Was not exactly mass market fare?
Borges - that is not serious.
The 1961 film was the highest grossing movie of the year.
It won 10 Academy Awards.
Natalie Wood was already an international movie star with previous films like Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, Splendor in the Grass, and a hit TV show.
Director - Jerome Robbins. Music - Leonard Bernstein. Lyrics - Stephen Sondheim.
In the 21st century I mean. The original film was made just a few years after the Broadway show had opened. It was made with a movie star as you stated. Today WSS is essentially art house stuff. This film had no movie stars, no “modernizing” of the music with “hip hop” touches. It was a piece of classical Hollywood filmmaking that was very reverent to the source while changing stuff that would not play today (the gang dialogue and slang that was cringe inducing five minutes after the 1961 film came out).