Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood
in Gypsy (1962)
Born	Natalia Zacharenko
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1943–1981
Spouse(s)	Robert Wagner (1957–1962 (divorced); 1972–1981 (her death)) 1 child Richard Gregson (1969–1972) (divorced) 1 child

Natalie Wood (born Natalia Zacharenko; July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American actress.

Wood began acting in movies at the age of 4, and became a successful child actor in such films as Miracle on 34th Street (1947). A well received performance opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and helped her to make the transition from a child performer. She then starred in the musicals West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962). By age 25 she was a three-time Academy Award nominee, after receiving nominations for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love With the Proper Stranger (1963).

Her career continued successfully into the late 1960s with films such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). She worked less during the 1970s in order to have more time to start a family. She was married to producer Richard Gregson and actor Robert Wagner, and had one daughter by each: Natasha Gregson and Courtney Wagner. Wood starred in several television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she won a Golden Globe Award.

Wood drowned near Santa Catalina Island, California at age 43. She had not yet completed her final film, the science fiction drama Brainstorm (1983) with Christopher Walken, which was released posthumously.

Child actress

File:Natalie Wood, 16.jpg

At age 15, circa 1953

Wood's parents, Maria Stepanova (née Zudilova) and Nikolai Zacharenko, were Russian immigrants, but they grew up far from their homeland: her father lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, while her mother grew up in a Chinese city, Harbin. Shortly after her birth in San Francisco, they moved north to Sonoma County and lived in Santa Rosa, California where Wood was noticed during a film shoot in downtown Santa Rosa. Her mother soon moved the family to Los Angeles and pursued a career for her daughter. By age four Natalia was being billed as Natasha Gurdin, Gurdin being the family's surname by this point. Like many parents of child actors, her mother tightly managed and controlled the young girl's career and personal life. Her father has been described by Wood's biographers as a passive alcoholic. At the studio's suggestion, Natalia's name was changed to Natalie Wood during her period as a child actor for Warner Bros.

As a seven year old, Wood played a German orphan opposite Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert in Tomorrow Is Forever. Welles later said that Wood was a born professional, "so good, she was terrifying". Her performance in the 1947 Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street made Wood one of the top child stars in Hollywood. She would appear in over 20 films as a child, appearing opposite such stars as Gene Tierney, James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Bette Davis and Bing Crosby. Her sister Svetlana Gurdin (better known as Lana Wood) also became an actress and later, notably, a Bond girl. She and Lana have a half sister, Olga.

Teen stardom

Wood and Tab Hunter arriving at the 28th Academy Awards, 1956.

Wood successfully made the transition from child star to ingenue at age 16 when she co-starred in Nicholas Ray's film about teenage rebellion titled Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean and Sal Mineo. Her performance won her an Academy Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The film is now considered a classic. She followed this with a small but crucial role in John Ford's western The Searchers which starred John Wayne and also featured Wood's sister, Lana, who played a younger version of her character in the film's earlier scenes. She graduated from Van Nuys High School in 1956. The following year, she received a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.

Signed to Warner Brothers, Wood was kept busy during the remainder of the 1950s in many 'girlfriend' roles that she found unsatisfying. The studio cast her in two films opposite Tab Hunter, hoping to turn the duo into a box office draw that never eventuated. Among the other films made at this time were Kings Go Forth with Frank Sinatra and the title role in Marjorie Morningstar.

Adult career

After appearing in the box office flop, All the Fine Young Cannibals with her husband, Robert Wagner, Wood's career was salvaged by her casting in Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961) opposite Warren Beatty, which earned Wood Best Actress Nominations at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards.

Also in 1961 Wood played Maria in the Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise musical West Side Story which was a major box office and critical success. She had been signed to do her own singing but was later dubbed by session singer Marni Nixon. Wood's own singing voice was used when she starred in the 1962 film Gypsy. She was dubbed by Jackie Ward in the slapstick comedy The Great Race (1965) co-starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Peter Falk. Wood received her third Academy Award nomination and another Golden Globe nod in 1964 for Love with the Proper Stranger opposite Steve McQueen.

Although many of Wood's films were commercially profitable, her acting was criticized at times. In 1966 she won the Harvard Lampoon Worst Actress of the Year Award. She was the first performer in the award's history to accept it in person and the Harvard Crimson wrote she was "quite a good sport."

Other notable films she starred in were Inside Daisy Clover (1965) and This Property Is Condemned (1966), both of which co-starred Robert Redford and brought subsequent Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. In both films, which were set during the Great Depression, Wood played small-town teens with big dreams. After the release of the films, Wood suffered an emotional breakdown and sought professional therapy. During this time, she turned down the Faye Dunaway's role in Bonnie and Clyde because she didn't want to be separated from her analyst. In 1969, Wood also starred as a swinger in a film about sexual liberation, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. After this, however, she worked less in order to give herself time to settle down and start a family. She would act only occasionally for most of the 1970s. She appeared as herself in The Candidate (1972), reuniting her for a third time with Robert Redford. She also reunited on the screen with husband Robert Wagner in The Affair (1973), a made-for-television remake of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976) and made appearances on his shows Switch and Hart to Hart. She would later begin to work more frequently as her daughters reached school age.

Among the film roles Wood turned down during these years went to Ali MacGraw in Goodbye, Columbus, Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby and Faye Dunaway in The Towering Inferno. Instead, Wood chose to star in misfires like the disaster film Meteor (1979) with Sean Connery and the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980). She found more success in television, receiving high ratings and critical acclaim in 1979 for The Cracker Factory and especially the miniseries film From Here to Eternity with Kim Basinger and William Devane. Wood's performance in the latter won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 1980. Later that year, she starred in The Memory of Eva Ryker which proved to be her last completed production.

At the time of her death, Wood was filming the sci-fi film Brainstorm (1983) with Christopher Walken. She was also scheduled to star in a theatrical production of Anastasia and in a film called Country of the Heart, playing a dying novelist who has an affair with a teenager played by Timothy Hutton. Due to her untimely death, both of the latter projects were canceled and the ending of Brainstorm had to be re-written. A stand-in and sound-a-likes were used to replace Wood for some of her critical scenes.

She appeared in 56 films for cinema and television. Following her death, Time magazine noted that although critical praise for Wood had been sparse throughout her career, "she always had work."

Personal life

Marriages

Natalie Wood's two marriages to actor Robert Wagner were highly publicized. "I was ten and he was 18 when I first saw him walking down a hall at 20th Century Fox," Wood recalled. "I turned to my mother and said, 'I'm going to marry him.' " It was on her 18th birthday when she went on her first date with the 26-year old Wagner, and they married a year later on December 28, 1957. The couple separated in June 1961 and divorced in April 1962.

On May 30, 1969, Wood married British producer Richard Gregson. The couple dated for two and a half years prior to their marriage. They had a daughter, Natasha (born September 29, 1970). They separated in August 1971 after Wood overheard an inappropriate telephone conversation between her secretary and Gregson. She filed for divorce, and it was finalized in April 1972.

In early 1972, Wood resumed her relationship with Wagner. The couple remarried on July 16, 1972, just five months after reconciling and only three after she divorced Gregson. Their daughter, Courtney Wagner, was born on March 9, 1974. They remained married until Wood's death on November 29, 1981.

Afterwards, Robert Wagner estranged himself from Natalie Wood's family and refused to let her Lana Wood see Natasha and Courtney.

Other relationships

Biographer Suzanne Finstad claimed Wood slept with director Nicholas Ray, while she was trying to land the lead role in Rebel Without a Cause, when she was 16 and he was 43.

During her teens, Wood went on studio-arranged dates with older men, including actors Tab Hunter and Nick Adams. She also had a long friendship with playwright Mart Crowley. Citing Wood's ex-boyfriend Dennis Hopper as her source, Suzanne Finstad also claimed that Wood had a relationship with bisexual actor Raymond Burr when she was 17 and he was 38.

Wood also had relationships with actors Warren Beatty, Michael Caine and Steve McQueen, singer Elvis Presley, director Henry Jaglom, and politician Jerry Brown.

Among her celebrity friends were fellow child performers Margaret O'Brien, Carol Lynley, Stefanie Powers, and Jill St. John, who married Wood's widower, Robert Wagner, in 1990.

Natalie Wood's mother, Maria Gurdin, died of pneumonia in 1998, aged 85.

Death

In September and October 1981, Wood and Wagner stayed in Raleigh, North Carolina while Wood did location work for the science-fiction film Brainstorm. Wood then spent most of November in California shooting interior scenes with Christopher Walken and other cast members on the MGM lot in Culver City.

The day after Thanksgiving, Wood, Wagner and Walken went to Catalina Island for the weekend and on the night of November 28 their yacht (Splendour) was anchored in Isthmus Cove. Also on board was the boat's skipper, Dennis Davern, who had worked for the couple for many years. Wood apparently tried to either leave the yacht or secure a dinghy from banging against the hull when she accidentally slipped and fell overboard. A woman on a nearby yacht said she heard calls for help at around midnight. The cries lasted for about 15 minutes and were answered by someone else who said, "Take it easy. We'll be over to get you". "It was laid back," the witness recalled. "There was no urgency or immediacy in their shouts". An investigation by Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi resulted in an official verdict of accidental drowning. Noguchi concluded Wood had drunk "seven or eight" glasses of wine and was intoxicated when she died. There were marks and bruises on her body which Noguchi speculated could have been received as a result of her fall. Noguchi later wrote that had Wood not been intoxicated, she likely would have realized her heavy down-filled coat and wool sweater were pulling her under water and would have removed them. Noguchi also wrote that he found Wood's fingernail scratches on the side of the rubber dinghy indicating she was trying to get in. Wood was 43 at the time of her death and is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Appearances and awards

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1943	Happy Land	Bit Part
1946	The Bride Wore Boots	Carol Warren
	Tomorrow Is Forever	Margaret Ludwig
1947	Driftwood	Jenny Hollingsworth
	The Ghost and Mrs. Muir	Anna Muir as a child
	Miracle on 34th Street	Susan Walker
1948	Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!	Bean McGill
1949	Father Was a Fullback	Ellen Cooper
	The Green Promise	Susan Anastasia Matthews
	Chicken Every Sunday	Ruth Hefferan
1950	Never a Dull Moment	Nancy 'Nan' Howard
	The Jackpot	Phyllis Lawrence
	Our Very Own	Penny Macaulay
	No Sad Songs for Me	Polly Scott
1951	The Blue Veil	Stephanie Rawlins
	Dear Brat	Pauline
1952	The Star	Gretchen
	Just for You'	Barbara Blake
	The Rose Bowl Story	Sally Burke
1954	The Silver Chalice	Helena as a child
1955	Rebel Without a Cause	Judy	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
	One Desire	Seely Dowder
1956	The Girl He Left Behind	Susan Daniels
	The Burning Hills	Maria Christina Colton
	A Cry in the Night	Liz Taggert
	The Searchers	Debbie Edwards (older)
1957	Bombers B-52	Lois Brennan
1958	Kings Go Forth	Monique Blair
	Marjorie Morningstar	Marjorie Morgenstern
1960	All the Fine Young Cannibals	Sarah 'Salome' Davis
	Cash McCall	Lory Austen
1961	West Side Story	Maria
	Splendor in the Grass	Wilma Dean Loomis	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1962	Gypsy	Gypsy Rose Lee	Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1963	Love with the Proper Stranger	Angie Rossini	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1964	Sex and the Single Girl	Helen Gurley Brown
1965	Inside Daisy Clover	Daisy Clover	Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Nominated — World Film Favorite - Female
	The Great Race	Maggie DuBois
1966	Penelope	Penelope Elcott
	This Property Is Condemned	Alva Starr	Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1969	Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice	Carol Sanders
1972	The Candidate	Herself
1973	The Affair	Courtney Patterson	Released theatrically outside of the U.S.
1975	Peeper	Ellen Prendergast
1976	Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	Maggie	Made for Television
1979	From Here to Eternity	Karen Holmes	Miniseries Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
	The Cracker Factory	Cassie Barrett	Made for television
	Meteor	Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya
1980	The Memory of Eva Ryker	Eva/Claire Ryker	Television
	The Last Married Couple in America	Mari Thompson
	Willie & Phil	Herself
1983	Brainstorm	Karen Brace	Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress

Television shows

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1953	Pride of the Family	Ann Morrison	One season
1969	Bracken's World	Cameo	Guest Appearance
1978	Switch	Girl in the Bubble Bath	Guest Appearance
1979	Hart to Hart	Movie Star	Pilot episode, as Natasha Gurdin

Other awards

Year	Organization	Award	Film	Result
1946	Box Office Magazine	Most Talented Young Actress of 1946	Tomorrow is Forever	Won
1956	National Association of Theatre Owners	Star of Tomorrow Award		Won
1957	Golden Globe Award	New Star Of The Year - Actress	Rebel Without A Cause	Won
1958	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Dramatic Performance	Marjorie Morningstar	Nominated
	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (13th place)
1959	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (7th place)
1960	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (9th place)
1961	Grauman's Chinese Theatre	Handprint Ceremony		Inducted
1961	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (14th place)
1962	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Dramatic Performance	Splendor in the Grass	Nominated
	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (5th place)
1963	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Musical Performance	Gypsy	Nominated
	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (2nd place)
1964	Mar del Plata Film Festival	Best Actress	Love with the Proper Stranger	Won
	New York Film Critics Award	Best Actress	Love with the Proper Stranger	Nominated
	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Dramatic Performance	Love with the Proper Stranger	Nominated
	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (3rd place)
1965	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (6th place)
1966	Golden Globe Award	World Film Favorite		Won
	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (8th place)
1967	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (3rd place)
1968	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (12th place)
1970	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (9th place)
1971	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (9th place)
1987	Hollywood Chamber of Commerce	Hollywood Walk of Fame	-	Inducted

Bibliography

• Rulli, Marti and Dennis Davern. Goodbye Natalie Goodbye Splendour. Medallion, 2009. ISBN 1597776394.
• Finstad, Suzanne. Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood. Three Rivers Press, 2001. ISBN 0-609-80957-1.
• 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.
• Harris, Warren G. Hollywood's Star-Crossed Lovers "Natalie and R.J.". Doubleday, 1988. ISBN 0-385-23691-3.
• Lambert, Gavin. Natalie Wood: A Life. London: Faber and Faber, 2004. ISBN 0-571-22197-1.
• Nickens, Christopher. Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs. Doubleday, 1986. ISBN 0-385-23307-8.
• Noguchi, Thomas T. Coroner. Simon & Schuster (October 1983). ISBN 0671467727.
• Wood, Lana. Natalie: A Memoir by Her Sister. Putnam Pub Group, 1984. ISBN 0-399-12903-0.

External links

• Foul Play on Catalina Island? The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood
• Natalie Wood at Find a Grave
• 'Natalie Wood Style and Beauty Page'
• Natalie Wood at Who2