Director Elia Kazan described her performance as Maria in West Side Story as Wood’s most powerful moment. It was a breakthrough that showcased her talent for witty dialogue and complex characterization. In 1981, she drowned during a boating trip with husband Robert Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken. The circumstances surrounding her death remain controversial.
Natalie Wood was born into Hollywood glamour and enjoyed the perks of stardom early on. She was a child actress who starred in more than twenty films. She portrayed roles as a little girl in Miracle on 34th Street and as an ingenue in Rebel Without a Cause. The success of these films helped her land a contract with 20th Century Fox.
As her acting career progressed, she began to be given more and more choice projects. She was usually cast as the girlfriend or ingenue of the male lead. In some of these films, such as Splendor in the Grass and The Searchers, she was able to make her own mark as an actress.
However, her box office performances were mixed. Despite this, she continued to be a sought after actress by producers. She was paired with teen heartthrob Tab Hunter in a number of films. However, this pairing did not work out and it was evident that her appeal to audiences was beginning to decline.
During the sixties, Wood’s films often dealt with social issues. For example, West Side Story dealt with racial prejudice and Inside Daisy Clover examined the harsh reality of stardom behind the glamour. She was also in the successful musical Gypsy Rose Lee and the film based on Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
In the final years of her life, Natalie Wood found more stability in television and made only four more theatrical films. The last of these was the science fiction film Meteor and was released posthumously in 1983. She was also scheduled to make her stage debut in a 1982 production of Anastasia.
The re-release of the book ‘Natalie Wood’ in 2012 was due to the fact that it had been over two decades since the first edition. Author Suzanne Finstad re-examined the events of Natalie’s life and uncovered new details that were previously not known. She has included these new details in her new edition of the book. This is a very important and valuable addition to the book.
Her Personal Life
Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko on July 20, 1938 in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents. She began acting at the age of four, appearing in a string of small film parts, and was truly launched into stardom when she appeared in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street. In a career that would span more than 40 years, she earned dozens of critically acclaimed performances and numerous awards, including three Academy Awards nominations.
Although she became one of the top stars in Hollywood, Wood’s personal life was fraught with problems. She was married twice and had two children, but she never had the happy home life she craved. She was also frequently abused by directors, producers, and other members of the film industry.
She was often insecure about her appearance and body, and she frequently smoked cigarettes. She developed a serious case of bulimia and was criticized for her eating habits, but she was able to overcome the problem with therapy and diet.
As she grew older, she began to fight back against the system that had kept her under its control since she was a child. In 1959, she refused roles that she felt were not good for her or that were offensive to her. She also fired her support team and took over the management of her own career.
In the late 1960s, she began to find more substantial roles and won critical acclaim for her work in the films West Side Story and Gypsy. She also received Oscar nominations for her work in the modern romances Splendor in the Grass and Love with a Proper Stranger.
Wood continued to star in successful movies through the 1970s, including the thriller The Searchers and the comedies Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and The Last Married Couple in America. In the latter, she made a groundbreaking statement by using the word “fuck” in a frank discussion with her husband (George Segal).
Wood’s death on December 30, 1981, off the coast of California’s Catalina Island was ruled a suicide. Her mother Maria and her ex-husband, Dennis Davern, have both written books about her death.
Her Film Career
Wood’s film career took off at age eight when she stole the show in Miracle on 34th Street. She starred with Maureen O’Hara and became so popular that Macy’s invited her to appear in their Thanksgiving Day parade. She starred in more than 20 films as a child, but it was when she played teen ingenue Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) that Wood made the transition from little star to big screen icon.
After this film, Wood’s roles were more substantial and mature. She starred with John Wayne in the 1956 Western The Searchers, a post-Civil War drama that explores the challenges between Texas settlers and Native Americans. She also starred in the romantic melodramas Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with a Proper Stranger (1963), both of which earned her Oscar nominations.
In the 1960s, Wood continued her acting streak with a string of acclaimed movies such as The Guns of Navarone, West Side Story and The Jolson Story. Wood was also a regular on television with guest appearances on shows like The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse, Four Star Playhouse, General Electric Theater and the soap opera Hart to Hart.
Her off-screen life was just as active. Wood was a hit with tabloids and appeared in numerous relationships — both public and secret — with the likes of actor Dennis Hopper, hotel dynasty heir Nicky Hilton and singer Elvis Presley.
In addition to her successful acting career, Wood devoted her time to charitable work and family. She worked to promote child safety and donated a collection of ancient art to UCLA. She was also a patron of the arts and founded CoachArt, a program that provides performing arts instruction to chronically ill children.
In her later years, Wood struggled to find a balance between her personal and professional lives. She decided to leave acting for a few years, but returned to the industry with roles in films such as The Cracker Factory and Here to Eternity. However, by this point in her life, Wood believed that those who drew a line of distinction between film and television were snobbish, and that good work was good work no matter what medium it was performed for.
Her Death
Hollywood actress Natalie Wood, famous for her roles in West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause, drowned on November 29, 1981, during a yachting trip off the coast of California’s Catalina Island. The body of the star of Miracle on 34th Street and Splendor in the Grass was found several hours later, bobbing in the water wearing only her flannel nightgown and down jacket. She had been with her husband Robert Wagner, her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken and the yacht’s captain, Dennis Davern.
After her death, questions about the circumstances surrounding her demise remained for decades. In a 1992 appearance on a Geraldo Rivera show and a 2000 Vanity Fair article, writer Sam Kashner detailed the many ambiguities in her case and suggested that it was not an accident. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department reopened the investigation in 2011, and on December 11, 2013, it officially changed Wood’s official cause of death from accidental to undetermined drowning. Coroners cited fresh bruises on her arms and knee, along with a scratch on her neck and a scrape on her forehead, that could have been inflicted before she died.
Throughout her life, Wood struggled with drug and alcohol addictions as well as emotional issues. She often felt pressured by her producer mother and by her own burgeoning fame to make movies she didn’t want to do. Her dislike of the 1956 Western film The Searchers — in which she played the granddaughter of a tribe leader who was kidnapped and raised by Native Americans — was particularly strong.
As she aged, her marriages became more troubled. She first married actor Robert Wagner, eight years her senior, in 1957, and divorced him in 1962. She then began an affair with fellow actor Warren Beatty and, in 1966, tried to kill herself with a heroin overdose. She remarried, to a screenwriter named Richard Gregson, in 1969 and had a daughter, Natasha, the following year.
Despite her numerous awards and accolades, Wood was never completely happy with her career or personal life. She had a number of health problems, including chronic fatigue and an eating disorder, and her final years were marred by depression. In 1979, she was diagnosed with cancer, which she eventually died from. She was buried in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her funeral was attended by scores of representatives from the media and celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.
