TOGETHER FOR THE KIDS

Rita Moreno: I’d Have Ended My 45-Year Marriage if Not for Our Daughter

The living legend said her relationship with her late husband taught her that “having to be with somebody forever and ever is not necessarily a fabulous thing.”

Rita Moreno is opening up about her “very hard” and decades-long marriage to her husband, whom she says she likely would have left long before his death in 2010 if not for fear of breaking up their family. The 92-year-old living legend told an audience at a New York City panel on Wednesday that Leonard Gordon, whom she wed in 1965, had “a fabulous sense of humor” but was “very controlling,” according to People. “Things began to get very tense,” she explained. “And if it were not for my daughter, I probably would have left.” Gordon, who retired from medicine to manage Moreno’s career, taught her “a big, deep lesson,” she said. “This marriage taught me something about relationships that I didn’t like, and that is having to be with somebody forever and ever is not necessarily a fabulous thing. Sometimes it is. But more often than not, it’s not.” Moreno previously spoke about her troubled relationship with Gordon in a 2017 interview with The Daily Beast, recalling that he became increasingly possessive as the years went on. Unable to bring herself to leave him, particularly with their daughter caught in the middle, it was only after Gordon’s death that she found freedom. “It was an astonishing discovery,” she said. “After all the years of supervision I can do whatever I want. It was a very long time to be that unhappy.”