Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer star in this Academy Award-winning musical drama adapted from the Broadway stage show. A neighbourhood in Manhattan, New York, provides the setting for a love affair between Tony (Beymer) and Maria (Wood), a young man and woman caught on opposite sides of a gang war. Maria is the sister of Bernardo (George Chakiris), leader of the Sharks, and Tony is the best friend of Riff (Russ Tamblyn), leader of the Jets. The two gangs are sworn enemies, and nothing Maria or Tony can say will dissuade them from the violence which leads to the film's heartbreaking finale. The film won ten Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Score.

Natalie Wood and “lovely” Richard Beymer, to the mercurial Jerome Robbins and “passionate” Rita Moreno, with whom Chakiris remains friends. “I know exactly where my gratitude belongs,” Chakiris writes, “and I still marvel at how, unbeknownst to me at the time, the joyful path of my life was paved one night in 1949 when Jerome Robbins sat Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents down in his apartment and announced, ‘I have an idea.’"