In Gypsy As Gypsy Rose Lee
Born in San Francisco, California on July 20, 1938, the Russian Revolution of 1917 provides the fateful impetus for the baby that starts life in the United States of America ... her father, Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko, leaves the port of Vladivostok with his family, after his father, a poor chocolate factory worker and anti-Bolshevik is killed during a street fight between Red and White Russian soldiers in 1918 (the family first relocates to Canada before moving on to San Francisco, where Natalie's father works as a day laborer and carpenter), while her mother, Maria Stepanovna Zudilova Zakharenko, ends up in San Francisco when her father, an owner of soap and candle factories flees Russia's communist regime for first China, then comes to the United States. Natalie will speak both English and Russian throughout her life, and will be raised as a member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Transferring her blocked dreams and ambitions (to become a a renowned actress or ballerina) to her middle daughter, as just a child, Natalie accompanies her mother to local showings of Hollywood's latest movies and strikes poses for imaginary cameras as directed by her parent. And impossibly, it somehow works. Living in Santa Rosa, California, young Natalie is noticed by members of a film crew shooting in the downtown portion of the city. Told the child could be a star, it is all the encouragement that Mamma Maria needs to uproot the family and move to Southern California (despite the protests of her husband). "Discovered," Natalie appears for fifteen seconds in 1943's The Moon Is Down and then as a youngster who drops an ice cream cone in Happy Land. She is 4-years-old.
Baby
Young Natalie
New name squired and a contract with Twentieth Century Fox signed, in Hollywood Natalie will play a German post-World War II orphan opposite Orson Welles (he will describe her as "so good, she was terrifying" ... the movie is the first in which she will receive a screen credit) and Claudette Colbert in 1946's Tomorrow Is Forever (unable to cry on cue, Natalie will shed real tears for the cameras when her mother gives her the wet ability by tearing a butterfly to pieces off camera). She becomes Hollywood's go-to female child star the next year when she becomes a scene stealer opposite Maureen O'Hara, John Payne,and Edmund Gwen in the holiday classic, Miracle On 34th Street. And so it goes as she becomes known as "One Take Natalie" ... among her early Hollywood roles she will be Gene Tierney's young daughter in The Ghost And Mrs. Muir, will play one of Coach Fred MacMurray's daughters in 1950s Father Was A Fullback, and in Paul Newman's debut, The Silver Chalice, she will play the part of Helena, Newman's young love who grows up to become actress Virgina Mayo. And then she does what few child actresses are capable of and as a 16-year-old teenager transitions into ingenue roles as the love interest of James Dean in the tragedy, Rebel Without A Cause (she will be nominated for a Bes Supporting Actress Oscar for the role), which she then follows up with as the object of John Wayne's quest in the 1956 John Ford western classic, The Searchers (taking the role that Natalie once would have played, Natalie's younger sister Lana will play her character, Debbie Edwards, at the beginning of the film). And while all that is going on, following the child-labor laws of the state of California, she gains an education at various studio schools, becoming an A student with a proclivity for mathematics of whom Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz will say, "In all my years in the business, I never met a smarter moppet." In 1956 she graduates from Van Nuys High School, signs a new contract with Warner Brothers, and stars in two movies with Tab Hunter.
Miracle On 34th Street
In The Searchers
Teen to adult, Woods successes continue with films as varied as Majorie Morningstar (opposite Gene Kelly), Kings Go Forth (with Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis), Cash McCall (with James Garner in the title role), All The Fine Young Cannibals (also starring her two-time husband, Robert Wagner), Splendor In The Grass (paired with Warren Beatty, for which Wood will receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination), West Side Story (in the pivotal role of Maria ... she will be heartbroken when she discovers all of her singing has been edited from the Best Picture winning musical), Gypsy (as Roselind Russell's show-biz daughter), Love With A Proper Stranger (and garners another Best Actress nomination for her role opposite Steve McQueen), Sex And The Single Girl (as Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown), Inside Daisey Clover (with co-star Robert Redford), The Great Race (as female reporter Maggie DuBois), This Property Is Condemned (again with Redford), Penelope, (as the bank robbing title character), and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (as Carol, with Robert Culp, Eliott Gould, and Dyan Cannon).
The Tragic End Of West Side Story
In The Great Race
After she becomes pregnant in 1970 with her first child (with second husband, Richard Gregson, Wood goes into semi-retirement, taking the occasional movie role (she will make just four more and turns down the Ali McGraw part in Goodbye, Columbus, the Mia Farrow part in The Great Gatsby, and the Faye Dunaway role in The Towering Inferno, to go along with ducking the Faye Dunaway role in 1967's Bonnie And Clyde) and starring in lots of television parts ... among them, The Affair, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Cracker Factory, the mini-series From Here To Eternity (for which she will win a Best Actress award at the 1980 Golden Globes), and The Memory Of Eva Ryker. Deciding to try another feature length movie release, in 1981 she takes on the role of Karen Brace, opposite Christopher Walken, in the sci-fi thriller, Brainstorm.
From Here To Eternity
Acting work seemingly a breeze, Wood's personal life to the 1980s is a much bumpier road. Name never mentioned beyond her family, as a junior in the studio system she is raped by a huge Hollywood star under cover of a supposed job interview at the Chateau Marmont (fearing revealing the event will ruin her career, the rapist is never brought up on charges). Additionally, from the time she is sixteen there will be serious relationships and flings with actor Raymond Burr (when he is in hetero mode), actor Paul Newman, actor Tab Hunter (when he is in hetero mode), actor James Westmoreland, film director Nicolas Ray (her Rebel director, 27 years older than the actress), actor Dennis Hopper, actor Scott Marlowe, singer Elvis Presley, actor Robert Vaughn, hotel heir Conrad Hilton, Jr., actor Tony Curtis, actor Warren Beatty, actor Tom Courtney, producer Sandy Whitelaw, producer David Niven, Jr., businessman Ladislav Blatnik, producer Arthur Loew, Jr., actor Michael Caine, director Henry Jaglom, actor Richard Johnson, politician Jerry Brown, and producer Donald Wilson. Childhood crush made real, on Wood's 18th birthday, she is squired about town by 26-year-old actor Robert Wagner, whom she marries a year later, just after Christmas of 1957. Hollywood's golden couple for awhile, fidelity issues cause the couple to separate in 1961 and then divorce in 1962. After dating for over two years, in 1969 Wood marries British producer Richard Gregson, but with fidelity an issue once more (the actress overhears an inappropriate telephone call between the producer and his secretary), the couple break in 1971 and divorce in 1972. Friends despite the failure of their marriage, Wood and Wagner get back together in 1972, and remarry during the summer. Again however, there seem to be fidelity issue for the pair.
With Elvis
Oscars With Wagner
With Gregson
Second Time Around
Taking a break from filming Douglas Trumbull's (the special effects wizard of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Blade Runner) Brainstorm, the Wagners invite Natalie's co-star in the movie, recent Academy Award winner Christopher Walken to join them for a Thanksgiving weekend of yachting off Catalina Island, despite rumors that Walken and Wood have begun an affair (and despite Wood not knowing how to swim and fearful of the water, a phobia decades old that comes to the star by her mother's tale of a gypsy that forecasts Maria will birth a legendary beauty, but should be wary of "dark waters" ... a tale repeated over and over to Natalie while she is growing up). Party of four, aboard the Wagner's yacht, the 55-foot Splendour, when it reaches Catalina are the three stars, and the boat's captain, Navy veteran Dennis Davern. Anchored off Two Harbors (also known as The Isthmus), the once official story of what happens next is that on the evening of 11/28 (a starless night with rain), a tipsy Wood retires first (way beyond tipsy, her blood alcohol count is at 0.14 against a 0.10 being considered to drunk to drive, and her blood also includes traces of a seasick pill and painkiller, both of which exacerbate the effects of booze), but then as Walken and Wagner discuss politics, decides to go ashore using the yacht's dinghy (named Valiant after Prince Valiant, the title of Wagner's 1954 swashbuckling CinemaScope hit), slips getting in, and falls into the ocean and drowns sometime during the evening, with all the men aboard oblivious to what has happened. Wood's worst nightmare come true, the entertainer's body is discovered at 8:00 in the morning of 11/29, face down about a mile from the yacht wearing a red down jacket, blue socks and a flannel nightgown. Los Angeles County Chief coroner, Thomas Noguchi, will rule Wood's death to be accidental, the result of drowning and hypothermia. But almost instantly, questions and other stories arise that linger to today.
Walken & Wood In Brainstorm
The Splendour
Two Harbors - 2017
The Recovered Dinghy
Deathly afraid of water, and yet on her own Wood decides to go ashore, wearing what she was wearing, in the rain? Her body will be discovered with fresh bruises on her body and arms, and an abrasion on her left cheek ... as a result of trying unsuccessfully to climb back in the dinghy ... or from a fight with Wagner? There is a time gap between when Wood is last seen and when Wagner calls to shore for help at 1:30 in the morning. What emerges years later is a tale that includes two days of drinking, Wood and Walken flirting for hours with each other at a restaurant at Two Harbors, a fight over whether Walken is sleeping with Wood in which a jealous and furious Wagner breaks a bottle of red wine over a table aboard the yacht, Wood and Wagner taking the fight back to their cabin, and a couple on a nearby boat (moored about 80 feet away) hearing a woman's cries for help and that she is drowning that last almost thirty minutes (the couple is unsure of the source of the cries due to the rain and a boat party taking place, and when the husband calls the local harbormaster, no one answers the call). Case reopened in 2011 (and it remains open), Davern now testifies that Wagner orders the captain to lie about the fight and excessive drinking, not turning on the yacht's search lights, and not calling immediately for help in the name of all the bad publicity the actor will receive (Walken will hire a lawyer, cooperate with the new investigation, and will be dismissed as a suspect by authorities, while Wagner refuses to offer any further testimony on the matter despite authorities requesting he come in for an interview over ten times since 2011). In 2012, the Los Angeles County Chief coroner, Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, will amend Wood's death certificate as to the cause of death being "drowning and other undetermined factors" and that how Wood ended up in the water has "not clearly been established." In 2013, the coroner's office issues a ten page addendum to the Wood autopsy about how the bruises on Wood's body might have occurred. And in 2018, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department names Wagner as a "person of interest" in the investigation of the actress' death. Both Davern, and Wood's younger sister Lana, now believe Wagner is responsible for the entertainer's death, while the authorities, they just aren't sure.
Davern
Sister Lana
A mystery maybe never to be solved short of some kind of death bed confession (Wagner is now almost 90), what is known is the esteem Wood is held in by members of her Hollywood community. Closed to the public, Natalie Wood is interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles in a ceremony that is attended by family and friends ... friends the likes of Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Gene Kelly, Elia Kazan, and Laurence Olivier (who flies in from London for the event). Gone too soon, but certainly not forgotten, Wood lives on by way of a host of memorable screen and television performances which still entertain both old and new fans. Thank you, Natasha!
Natalie Wood - Top Of The World - At Home, 1960
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