Column: From ‘Extraordinary Guy’ to ‘West Side Story’

It was the most unforgettable social event of my high school career.

In April 1962, I was a 17-year-old senior at Costa Mesa High School, six weeks short of graduation.

My high school sweetheart, Margie, and I had been going steady for a year. She was a 16-year-old junior.

In the spring of ’62, I had a lead role in Mesa’s original musical, “An Extraordinary Guy.” It was a wonderful production and ran for a Thursday night dress rehearsal and a Friday evening performance in late April in Orange Coast College’s 1,200-seat auditorium.

After weeks of work in the high school’s rehearsal rooms we prepared for a week on the auditorium stage. Our dress rehearsal unfolded before a small but appreciative audience, and we knew we had a hit.

The Friday performance was sold out, and folks had to be turned away. By “popular demand,” we scheduled an encore performance for a Saturday in late May. That show, too, sold out.

This newspaper gave the production a glowing review.

The setting for the musical is an American high school campus, awash in burning issues of the day (1962), like cliques, acne and angst. Alcohol, drugs and teen pregnancy go unacknowledged because, frankly, they weren’t yet on anyone’s radar.

Students wrote the script, music and lyrics. The school mounted the production in the spring of ’62, and it was produced by at least one other Southern California high school the following year.

On a Saturday night between Mesa’s two performances I had the most memorable high school date of my life with Margie.

Don Miller, an English teacher, directed “Extraordinary Guy.” He also taught the creative writing class that fashioned the script.

Not yet 30, Miller was a creative dynamo and UCLA grad. I’d taken English and journalism from him and came to admire him greatly.

In celebration of a successful opening, Miller invited Margie and me, plus the production stage manager, Lisa, and her boyfriend, Bob, to attend a movie in Hollywood. Miller was accompanied by his fianceé.

The film was “West Side Story,” directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise. Music was by Leonard Bernstein.

I was familiar with the show. My dad, a Broadway aficionado, purchased the original cast album shortly after the show’s debut in 1957.

I fell in love with it, memorizing every note and lyric

Fifty-five years later the show still holds up. Three of my granddaughters — ages 11, 14 and 16 — saw the movie for the first time a couple of months ago and were mesmerized. Tears flowed in the final tragic scene, when Tony dies.

We three couples exited the theater deeply touched as tunes from the show — like “Maria,” “There’s a Place For Us” and “Tonight” — resounded in our consciousness.

Recovering, we sang as we drove from Hollywood to Westwood. Miller took us to his favorite Italian bistro near UCLA for a late supper. In the dimly lit cavern, each table had a raffia-wrapped Chianti bottle with colored wax drip and a candle in the top.

As we drove home, I remember listening to clarinetist Acker Bilk’s haunting hit, “Stranger on the Shore,” on the car radio. Self-consciously, I placed my arm around Margie’s shoulders — and left it there for about an hour.

For an eternal moment we celebrated “Our Night,” “Our Movie,” “Our Theme-Song” (“Stranger on the Shore”) and “Our World.”

I attended college the next year, then joined the Army. I returned home three years later to finish my degrees. Margie did her undergraduate work in the Midwest.

“West Side Story,” for me, became a rite of passage.

I watched it the other night, intending to stay five minutes and then switch to a ballgame.

My fingers never grasped the remote.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.