leonard bernstein conducted.thing. dale: and the curtain went up, and it went up to silence, and the audience was stunned. they just looked at us. and then suddenly, there was this whoop of applause. it was like an explosion in the house. and the curtain went up and up and up and up and up. i think there were 16 curtain calls. we were all changed. the experience of working with jerry changes you forever. it changed everything [ laughs ] in musical theater. after "west side story," someone in a musical could not just dance or sing or act. a performer had to have all three skills to even be considered. it consolidated this wave of change that would ultimately lead to the rise of off-broadway theater and the emergence on broadway of artists such as edward albee with "who's afraid of virginia woolf," which never would have happened in the pre-"west side story" broadway. it was as if for the first time something modern a new was crashing into the commercial broadway world. pow! narrator: having made broadway history r

robbins: and that was leonard bernstein. was still a dancer traveling all over the united states with the ballet theatre. and lenny would send me music and a little disc of how it was to be played. bernstein: anyway, my love and i hope you like it. good luck, jerry. robbins: and that was the beginning of our collaboration. man: there was a freshness of approach. there was nothing stuffy about it. here were these guys and they're on the town, you know and they pick up these dames and everything goes screwy. and yet it was a classical ballet. everything about it just worked. woman: it wasn't like they looked like ballet dancers. they looked like people who happened to be able to dance very well. and that's what i think jerry wanted. he wanted human beings on the stage. narrator: the solos robbins made for his friends and for himself showed off their distinctive personalities -- the first sailor had harold lang's brash, in-your-face charm... the second displayed john kriza's playful sweetness... and the third sailor had all the

we met, as a matter of fact, in leonard bernstein's apartment. his wife, felicia montealegre at the time, was making anti-war christmas cards, which sounds silly now, of course, but people went to great lengths to be against the war in those days. it was a kind of harmless escapade. we were there covering it, and, of course, we were jockeying for position to interview everybody he and i tangled immediately and started shouting at each other. he said, "i will desist because i'm the gentleman and not because you are a lady." i thought that was a rather remarkable line. i think i burst out laughing. we were very, very good friends he was a wonderful character, maybe one of my closest friends in the world. he went to vietnam. i worked along-side him in vietnam a lot. he then went to tokyo. c-span: who did he work for in vietnam? >> guest: he worked for a couple of people. he worked for nbc radio at one point, he worked for abc television, he worked for wcbs. he was kind of drifting around. he was the kind of person that was either your friend or your