Natalie Wood

There are not many stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that can lay claim to the icon of child star to teen starlet to adult movie star. Robert Osborne put her alongside legends Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Lana Turner, Greta Garbo and Bette Davis. Anyone in the public might have turned away from Natalie in her 40-year career, but the fascination never faded and, in her death, and the ensuing mystery her legend continues to this day.

Born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco on July 20, 1938 to Russian emigres who barely spoke English changed the family name to Gurdin when they became U.S. citizens. Her mother Maria was determined to make a star of her daughter and enrolled her at age 4 in ballet school and by age 5 this domineering parent had secured her young daughter a movie role an albeit small one of just 15 seconds in a movie called Happy Land in ’43. It was apparently enough to grab the attention of director Irving Pichel and he cast her opposite Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert playing a WWII orphan in Tomorrow is Forever just 2 years later. Welles was later to comment that Natalie was so good she was “terrifying”. Her next film made her a star and is today still a Christmas classic in the enduring Miracle on 34^th Street starring opposite Maureen O’Hara. So popular was the film that Macy’s invited her to their annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. 

California law at the time dictated that child actors had to spend at least 3 hours in the classroom and Natalie was a straight A student excelling in mathematics and Joseph L. Mankiewicz who directed her in the 1947 hit The Ghost and Mrs. Muir starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison said he never encountered a “smarter moppet”. Natalie was so conscientious though she felt that all the actors were waiting for her on the set to finish her schooling and would run like the dickens get back to filming because she felt so guilty. It might have been here that Natalie’s mental disturbances began coupled with her mother’s imperious persona driving her for perfection. 

Her next splash would come opposite the iconic James Dean in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause in 1955. Here as the love interest for Dean she was nominated for the first of her 3 Academy Award’s this one in a supporting role. Natalie followed with her least favorite film in which she had little screen time with John Wayne in what might be called the best Western of all time The Searchers in 1956. She felt she was miscast as a white woman abducted by Indians.

A number of minor roles followed until ’61 where she starred opposite on and off-screen lover Warren Beatty as a troubled young girl driven to near madness in Splendor in the Grass. That role earned her the second nomination this time for actor in a leading role. That year was only eclipsed though in her role as Maria in the 10-time Oscar Winning movie West Side Story. Natalie danced all her scenes, but her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon. West Side Story a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remains in the annals of landmark films. Only Ben Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings have won more awards at 11.

Mirroring her own life, she took on Gypsy in 1962 based on the true story of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee who was aggressively managed by her stage mother Mama Rose played by Rosalind Russell. The film a success garnered 3 nominations. The following year partnered with upcoming megastar Steve McQueen Natalie garnered her 3^rd nomination and plays an innocent Catholic girl discovering she’s pregnant during a one-night stand with McQueen playing a musician. The Catholic censors had a field day with this one as the Hays Code was just losing its grip.

A couple of nonsensical roles followed in Sex and the Single Girl in ’64 and The Great Race in ’65 and then Inside Daisy Clover opposite Robert Redford, which took a serious look at Hollywood’s treatment of stars as a commodity, but script and disjointed scenes kept the movie dark as it was from being a true hit. Natalie followed with Robert Redford with a much-improved script in This Property is Condemned set during the Great Depression.  It was in Daisy Clover that Redford discovered Wood’s extreme fear of the water when fooling around he picked up Natalie in his arms and jumped in the pool while on set with her. When he found out how petrified she was of the water he was crestfallen.

In 1969 Wood teaming with Robert Culp, Elliot Gould and Dyan Cannon in the Avant Garde classic and here the film explored the subject of group sex. Nominated for 4 Oscars it delved into a taboo for the first time that would catapult Hollywood into sex openly for the next decade and beyond. Tame by today’s standards but after that movie cinema was never the same. 

Natalie married actor Robert Wagner twice and she would appear in two of her husband’s TV shows Switch and Hart to Hart. Her last film before her death she costarred with Christopher Walken who some speculated she had an affair with in Brainstorm in ’81. This movie explored the world of artificial intelligence and was quite thought provoking for the time.

Natalie’s death is one that continues to remain open and suspicious in the minds of fans and authorities as some still suspect that her twice married husband Robert Wagner was somehow involved in bringing about her death. The idea that Natalie would end up drowning is so incongruous as stated earlier she was deathly afraid of the water. Natalie died November 29, 1981 at age 43.   

I've avoided many rumors about Natalie's drinking problems, suicide attempts and alleged affairs even two with Frank Sinatra 38 while she was 15 and with Nicholas Ray while filming Rebel Without a Cause. All these tales were laid at the doorstep of her Mother in her quest to make her a star. Natalie was indeed troubled and how many of these stories are true I will leave you to speculate about.