Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood's two marriages to actor Robert Wagner were publicized often in a positive light without any hints of arguments that may have led to the end of the first (in 1962) or conflicts that arose during the second besides the alleged fight on Wood's last night alive. As newlyweds in 1958, the couple was considered such an ideal couple by Hollywood figures, who even then were cynical about marriage, that they were asked to hand Oscar trophies to all the winners in that year's ceremony. In film of the ceremony presenter David Niven can be heard calling them "lovebirds" and joking that they needed to stop staring at each other so passionately and to get the next statuette ready. According to Suzanne Finstad, Wood ended her first marriage to Wagner after she caught him "in a compromising position with another man."^[5] Wagner is aware of Finstad's claim, and he has called it untrue.^{[citation needed]} Statements made by Wood in divorce court and to the press did not hint at the allegation Finstad made decades later. Wood said she was seeking the divorce because Wagner spent a lot of time playing golf and he regularly criticized her friends, who did not play golf.^[6] Wagner was, in fact, photographed on golf courses many times from the 1950s until the 1990s, and not always for publication.^{[citation needed]}

Despite a large publicity build-up as a contract player with Twentieth Century Fox in the 1950s, the hit movies in which Wagner had top billing were few and far between at the time of the 1962 divorce. Wood, however, was widely seen at the time because West Side Story (film) in which she starred had won Best Picture (along with awards in many other categories) a few weeks earlier at the Academy Awards ceremony, and the film still played in many theaters throughout the United States (although its year of release is always listed as 1961). Although Wood's singing in the movie was dubbed, that fact was not known to many moviegoers outside of New York and Los Angeles, and they enjoyed "her" voice both on film and in the soundtrack album, which featured a large photograph of Wood and her co-star Richard Beymer on the front cover and became one of the top-selling record albums of the year.

[edit] Activities with Warren Beatty

The relationship Natalie Wood had with Warren Beatty immediately after her divorce from Wagner was heavily publicized in 1962 and 1963. Wood and Beatty were photographed together many times at Hollywood events and filmed for newsreels, but one night during their relationship that would interest a wide audience today remains mysterious. Wood allegedly, on the day of Darryl Zanuck's funeral on December 27, 1979, told James Haspiel, a personal friend of Marilyn Monroe, that Wood and Beatty had visited the Santa Monica beachfront home of Peter Lawford on Friday night, August 3, 1962.^[7] The highly publicized couple allegedly saw Monroe and Robert Kennedy visit the house together. Wood and Beatty, aware of Kennedy's reputation as a devoted family man, allegedly felt awkward trying to make conversation, and they left the house.^[8] Wood died without telling the story directly to any journalist or writer. The first neutral person to investigate the allegation, Anthony Summers, queried Beatty two years after Wood's death. He admitted to seeing only Monroe "the night before she died" but refused to comment further or to identify anyone else who was present at the scene.^[9] No one has queried Beatty about the incident for publication since Summers did.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Drowning at Catalina Island

On November 29, 1981, at the age of 43, Natalie Wood drowned while the yacht she and Wagner owned, The Splendor, was anchored near Catalina Island. An investigation by Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi resulted in an official verdict of accidental drowning, although speculation about the circumstances continues.

Wood was on board the yacht with Wagner, Christopher Walken and a skipper named Dennis Davern whom the married couple had used for many years. The couple had invited Walken to join them during a Thanksgiving weekend break from filming the science-fiction screenplay Brainstorm. In September and October, Wood had done location work on the film in Raleigh, North Carolina.^[10] North Carolina had recently become known to Hollywood executives as an excellent production site. Wood and her husband stayed together in Raleigh for weeks without causing any trouble or negative rumors in the vicinity of her filming location.^[11] (Wagner was on a break from filming his Aaron Spelling-produced hit TV series Hart to Hart.) They then returned to California where Wood spent most of November shooting interior scenes (including artistic simulations of mind reading performed by the futuristic device that is the centerpiece of the film) on the MGM lot in Culver City. Wood and Walken, who co-starred in the project, shot love scenes several days before Thanksgiving. ^[12] Mart Crowley, employed as Wood's personal assistant since 1960, had accompanied her to North Carolina. He then joined the actress, her mother, sisters, and Wagner for Thanksgiving dinner in Los Angeles, but he declined Wood's invitation to spend the holiday weekend on the yacht.

Anchored in the Pacific Ocean on the Saturday night of the holiday weekend, Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken reportedly had a loud argument about how Walken was behaving around Wood on the yacht and possibly in a Catalina Island restaurant where they all partied earlier that day. Wood apparently tried either to leave the yacht or to secure a dinghy that was banging against the hull when she accidentally slipped and fell overboard. A woman on a nearby yacht said she heard cries for help from the water at around midnight, along with voices replying, "Take it easy. We'll be over to get you."^[13] The woman, a commodities broker who had never met Wood, Wagner, or Walken, said this "call and response" continued for more than 15 minutes. She added that the woman who kept repeating "Help me" did it in a curiously flat, unemotional tone of voice. To quote the witness directly, "There just wasn't much credibility in that droning repetition." For that reason the commodities broker did nothing, and said that she felt "a lot of guilt" when she learned that Wood had drowned.^{[citation needed]}

Wagner has always refused to discuss the events of that night. Walken said in a New York Times interview in 1992 that there was no argument and that neither he nor Wagner witnessed Wood's fall. He added that her small physical stature (five feet tall) was a major factor in the accident.^[14] The skipper of the yacht, Dennis Davern, videotaped a rambling and confusing interview in 1992 for the TV documentary program Now It Can Be Told, hosted by Geraldo Rivera. At one point during the interview, his girlfriend, who never met any of the yacht's passengers, appears to goad him into making an accusation, and Davern hesitates.

Of the three witnesses who have talked, only the commodities broker told her story to the media without being pressed and within a reasonable amount of time. She gave reporters her whole story less than two days after Wood's body was discovered; Walken and Davern both waited more than ten years to say anything.

Dr. Noguchi revealed that Wood was legally intoxicated when she died and that there were marks and bruises on her body, which could have been received as a result of her fall. In Noguchi's memoir, Coroner, he stated that had Wood not been intoxicated, she likely would have realized that her heavy down-filled coat and wool sweater were pulling her underwater, and would have removed them. Noguchi said he found Wood's fingernails still embedded in the rubber boat's side.

At the time of her death Wood was filming Brainstorm. Released in theaters two years later without a climactic scene that Wood was scheduled to film the week after Thanksgiving, it turned out to be a box-office disaster. Wood was also scheduled to make her stage debut in an Ahmanson Theatre production of Anastasia, opposite Dame Wendy Hiller. She was scheduled to begin rehearsals in December 1981 shortly after wrapping Brainstorm.

In the 1990s, several magazine writers^[who?], apparently frustrated with the silence of Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken, interviewed Dennis Davern (skipper of The Splendor) and they pursued people who recalled seeing Natalie Wood on Catalina Island on both Saturday, November 28 and Friday, November 27. Journalists claimed she was drunk and disorientated on Friday evening, more than 24 hours before her death and she spent Friday night in an island hotel with Davern (who supposedly kept his clothes on the entire time). Wood is depicted as smashing plates against the wall of an island restaurant on Saturday afternoon. Few writers emphasize that this alleged behavior had to have happened within 36 hours of her death and that the DVD of Brainstorm stands as evidence of her long days of shooting an erudite science-fiction film (in which Wood's character is a scientist who plays classical piano) for almost three months until Thanksgiving week. A positive story from the Saturday-afternoon restaurant meal was published immediately after her death in a supermarket tabloid and then forgotten.^{[neutrality disputed]} According to the story, a little girl eating with her family at the restaurant recognized Wood from Miracle On 34th Street and approached her to discuss the film. The delighted actress sat the little girl on her lap and talked to her.

Natalie Wood is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. She was survived by her husband, Robert Wagner, and two daughters, Natasha Gregson Wagner (from her marriage to Richard Gregson), and Courtney Wagner, her daughter with Robert Wagner. Other survivors included her stepdaughter Katie Wagner (from Robert Wagner's previous marriage to Marion Marshall), her sister, Lana Wood, sister Olga Virapaeff, and her mother. Lana Wood published a 1986 biography in which she expresses anger about her sister's death, although she does not explain how much of the blame for it should go to Wagner, Walken or Davern. She admits her sister drank too much occasionally, but "she was not an alcoholic by any stretch of the imagination."^{[cite this quote]}

[edit] Trivia

• When she was nine she had an accident on a movie set that left a slight but permanent bone protrusion on her left wrist. For the rest of her life, on camera or in public, she wore a bracelet to cover it. The nighttime accident, in which a footbridge holding Wood collapsed, caused her to fear dark water and drowning for the rest of her life.

• Wood's fear became an issue during the filming of at least three of her films in which her character becomes immersed in water. During the making of This Property Is Condemned, she was so scared of performing a skinny-dipping scene that co-star Robert Redford held her feet underwater to help steady her while shooting it.

• She is one of several child actors to have been nominated for an acting-related Oscar in adulthood. Other examples are Elizabeth Taylor (who won two Oscars in adulthood), Jodie Foster (also won twice in adulthood), Jennifer Connelly (won once), Judy Garland, Natalie Portman, Dean Stockwell, Mickey Rooney, Joaquin Phoenix, Mary Pickford, Jackie Earl Haley and a few others.

• Wood spoke Russian.

• She and Robert Wagner were close friends of Joan Collins.

[edit] Awards and Honors

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Television work

• From Here to Eternity (Miniseries, 1979)
• Hart to Hart (Pilot episode, 1979, Cameo)

[edit] Bibliography

• Frascella, Lawrence and Al Weisel. Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause. Touchstone, 2005. ISBN 0-7432-6082-1.
• Finstad, Suzanne. Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood. Three Rivers Press, 2001. ISBN 0-609-80957-1.
• Lambert, Gavin. Natalie Wood: A Life. London: Faber and Faber, 2004. ISBN 0-571-22197-1.
• Harris, Warren G. Harris. Hollywood's Star-Crossed Lovers "Natalie and R.J.". Doubleday, 1988. ISBN 0-385-23691-3.
• Nickens, Christopher Nickens. Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs. Doubleday, 1986. ISBN 0-385-23307-8.
• Wood, Lana. Natalie: A Memoir by Her Sister. Putnam Pub Group, 1984. ISBN 0-399-12903-0.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Natalie Wood at the Internet Movie Database
• Foul Play on Catalina Island? The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood
• Natalie Wood at Find a Grave
• Natalie Wood Style and Beauty Page
• Who2bs:Natalie Wood

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