Murray Benowitz

Murray Benowitz is a social worker whose guarded hope for the neighborhood’s teenagers shapes the Municipal Community Center dance and its failed attempt to bring the Jets and Sharks together. The dance briefly looks like evidence that his work might be succeeding; as the rival groups gather, he recognizes that a crowded room is not the same as a reconciled one. His effort to manage the night combines genuine persistence with the paternalism of an adult who wants to guide young people he does not fully understand.

Identity and Working Outlook

The community center has a history that gives Murray’s optimism a difficult setting. After the center welcomed Puerto Rican residents, older neighborhood residents avoided it, and their children were hard to persuade to attend. Puerto Rican families, in turn, were reluctant to use a place they understood to be boycotted. Its rooms and clubs often stood empty, with books and games unused and the basketball court without players. The social workers gathered in an office to complain about an unrewarding line of work.

Murray has learned to expect disappointment. Like many people drawn to social work, he had once looked at the world through rose-colored glasses and imagined it as the best possible place; experience has since made his view gray and bleak. Teenagers have damaged equipment, scrawled obscenities on walls, and called him Glad Hand. He absorbs the mockery and continues to think of them by their real names. That choice marks a durable distinction in his approach: he does not mistake their insults for the whole of who they are.

The Dance and a Renewed Hope

On a June evening, Murray is unusually confident about the event. As in the past, he promoted the dance without expecting much and urged the other youth workers to encourage attendance without becoming discouraged if few came. This time, however, teenagers arrive in numbers from eight o’clock onward, and he calls in two additional workers. Beside the record player, he sees fire-retardant crepe-paper decorations above the dance floor; there are records to play, chilled punch, ice, cups, and napkins. The practical preparations become, for him, signs that the evening may go better than expected. He imagines writing a detailed, favorable report for the downtown authorities about the progress at the center.

Murray moves through the crowd, greeting young people whose names he remembers and making himself laugh when they call him Glad Hand. He is uncomfortable with the increasingly unruly mood and regards mixed dancing as a sexual aberration, but he considers the possibility that, if the teenagers come to trust him, he might persuade the district supervisor to hire a dance teacher. His hopes are earnest and institutional: he wants to build trust, and he looks for a program that might make the center more useful to the young people who come there.

Attempt to Control the Gathering

When Murray sees the Sharks gathered at the entrance, he recognizes Bernardo and Bernardo’s girlfriend in a bright red dress. He hurries to welcome Bernardo, one of the boys he most wants to influence. Then he spots movement among the Jets and reaches the door as Riff Lorton, Action, and Tony Wyzek arrive. The two groups’ formations tell him more than their attendance does: the Sharks gather behind Bernardo, while the Jets form behind Riff Lorton, Action, and Tony Wyzek. Murray has heard from Doc that Tony Wyzek was working seriously and had stopped associating with the Jets. Seeing him with them, Murray wonders whether loneliness has drawn him back.

The danger becomes concrete as the gangs face one another. Two girls with the Jets have taken off their shoes, apparently ready to use their high heels as weapons. Murray raises both hands and asks for everyone’s attention, forcing a bright expression onto his face. When a police officer appears at the door, Murray signals that everything is under control. The officer’s presence helps secure attention, but the gangs remain hostile. Murray announces that this is the largest turnout in a long time and insists that the night is only beginning, speaking over the mockery of his professional friendliness.

When Officer Krupke arrives with the first policeman, the gangs form circles around the girls: Bernardo stands opposite Anita Palacio, while Riff Lorton takes his place with Graziella, who is eager for the music to start. Krupke gives the order to follow the instructions. The circles form, a record plays, and the boys and girls rotate in opposite directions. Murray’s planned exercise produces physical movement, but not the ease between the groups he wants. When the music stops, some Jets face girls who came with the Sharks and simply stare at them. Riff Lorton turns away from the girl opposite him and signals Graziella to join him instead. The public snub humiliates the Sharks; Bernardo calls Anita Palacio back, and the groups separate again.

Limits and Significance

Murray quickly asks for another record. A mambo fills the room, and he hopes its intensity will absorb the teenagers and interrupt their hatred long enough for the dance to end and the gangs to leave. Yet his interpretation of the music reveals the distance between his wish to help and his understanding of the people in front of him: he frames its force in anthropological, primitivizing terms, imagining it as something that can intoxicate the groups into calm. His relief is mixed with fear; he wonders whether Krupke will take him to the subway and make sure he boards a train home safely.

Murray’s evening therefore turns on a narrow, consequential difference between managing a crowd and changing its relationships. Attendance, decorations, refreshments, a police presence, and a forced dance create the appearance of a successful community event. But the rejected partner and the gangs’ return to their separate circles show how little those arrangements can do against entrenched hostility. He remains attentive and persistent, yet neither his appeal nor the dance dissolves the division. His role exposes the limits of the center’s well-intentioned interventions: the teenagers can be brought into one room, but their participation in the same space does not make them trust one another.