When they got together at the Beverly Hills Hotel in August 1955, their legs dipping in the pool, Arthur Laurents and Leonard Bernstein were wrestling with a problem 3,000 miles away: They were trying to recast the "Romeo and Juliet" story for a modern-day musical set in New York, and their initial idea about Jews and Catholics battling each other wasn't going anywhere.
Then they got an inspiration from the pages of the Los Angeles Times.
There had been stories about violent clashes between Latino gang members, and a new idea took root: "We decided to make the show about teenage gangs, to make it more timely," said Laurents, who went on to write the book for the musical "West Side Story."
