scholarship to Penn State University and came to New York to pursue acting after her parents died in a car crash.
She was cast as Velma, a rich girl who falls for Riff (Michael Callin), in West Side Story, which premiered in September 1957 at the Winter Garden Theatre with direction and choreography from Jerome Robbins and a book by Arthur Laurents. She also understudied the role of Anybodys.
For Robbins and Laurents’ next Broadway musical, Gypsy, D’Andrea was hired in 1959 to play June, the sister of Ethel Merman’s title character, but was replaced at the last minute by Lane Bradbury, according to Greg Lawrence’s 2001 book, Dance With Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins.
However, the actress, singer and dancer was a favorite of the demanding Robbins, and she made it back as Velma in the West Side Story film, co-directed and choreographed by Robbins. Here, Velma is the girlfriend of Ice (Tucker Smith), a character created for the movie.
D’Andrea married Morse and quit acting to raise her daughters, Andrea, Robin and Hilary. (Robin and Hilary have also acted on Broadway, and Robin is a teacher at the Manhattan School of Music.)
She taught acting for many years, first at Carnegie Hall in New York and then, starting in the early 1990s, in Hollywood. She took her classes online during the COVID pandemic and was still teaching a week before her death.
Survivors also include her grandchildren, Lucia, Francis, Jagger, Marlon and Lance.
Her daughters noted that D’Andrea died on her 44th Alcoholics Anonymous sobriety anniversary, which their mom said was “the day that I changed my life.”
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