Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood (born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko (Russian: Наталья Николаевна Захаренко);July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American actress.
Wood began acting in movies at the age of four 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). She also received Academy Award for Best Actress nominations for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).
Her career continued successfully with films such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). After this she took a break from acting and had two children, appearing in only two theatrical films during the 1970s. She was married to actor Robert Wagner twice, and to producer Richard Gregson. She had one daughter by each: Natasha Gregson and Courtney Wagner. Her younger sister, Lana Wood, is also an actress. 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.

Early life and childhood stardom

Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, to Russian immigrant parents Maria Stepanovna (née Zudilova) (1912–1998) and Nikolai Stepanovich Zacharenko. As an adult, she stated, "I'm very Russian, you know." Her father was born in Vladivostok and he, his mother, and two brothers, immigrated to Montreal, Canada and later to San Francisco. There, he worked as a day laborer and carpenter. Her paternal grandfather Stepan worked in a chocolate factory in Russia and was killed in street fighting between Red and White Russian soldiers in 1918. Natalie's mother originally came from Barnaul, southern Siberia, but grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin. She described her family by weaving mysterious tales of being either gypsies or landowning aristocrats. In her youth her mother dreamed of becoming an actress or ballet dancer.

In Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Biographer Warren Harris writes that under the family's "needy circumstances," her mother may have transferred those ambitions to her middle daughter, Natalie. Her mother would take Natalie to the movies as often as she could: "Natasha's only professional training was watching Hollywood child stars from her mother's lap," notes Harris. Natalie Wood would later recall this early period:

My mother used to tell me that the cameraman who pointed his lens out at the audience at the end of the Paramount newsreel was taking my picture. I'd pose and smile like he was going to make me famous or something. I believed everything my mother told me.

Publicity photo

Shortly after her birth in San Francisco, her family moved to nearby 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. Wood had one younger sister, Svetlana Zacharenko (better known as Lana Wood), who also became an actress and later, notably, a Bond girl. She and Lana have an older half sister, Olga Viriapaeff. Though Natalie had been born "Natalia Zacharenko," her father later changed the family name to "Gurdin" and Natalie was often known as "Natasha," the diminutive of Natalia. Hollywood would later change her name to "Natalie Wood," a name she really never cared for.
Wood made her film debut a few weeks before turning five, in a fifteen-second scene in the film Happy Land (1943). Despite the brief part, she attracted the notice of the director, Irving Pichel, who remained in touch with her family for two years until another role came up. The director phoned Natasha's mother and asked her to bring Natasha down to Los Angeles for a screen test. Her mother became so excited at the possibilities, she overreacted and "packed the whole family off to Los Angeles to live," writes Harris. Her husband opposed the whole idea, but his wife's "overpowering ambition to make Natasha a star" took priority.
Wood, then seven years old, got the part and 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". After doing another film directed by Pichel, her mother signed her to a role with 20th Century Fox studio for her first major role, the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which made her one of the top child stars in Hollywood. Within a few months after the film's release she was so popular that Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.
She would eventually 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. As a child actor, her formal education took place on the studio lots wherever she was acting. California law required that until age 18, actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom, notes Harris. "She was a straight A student," and one of the few child actors to excel at arithmetic. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who directed her in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), said that "In all my years in the business, I never met a smarter moppet." Wood remembers that period in her life:

I always felt guilty when I knew the crew was sitting around waiting for me to finish my three hours. As soon as the teacher let us go, I ran to the set as fast as I could.

Teen stardom

With James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Wood successfully made the transition from child star to ingenue at age 16 when she co-starred with James Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray's film about teenage rebellion. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. 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.
Signed to Warner Brothers, Wood was kept busy during the remainder of the decade 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 materialized. Among the other films made at this time were 1958's Kings Go Forth and Marjorie Morningstar. As Marjorie Morningstar, she played the role of a young Jewish girl in New York City, who has to deal with the social and religious expectations of her family, as she tries to forge her own path and separate identity.

Adult career

After appearing in the box office flop All the Fine Young Cannibals, Wood's career was salvaged by her casting in director 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, however, the singing parts were sung by Marni Nixon. Wood did sing when she starred in the 1962 film, Gypsy. She co-starred in the slapstick comedy The Great Race (1965), with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Peter Falk. Wood then received her third Academy Award nomination and another Golden Globe award 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." Conversely, director Sydney Pollack said "When she was right for the part, there was no one better. She was a damn good actress." 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^{[citation needed]} and sought professional therapy. During this time, she turned down the Faye Dunaway role in Bonnie and Clyde because she didn't want to be separated from her analyst.

In her last film Brainstorm (1983)

After three years away from acting, Wood played a swinger in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a comedy about sexual liberation. The film was one of the top ten box office hits of the year, and Wood received ten percent of the film's profits. After becoming pregnant with her first child, Natasha Gregson, in 1970, she went into semi-retirement and only acted in four more theatrical films during the remainder of her life. She appeared as herself in The Candidate (1972), reuniting her for a third time with Robert Redford. She also reunited on the screen with Robert Wagner in The Affair (1973), a television adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976) and made cameo appearances on his shows Switch in 1978 as "Bubble Bath Girl" and Hart to Hart in 1979 as "Movie Star". During the last two years of her life, Wood began to work more frequently as her daughters reached school age.
Film roles Wood turned down during her career hiatus went to Ali MacGraw in Goodbye, Columbus, Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby and Faye Dunaway in The Towering Inferno. Later, 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), co-starring Christopher Walken and directed by Douglas Trumbull. She was also scheduled to star in a theatrical production of Anastasia with Wendy Hiller and in a film called Country of the Heart, playing a terminally ill writer who has an affair with a teenager, to be 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. The film was released posthumously on September 30, 1983, and was dedicated to her in the closing credits.
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

With Robert Wagner in All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960)

Natalie Wood's two marriages to actor Robert Wagner were highly publicized. Wood said she had a crush on Wagner since she was a child and on her 18th birthday she went on a studio-arranged date with the 26-year old actor. They married a year later on December 28, 1957, which met with great protest from Wood's mother. In an article in February 2009, Wagner recalled their early romance:

I saw Natalie around town but she never seemed interested. She was making Rebel Without a Cause and hanging out with James Dean; I was with an older crowd. The first time I remember really talking to her was at a fashion show in 1956. She was beautiful, but still gave no hint about the mad crush she had on me. I later found out she had signed with my agent simply because he was my agent. A month later, I invited Natalie to a premiere on what turned out to be her 18th birthday. At dinner, we both sensed things were different. I sent her flowers and the dates continued. I remember the instant I fell in love with her. One night on board a small boat I owned, she looked at me with love, her dark brown eyes lit by a table lantern. That moment changed my life.

A year after their wedding, Wood expressed her feelings in a letter to her new husband:

"You are my husband, my child, my strength, my weakness, my lover, my life."

Wood and Wagner separated in June 1961 and divorced in April 1962.

Natalie Wood's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

On May 30, 1969, Wood married British producer Richard Gregson. The couple dated for two and a half years prior to their marriage, while Gregson waited for his divorce to be finalized. They had a daughter, Natasha Gregson (born September 29, 1970). They separated in August 1971 after Wood overheard an inappropriate telephone conversation between her secretary and Gregson. The split also marked a brief estrangement between Wood and her family, when mother Maria and sister Lana told her to reconcile with Gregson for the sake of her newborn child. 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 months after she divorced Gregson. Their daughter, Courtney Wagner, was born on March 9, 1974. They remained married until Wood's death seven years later on November 29, 1981.

Other relationships

Biographer Suzanne Finstad writes that Wood had a relationship with director Nicholas Ray, director of 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, and dated actor Raymond Burr, when she was 17 and he was 38. Wood also dated actors Michael Caine, Steve McQueen, Warren Beatty and Dennis Hopper, 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, .

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, which Wood spent with her parents and sister Lana in Los Angeles, Wood, Wagner and Walken went to Catalina Island for the weekend. On Saturday night, November 28, the Wagners' 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. The official theory is that Wood either tried to leave the yacht or to secure a dinghy from banging against the hull when she accidentally slipped and fell overboard. When her body was found, she was wearing a down jacket, nightgown, and socks. 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". There was much partying going on in the area, though, and while it has never been proven that the woman calling for help was, indeed, Natalie Wood, no other person ever has been identified or come forward as having called out for help on that night. 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. 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. On March 11, 2010 Wood's sister Lana stated that she is going to ask that the L.A. county sheriff reopen the case of her death.
At the funeral, at least a thousand spectators, along with scores of photographers and reporters from around the world, were spread out behind the cemetery walls. Among the guests at her funeral was Laurence Olivier, who flew there from London. Also there were Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Gene Kelly, and director Elia Kazan.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1943	Happy Land	Little girl who drops ice cream cone	uncredited
1946	The Bride Wore Boots	Carol Warren
1946	Tomorrow Is Forever	Margaret Ludwig
1947	Driftwood	Jenny Hollingsworth
1947	The Ghost and Mrs. Muir	Anna Muir as a child
1947	Miracle on 34th Street	Susan Walker
1948	Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!	Bean McGill
1949	Father Was a Fullback	Ellen Cooper
1949	The Green Promise	Susan Anastasia Matthews
1949	Chicken Every Sunday	Ruth Hefferan
1950	Never a Dull Moment	Nancy 'Nan' Howard
1950	The Jackpot	Phyllis Lawrence
1950	Our Very Own	Penny Macaulay
1950	No Sad Songs for Me	Polly Scott
1951	The Blue Veil	Stephanie Rawlins
1951	Dear Brat	Pauline Jones
1952	The Star	Gretchen Drew
1952	Just for You'	Barbara Blake
1952	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
1955	One Desire	Seely Dowder
1956	The Girl He Left Behind	Susan Daniels
1956	The Burning Hills	Maria Christina Colton
1956	A Cry in the Night	Liz Taggert
1956	The Searchers	Debbie Edwards (older)
1957	Bombers B-52	Lois Brennan
1958	Kings Go Forth	Monique Blair
1958	Marjorie Morningstar	Marjorie Morgenstern
1960	All the Fine Young Cannibals	Sarah 'Salome' Davis
1960	Cash McCall	Lory Austen
1961	West Side Story	Maria
1961	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	Louise	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
1965	The Great Race	Maggie DuBois
1966	Penelope	Penelope Elcott
1966	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	cameo
1973	The Affair	Courtney Patterson	TV movie
1975	Peeper	Ellen Prendergast
1976	Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	Maggie	TV movie
1979	From Here to Eternity	Karen Holmes	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama
1979	The Cracker Factory	Cassie Barrett	TV movie
1979	Meteor	Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya
1980	The Last Married Couple in America	Mari Thompson
1980	The Memory of Eva Ryker	Eva/Claire Ryker	TV movie
1980	Willie & Phil	Herself	(cameo)
1983	Brainstorm	Karen Brace	Nominated—Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1953	Jukebox Jury	as Herself	Guest appearance
1953	Pride of the Family	Ann Morrison	One season
1954	The Public Defender	Rene Marchand	One episode, "Return of the Dead"
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
1958	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
1962	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (5th place)
1963	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Musical Performance	Gypsy	Nominated
1963	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Star		Nominated (2nd place)
1964	Mar del Plata Film Festival	Best Actress	Love with the Proper Stranger	Won
1964	New York Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Actress	Love with the Proper Stranger	Nominated
1964	Golden Laurel Awards	Top Female Dramatic Performance	Love with the Proper Stranger	Nominated
1964	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
1966	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