Natalie Wood. born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko (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 actress 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. During her career, from child actress to adult star, her films represented a "coming of age" for both her and Hollywood films in general.
Wood drowned near Santa Catalina Island, California, at age 43, during production of Brainstorm (1983) co-starring Christopher Walken. Her death has been declared an accident. However, on November 17, 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reopened the case based on new witness statements.
Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents Maria Stepanovna (née Zudilova; 1912–1998) and Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko. 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.
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 - who 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.
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.
Tibbetts notes similarities in her role in this film and the earlier Rebel Without a Cause. Here, she also plays the role of a restless adolescent which reflected the "restlessness of American youth in the 1950s," expressed by youth gangs and juvenile delinquency, along with early Rock and Roll. Both films, he observes, were "modern allegories based on the 'Romeo and Juliet' theme, including private restlessness and public alienation. Where in Rebel she falls in love with the character played by James Dean, whose gang-like friends and violent temper alienated him from his family, in West Side Story 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. 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. 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 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 emotionally 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.Natalie Wood's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located on the south side of the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard
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, Wood went into semi-retirement and acted in only four more theatrical films during the remainder of her life. She made a very brief cameo appearance 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 television movie of the week The Affair (1973) and with Sir Laurence Olivier and husband Wagner in an adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976) broadcast as a special by NBC. She made cameo appearances on Wagner's prime-time detective series 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.
Wood in her last film, Brainstorm
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 science fiction 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.[22] 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-alikes 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.
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."
Death
On November 28, 1981, the Wagners' yacht, Splendour, was anchored in Isthmus Cove off Catalina Island with Wagner, Wood, and Wood's current film co-star Christopher Walken on board.[30] Also on board was the boat's captain, Dennis Davern, who had worked a number of years for the Wagners before Wood's death.
According to Wagner in his 2009 book, Pieces of My Heart, he had been jealous of Wood's friendship with Walken and there had been a fight between him, Walken, and Wood, during which Wagner smashed a wine bottle on a table. Also according to Wagner, it was at this time that Wood left for her stateroom and Walken retired to his, with Wagner behind Wood. According to Davern, the yacht's captain, it was at this time that he heard the couple fighting; he reports that he turned up his stereo to drown out the argument. Looking out the pilot house window, he saw both Wood and Wagner arguing at the aft deck of the yacht. Shortly after this, Davern claims, Wagner sought him out, saying he couldn't find Wood. Davern unsuccessfully searched the boat for her, also noticing that the yacht's dinghy was missing. According to Davern, Wagner seemed unconcerned about Wood's disappearance and poured drinks for both himself and Davern.
At this point, Wagner's story as told in his book differs from Davern's: he claims when he went to their stateroom to talk to Wood, she wasn't there. Wagner further states that while he and Davern searched the boat for his wife he also noticed the dinghy to be missing. Wagner further wrote that he had assumed Wood had used the dinghy to go to shore as a result of the argument. Davern claims that Wagner not only seemed unconcerned, but that he told Davern not to alert anyone about Wood's absence. According to Davern, Wagner said, "We're not going to look too hard, we’re not going to turn on the search light, we’re not going to notify anybody right at the moment."
Wagner's theory is that Wood tried either 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 a mile from the dinghy on Sunday afternoon, she was wearing a down jacket, a nightgown, and socks. A woman on a nearby yacht reported she had heard a woman calling for help at around midnight. She further reported that 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." According to the witness, "It was laid back, there was no urgency or immediacy in their shouts."
Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi ruled her death an accident following his investigation.
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 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.
Case reopened
On November 17, 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department office announced that it had officially reopened the case, based on new information from the yacht's skipper Dennis Davern.
Sheriff's Office homicide bureau Detective Lieutenant John Corina stated at a press conference, "We recently received information that we deemed to be credible. We're going to follow up on the leads we have." Corina declined to divulge any specific information regarding the new leads but did state that Wood's husband, Robert Wagner, is not considered a suspect.
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