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Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood in 1981
Born	Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko July 20, 1938 San Francisco, California, United States
Died	November 29, 1981(1981-11-29) (aged 43) Santa Catalina Island, California, United States
Other names	Natasha Gurdin Natalie Wood Wagner
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1943–1981
Spouse(s)	Robert Wagner ​(m. 1957⁠–⁠1962)​ Richard Gregson ​ ​(m. 1969⁠–⁠1972)​ Robert Wagner ​(m. 1972⁠–⁠1981)​(her death)
Children	Natasha Gregson (b. 1970) Courtney Wagner (b. 1974)
Relatives	Lana Wood (sister)

Natalie Wood (born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko; Template:Lang-ru; July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.

Wood began acting in movies at the age of four and at age eight was given a co-starring role in the classic Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street. As a teenager, her performance in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to star in the musical films West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962). She received 2 more Academy Award nominations, for Best Actress in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).

At the age of 28, Wood semi-retired from acting, appearing in only four theatrical films during the remainder of her life. She was married to actor Robert Wagner (twice) and to film producer/writer 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. During her career, from child actress to adult star, her films represented a "coming of age" for both her and Hollywood films in general.

At age 43, Wood drowned near Santa Catalina Island, California at the time her last film, Brainstorm (1983), was in production with co-star Christopher Walken. Her death was declared an accident. Although the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reopened the case in late 2011 based on new witness statements, no evidence to contradict that original conclusion was found.

Background

Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko and Maria Stepanovna (née Zudilova; 1912–1998). As an adult, she stated, "I'm very Russian, you know." She spoke both Russian and English. Her father was born in Vladivostok and he, his mother, and two brothers, immigrated to Montreal, Quebec, 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. She was raised as a Russian Orthodox Christian and remained in the church.

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: "Natalie's only professional training was watching Hollywood child stars from her mother's lap," notes Harris. Wood would later recall this time 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.

Shortly after Wood's 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's younger sister, Svetlana Zacharenko — now known as Lana Wood — also became an actress and later 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. The studio executives at RKO Radio Pictures later changed her name to "Natalie Wood", a name she never liked.

Career

Child actress

Wood made her film début a few weeks before turning five during a fifteen-second scene in the 1943 film Happy Land. Despite the brief part, she attracted the notice of the director, Irving Pichel, who remained in contact with Wood's family for two years when another role came up. The director telephoned Wood's mother and asked her to bring her daughter to Los Angeles for a screen test. Wood's mother became so excited at the possibilities, she overreacted and "packed the whole family off to Los Angeles to live," writes Harris. Wood's father opposed the idea, but his wife's "overpowering ambition to make Natalie a star" took priority. According to Wood's sister, Lana Wood, Pichel "discovered her and wanted to adopt her."

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 Wood acted in another film directed by Pichel, her mother signed her up with 20th Century Fox studio for her first major role, the 1947 Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street; the film made her one of the top child stars in Hollywood. Within a few months after the film's release, Wood was so popular that Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

Film historian John C. Tibbetts writes that for the next few years following her success in Miracle, Wood played roles as a daughter in a series of family films: Fred MacMurray's daughter in Father Was a Fullback and Dear Brat, Margaret Sullavan's daughter in No Sad Songs for Me; James Stewart's daughter in The Jackpot; Joan Blondell's neglected daughter in The Blue Veil; and daughter of Bette Davis' character in The Star. In all, Wood appeared in over 20 films as a child.

Because she was a minor, Wood's formal education took place on the studio lots wherever she was contracted. 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 remembered 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.

As a child actress, Wood received media attention. By age nine, she had been named the "most exciting juvenile motion picture star of the year" by Parents. At age twelve, Wood was judged Child Star of the Year by the Children's Day National Council of New York.

Teen stardom

In the 1953-1954 television season, Wood played Ann Morrison, the teenage daughter in the ABC situation comedy, The Pride of the Family, with Paul Hartman cast as her father, Albie Morrison; Fay Wray, as her mother, Catherine; and Robert Hyatt, as her brother, Junior Morrison.

Wood successfully made the transition from child star to ingenue at age 16 when she co-starred with James Dean and Sal Mineo in 1955's 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 brief but crucial role in John Ford's western The Searchers (1956), which starred John Wayne and also featured Wood's ten-year-old sister, Lana, who played a younger version of her character in the film's earlier scenes.

Wood 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, Wood 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.

However, she had her detractors. The film critic Pauline Kael referred to her as "clever little Natalie Wood" the "most machine-tooled of Hollywood ingenues.

Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story

Wood's career was in a transition period, having until then been cast primarily in roles as a child or teenager. She was now hoping to be cast in adult roles. Biographer Suzanne Finstad notes that a "turning point" in her life as an actress took place upon seeing the film A Streetcar Named Desire: "She was transformed, in awe of director Elia Kazan and of Vivien Leigh's performance... became a role model for Natalie." "Her roles raised the possibility that one's sensitivity could mark a person as a kind of victim," noted Tibbetts.

In 1961, after a "series of bad films, her career was already in decline," notes Rathgeb. Kazan himself writes that the "sages" of the film community declared her as "washed up" as an actress, although he still wanted to interview her for his next film. Kazan cast Wood as the female lead in Splendor in the Grass, and her career rebounded. He felt that despite her earlier, innocent roles, she had the talent and maturity to go beyond. In the film, Warren Beatty's character was deprived of sexual love with Natalie, and as a result turns to a prostitute; Natalie likewise couldn't handle the issue, but ended up in a mental institution. Kazan writes that he cast her in the role partly because he saw in Wood's personality a "true-blue quality with a wanton side that is held down by social pressure," adding that "she clings to things with her eyes," a quality he found especially "appealing."

Finstad feels that despite Wood's never receiving training in Method acting techniques, "working with Kazan brought her to the greatest emotional heights of her career. The experience was exhilarating but wrenching for Natalie, who faced her demons on Splendor." She adds that a scene in the film, as a result of "Kazan's wizardry ... produced a hysteria in Natalie that may be her most powerful moment as an actress." Actor Gary Lockwood, who also acted in the film, felt that "Kazan and Natalie were a terrific marriage, because you had this beautiful girl, and you had somebody that could get things out of her." Kazan's favorite scene in the movie was the last one, when Wood goes back to see her lost first love, Bud (Beatty). "It's terribly touching to me. I still like it when I see it," writes Kazan.

The same year, Wood played Maria in the Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise musical West Side Story which was a major box office and critical success. In this film, she plays the role of a restless adolescent which reflected the "restlessness of American youth in the 1960s," expressed by youth gangs and juvenile delinquency. Both films, he observes, were "modern allegories based on the 'Romeo and Juliet' theme, including private restlessness and public alienation. In the film she also enters into a romance with a gang member and his threatening world of outcasts, also alienated from their families and the law. Although the singing parts were sung by Marni Nixon, West Side Story is still regarded as one of Wood's best films.

Remainder of career and missed roles

Wood did her own singing in the 1962 film, Gypsy. In 1964, she received her third Oscar nomination for Love with the Proper Stranger, opposite Steve McQueen. She then co-starred in the slapstick comedy The Great Race (1965), with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Peter Falk. Her ability to speak Russian was an asset given to her character "Maggie DuBois", justifying the character to record the progress of the race across Siberia, and entering the race at the beginning as a contestant.

Wood's acting was criticized at times. In 1966, the Harvard Lampoon named her the "Year's Worst Actress". She accepted the award in person, and the Harvard Crimson wrote she was "quite a good sport." Director Sydney Pollack was quoted as saying about Wood, "When she was right for the part, there was no one better. She was a damn good actress." Other notable films starring Wood 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 role in Bonnie and Clyde because she did not want to be separated from her analyst.

After three years away from acting, Wood made a brief return in the ensemble film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a comedy about sexual liberation. Wood agreed to the film up-front for no salary, in exchange for 10% of the profits. According to Tibbets, this was the first film in which "the saving leavening of humor was brought to bear upon the many painful dilemmas portrayed in her adult films."

Wood resumed her self-imposed "semi-retirement" after becoming pregnant in 1970 with her first child. Although she was not making movies, Wood did make a few trivial cameo appearances in film and TV over the following decade. She played herself in The Candidate (1972) with Robert Redford; co-starred with Robert Wagner in the made-for-TV movies The Affair (1973) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976); and briefly appeared on Wagner's prime-time detective series Switch in 1978 as "Bubble Bath Girl" and Hart to Hart in 1979 as "Movie Star." She won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Karen Holmes in the 1979 miniseries remake of From Here to Eternity, which co-starred William Devane as her love interest, and Kim Basinger in the role of Lorene Rogers.

Film roles Wood turned down went to Ali MacGraw in Goodbye, Columbus; Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby; and Faye Dunaway in The Towering Inferno. Her sister Lana would later describe these as "catastrophic career miscalculations" in the memoir she wrote after Wood's death. Those films were released during a crucial time in Hollywood, during which many actresses, such as Jane Fonda, were making the transition from "classic" to "modern" films. Because Wood was not acting at all during that time period (early 1970s), her career options were limited when she finally decided to start making films again.

Upon resuming her film career, Wood joined the ensemble of the 1979 science fiction disaster Meteor, which marked her first acting role in a widely released film since Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice an entire decade earlier (she did star in a film called Peeper in 1975, but it was not given a proper theatrical release). Meteor was a critical and commerical flop, as was her next film, the 1980 sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America, although her own performance in the latter did receive some positive reviews. In Last Married Couple, Wood broke ground by being an actress with a clean, middle class image, yet using the 'F' word when she says "Fuck me" to her husband (George Segal). Later in 1980, she starred in the television film The Memory of Eva Ryker. The film featured a scene in which Wood's character drowns, and when Wood drowned in real life the following year, the film was never broadcast again.

At the time of her death, Wood was filming the science fiction drama Brainstorm (1983), directed by Douglas Trumbull. She and Christopher Walken portrayed a husband-and-wife team of scientists working on a device that can record human thoughts, and in the process use the device to solve their own marital problems. This was Wood's first dramatic big-screen role since This Property Is Condemned more than 15 years earlier, and she anticipated that Brainstorm would be her comeback film. Wood had only completed approximately 75% of her work on the film before drowning during a weekend off from production. As a result, her character was written out of several scenes, with a stand-in and sound-alikes replacing her for some critical scenes. The film was released posthumously on September 30, 1983, and was dedicated to her in the closing credits.

Wood was also scheduled to star in a theatrical production of Anastasia with Wendy Hiller. Rehearsals were to begin in December of 1981. Another film she had in development was Country of the Heart, in which she would portray a terminally ill writer who has an affair with younger man, to be played by Timothy Hutton.

Wood 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. Wood said she had 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, a marriage which met with great protest from Wood's mother. They 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, 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, Warren Beatty, Dennis Hopper, David Niven, Jr., singer Elvis Presley, director Henry Jaglom, and politician Jerry Brown.

Among her celebrity friends were fellow child performers Margaret O'Brien, Carol Lynley and Stefanie Powers.

Death

Wood died by accidental drowning while on a weekend trip to Santa Catalina Island with her husband, Robert Wagner, actor Christopher Walken, and the boat's captain, Dennis Davern. Many facts surrounding her drowning are unknown, as no one saw how she entered the water. Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi ruled her death an accident by drowning and hypothermia following his investigation. According to the autopsy report, Wood had dozens of bruises on her body, including injuries to her face and arms. The autopsy found that her blood alcohol level was .14, and an examining doctor stated that it was higher when she went overboard. They also found two drugs in her bloodstream: Cyclivine, a sea-sickness pill, and Darvon, a painkiller, which they believed caused a "much more drunken state" when combined with alcohol. The case was reopened in late 2011 based on new witness statements, and after nearly two months of further investigation, no new evidence to contradict the original conclusion and cause of death was found.

Natalie Wood was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. Scores of international media and photographers as well as the public tried to attend Wood's funeral at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery; however, all were required to remain outside the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery walls. Among the celebrity attendees were Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Gene Kelly, Elia Kazan and Sir Laurence Olivier. Olivier, who had worked with Wood and Wagner in their 1976 television production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, flew from London to Los Angeles to attend the service.

Filmography

Film

Television

Other awards

Bibliography

• Finstad, Suzanne (2001). Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood (Biography). Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-0-609-80957-0. Retrieved July 24, 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• 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.
• Lambert, Gavin (2004). Natalie Wood: A Life (Biography). London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-22197-4. Retrieved July 24, 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Harris, Warren G. (1988). Hollywood's Star-Crossed Lovers "Natalie and R.J." (Biography) (First ed.). Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-23691-1. Retrieved July 24, 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Nickens, Christopher. Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs. Doubleday, 1986. ISBN 0-385-23307-8.
• Noguchi, Thomas T. Coroner. Simon & Schuster (October 1983). ISBN 0-671-46772-7.
• Rulli, Marti and Dennis Davern. Goodbye Natalie Goodbye Splendour. Medallion, 2009. ISBN 1-59777-639-4.
• Tibetts, John C. and James M. Welsh (eds.). American Classic Screen Profiles, Scarecrow Press, 2010. ISBN 0-8108-7676-0.
• Wood, Lana. Natalie: A Memoir by Her Sister. Putnam Pub Group, 1984. ISBN 0-399-12903-0.

References

1. Wrathall, John; Molloy, Mick (2006). Movie Idols. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 978-1-4027-3674-2. Retrieved July 24, 2010.
2. ^ Wilkins, Barbara. "Second Time's the Charm – Marriage, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner". People.com. Retrieved March 11, 2010. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
3. ^ Tibbetts, John C., Welsh, James M. (Eds.) (2010). American Classic Screen Profiles. Scarecrow Press. pp. 146–149. ISBN 0-8108-7676-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
4. ^ Winton, Richard (January 10, 2012). "Detectives find no evidence of foul play in Natalie Wood's death". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 15, 2012.
5. Lambert 2004, p. 3.
6. ^ Biography for Natalie Wood
7. ^ Natalie Wood's Russian roots
8. Harris 1988, p. 20.
9. Lambert 2004.
10. ^ Harris 1988, p. 21.
11. ^ Harris 1988, p. 25.
12. Wood, Lana. Natalie: A Memoir by her sister, G.P. Putnam's Sons, (1984) p. 50
13. O'Conner, John J. – Arts: " TV Weekend; A Documentary Remembrance of Natalie Wood". – New York Times. – July 8, 1988
14. "[[The Pride of the Family]]". Internet Movie Data Base. Retrieved May 1, 2011. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
15. Finstad 2001, p. 107.
16. Rathgeb, Douglas L. The Making of Rebel Without a Cause, McFarland (2004) p. 199. ISBN 0-7864-6115-2
17. Finstad 2001, p. 259.
18. Finstad 2001, p. 260.
19. Finstad 2001, p. 263.
20. Alexander, Jeffrey C. – "Lampoon Fixes Date With Natalie; Wood Will Win 'Worst' on Saturday". – Harvard Crimson. – April 18, 1966
21. ^ Finstad 2001.
22. Cite error: The named reference Tibbets was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
23. "The last hours of Natalie Wood". – TIME. – December 14, 1981
24. Hill, Ona L. (2000). Raymond Burr: A Film, Radio and Television Biography. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p.56. ISBN 0-7864-0833-2
25. "Natalie Wood Biography – Yahoo! Movies". Movies.yahoo.com. Retrieved June 17, 2010.
26. "Jill St John Biography – Yahoo! Movies". Movies.yahoo.com. Retrieved March 11, 2010.
27. Wagner, Robert (2008). Pieces of My Heart. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-137331-2.
28. Noguchi, Thomas T. (1983). Coroner. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-46772-7.
29. Finstad 2001, p. 433.
30. Harris 1988, p. 210.

External links

• Natalie Wood at IMDb

• Natalie Wood Style and Beauty
• Natalie Wood at Who2

Template:Persondata

• Use mdy dates from August 2010
• 1938 births
• 1981 deaths
• Accidental deaths in California
• People who died at sea
• Actors from California
• American child actors
• American film actors
• American people of Russian descent
• Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
• Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
• Deaths by drowning
• New Star of the Year (Actress) Golden Globe winners
• People from San Francisco, California
• People from Santa Rosa, California
• Russian Orthodox Christians
• Van Nuys High School alumni