Natalie Wood came into Hollywood as a child star and was able to age into several roles. The movie focuses on her life as an actress but also includes interviews with family and friends (including her stepfather Richard Wagner).
This documentary uses never-before-shared home movies, personal letters, and a who’s who of bygone Hollywood to make its case for this forgotten actress.
Wood began appearing on screen in 1943 at the age of 4 in a 15-second role in a short film called Happy Land. Her talent was recognized by the director, Irving Pichel, who asked her mother to bring her to Los Angeles for a screen test. The test went well, and Natalie Wood was given a part in the movie Tomorrow Is Forever, starring Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles. The movie was a box office hit, but Wood was still a child actress.
When she turned 16, her roles became more adult, with a small role in the forgettable One Desire and the lead in Rebel Without a Cause. This was a socially aware film that depicted teenagers as individuals, not as stereotypes. It proved a huge success and earned her an Oscar nomination.
She continued to appear on TV in anthology shows like Studio One in Hollywood, Camera Three, Kings Row, and Warner Brothers Presents. She was also a guest star in a couple of westerns with Tab Hunter.
By the mid- 1950s, it was clear that Natalie Wood had a special gift as an actress. The public loved her. She was a natural beauty, and she had a rare talent to play both sexy and sweet roles. Her performances made her a teen idol and one of the most popular leading ladies in Hollywood.
At the same time, her personal life was turbulent. Her volatile mother Maria resented her daughter’s success and tried to dominate every aspect of her life. Natalie would often leave home to live with her sister or with an older ex-partner to escape the suffocating atmosphere at home.
In 1956 she met and married actor Robert Wagner, with whom she had a daughter before divorcing him in 1962. She divorced again in 1972 and then remarried him in 1973. He was the love of her life until his death in 1981. They spent much of their time boating on Catalina Island.
Her Film Career
In 1943, Wood landed bit parts in the movies The Moon Is Down and Happy Land, but it was an introduction to director Irving Pichel that set her on the path to stardom. A bit role in Claudette Colbert’s 1947 film Tomorrow Is Forever pulled at America’s heartstrings, and Wood won the role of a wide-eyed little girl who questions Santa Claus’ existence in Miracle on 34th Street. This movie cemented her as a popular child actress. In 1955, she earned her first Oscar nomination for the juvenile delinquent drama Rebel Without a Cause. Her performance, opposite James Dean, made her a screen siren. She followed up with the romantic melodramas Splendor in the Grass and Love with the Proper Stranger.
In 1961, Wood played Maria in Jerome Robbins’ and Robert Wise’s musical West Side Story, which became one of the most successful films of the decade. Her character, a Puerto Rican woman on Manhattan’s West Side, was a modern allegory of Romeo and Juliet that expressed the restlessness of 1950s American youth, as reflected in youth gangs and juvenile delinquency. Wood’s performance garnered her a second Academy Award nomination.
During the 1970s, Wood appeared sporadically on screen as she raised her children. She had a supporting role in John Ford’s The Searchers (1956,) and a small part in Irving Rapper’s Marjorie Morningstar, Delmer Daves’ war film Kings Go Forth, and studio anthology TV shows such as Studio One in Hollywood, Camera Three, and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour.
Wood’s personal life also attracted much attention, particularly after her 18-year-old marriage to actor Robert Wagner, eight years her senior. The pair divorced in 1962. In the midst of her troubles, she was nearly killed on the set of the 1962 thriller The Green Promise when she fell through a broken bridge. The accident left her with a protruding bone in her wrist and a permanent fear of water.
After her acclaimed performance in Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969), Wood began to take on more adult roles. However, the 1979 disaster movie Meteor and the 1980 comedy The Last Married Couple in America failed to find an audience. Her final film was Brainstorm, a science fiction thriller starring Christopher Walken.
Her Personal Life
Throughout her lifetime, Wood had many ups and downs in her personal life. She often fell victim to the exploitative processes of Hollywood, whether by directors who took advantage of her young age or studio executives who looked the other way as she was abused by men. She was also often a victim of gossip and rumor.
Her acting career started at a very young age. Natalie was just 4 years old when she made her first film appearance in the 1943 drama Happy Land. Her nonspeaking role lasted only 15 seconds, but her face and talent grabbed the attention of Irving Pichel who gave her a screen test for a larger role in the following year’s Tomorrow Is Forever. Pichel’s decision was a game-changer for the actress, who soon became a major child star and teenager sensation.
Wood’s mother, Maria Zakharenko, was an aspiring actress herself and did everything she could to promote her daughter’s career. She reportedly forced her daughters into the business and was a controlling and manipulative parent. According to her youngest daughter Lana, she was also a pathological liar and one couldn’t always be sure what she said was the truth.
The teen star’s next big breakthrough came in 1956 when she was cast as the abducted niece of John Wayne’s character in the hit western The Searchers. The film was a critical and commercial success, but Wood was still being saddled with roles that lacked depth. She was paired with teen heartthrob Tab Hunter for many films, but it was in 1961 when she proved herself as a capable leading lady in the urban retelling of Romeo and Juliet called West Side Story. She did all her own dancing in the landmark film, although her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon.
After the hit film, Wood starred in several other popular movies such as Splendor in the Grass and The Gunslinger. In 1970, she married British producer Richard Gregson and had a daughter with him. After 11 months, the couple separated, and rumors surfaced that he had been unfaithful.
Her Death
The final chapter in Natalie Wood’s life was as mysterious as it was short. She was 43 when she drowned off the coast of California’s Catalina Island. The cause was ruled accidental drowning by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, but there are questions about her time on the boat and bruises found on her body. The mystery surrounding her death hung over the rest of her film career, and she was seen by many as a tragic figure.
A few months before her death, Wood had received an Academy Award nomination for Splendor in the Grass. She was nominated again in 1962 for Love With a Proper Stranger. She had starred in films since she was 4, and she was making the transition from child star to respected actress. She was a coveted leading lady, and she was a fixture of the gossip magazines.
In the years leading up to her death, there was a lot of turmoil in her personal life. She was estranged from her first husband, Robert Wagner, and she had a brief second marriage with British producer Richard Gregson. She also suffered from mental illness. She tried to commit suicide at least once and underwent daily psychoanalysis. She had a great fear of being alone at night, and that stemmed from a prophecy made to her superstitious Russian mother by a Gypsy.
On the night of her death, Wood was on a yacht with Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken. It was anchored off of Southern California’s Catalina Island. At around 11 p.m., the three got into an argument. Wagner reported that he assumed Wood would take off in her small dinghy to get some fresh air, but when she didn’t return after about 15 minutes, he called Harbor Patrol. Her body was later discovered about a mile away from the boat, and her Valiant-brand dinghy was beached nearby.
The case was reopened in 2011 after new information was uncovered, including a sworn statement from the medical examiner that the bruises on her arms and legs were most likely caused before she entered the water, not from her fall into it. Bruises are usually a sign of foul play, but investigators have not been able to identify a person of interest.