and second husband Nicholas Zacharenko (1912–1980). She was of Russian descent and raised in the Russian Orthodox religion. Her mother, who also used the names Mary, Marie, and Musia, was from Barnaul, Russia. Wood's maternal grandfather owned soap and candle factories, and an estate outside Barnaul. With the start of the Russian Civil War, his family fled Russia for China, settling as refugees in Harbin. Her mother was previously married to Armenian mechanic Alexander Tatuloff from 1925 to 1936. They had a daughter named Olga (1928–2015) and moved to America by ship in 1930, before divorcing six years later.
Wood's father was a carpenter from Ussuriysk, Russia. Her paternal grandfather, a chocolate factory employee who joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces during the war, was killed in a street fight between the Red Army and White Russian soldiers in Vladivostok. After that, his widow and three sons fled to Shanghai, relocating to Vancouver at the time of Wood's paternal grandmother's remarriage in 1927. By 1933, they moved to the United States. where Wood was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot downtown. After she started acting as a child, RKO executives David Lewis and William Goetz changed her surname to "Wood" to make it more appealing to English-speaking audiences and as a tribute to filmmaker Sam Wood. Her only full sibling, sister Svetlana, was born in Santa Monica in 1946 and later became an actress under the name Lana Wood.
Child actress
Early roles
thumb|right|upright|Wood in 1947
Wood's first appearance on screen came when she was just four years old in the March 1943 release of The Moon Is Down based on the John Steinbeck book of the same name. Shortly thereafter, she was cast again in a fifteen-second scene in the film Happy Land (1943). Despite the brief parts, she became a favorite of the director of both films, Irving Pichel. He remained in contact with Wood's family for two years, advising them 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 that she "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 younger sister Lana, Pichel "discovered her and wanted to adopt her."
Wood, then seven years old, got the part. She played a post-World War II German orphan, opposite Orson Welles as Wood's guardian and Claudette Colbert, in Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). When Wood was unable to cry on cue, her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her to ensure she would sob for a scene. Welles later said that Wood was a born professional, "so good, she was terrifying." He also said "Natalie doesn't act from the script, she acts from the heart." Wood acted in another film directed by Pichel, The Bride Wore Boots, and went on to 20th Century Fox to play Gene Tierney's daughter in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).
Miracle on 34th Street
Wood's best-known film as a child was Miracle on 34th Street (1947), starring Maureen O'Hara and John Payne at Fox. She plays a cynical girl who comes to believe a kindly department store holiday-season employee portrayed by Edmund Gwenn is the real Santa Claus. The film has become a Christmas classic; Wood was counted among the top child stars in Hollywood after the film and was so popular that Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.
Film historian John C. Tibbetts wrote that for the next few years following her success in Miracle, Wood played roles as a daughter in a series of family films: Driftwood (1947), at Republic; Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948); Chicken Every Sunday (1949); The Green Promise (1949); Fred MacMurray's daughter in Father Was a Fullback (1949), with O'Hara; Margaret Sullavan's daughter in No Sad Songs for Me (1950); the youngest sister in Our Very Own (1950); Never a Dull Moment (1950); James Stewart's daughter in The Jackpot (1950); Dear Brat (1951); Joan Blondell's neglected daughter in The Blue Veil (1951); The Rose Bowl Story (1952); Just for You (1952); and as the daughter of Bette Davis's character in The Star (1952). In all, Wood appeared in over twenty films as a child. She also appeared on television in episodes of Kraft Theatre and Chevron Theatre.
Because Wood was a minor during her early years as an actress, she received her primary education on the studio lots wherever she was contracted. California law required that until age 18, child 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, saying, "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."
Wood's mother continued to play a significant role in her daughter's early career, coaching her and micromanaging aspects of her career even after Wood acquired agents. As a child actress, Wood received significant media attention. By age nine, she had been named the "most exciting juvenile motion picture star of the year" by Parents magazine.
Teen stardom
thumb|With her sister [[Lana Wood|Lana, 1956]]
In the 1953–54 television season, Wood played Ann Morrison, the teenage daughter in The Pride of the Family, an ABC situation comedy. She appeared as a teenager on episodes of The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse, Public Defender, Mayor of the Town, Four Star Playhouse, The Ford Television Theatre, and General Electric Theater, and appeared in a TV version of Heidi. She described the GE Theater episode, "Carnival," as one of the best things she ever did. She continued to guest star on anthology TV shows like Studio One in Hollywood, Camera Three, Kings Row, Studio 57, Warner Brothers Presents, and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour. She had a small but crucial role in John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and was the female lead in A Cry in the Night (1956).
Tab Hunter and Marjorie Morningstar
Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School in 1956. She signed with Warner Brothers and was kept busy during the remainder of the decade in many "girlfriend" roles, which 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: The Burning Hills (1956), a Western, and The Girl He Left Behind (1956). She guest starred in episodes of Conflict.
Warner Bros. tried teaming her with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in Bombers B-52 (1957). Then she was given the lead in a prestigious project, Marjorie Morningstar (1958). 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.
Adult career
thumb|Wood in 1958
Tibbetts observed that Wood's characters in Rebel, Searchers, and Morningstar began to show her widening range of acting styles. She returned to be leading lady to James Garner in Cash McCall (1960). After Wood appeared in the box office flop All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), she lost momentum. Wood's career was in a transition period, having until then consisted of roles as a child or as a teenager. She was then cast in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961) with Warren Beatty. Kazan wrote in his 1997 memoir that the "sages" of the film community declared her "washed up" as an actress, but he still wanted to interview her for his next film:
Kazan cast Wood as the female lead in Splendor, and her career rebounded. He felt that despite her earlier innocent roles, she had the talent and maturity to go beyond them. In the film, Beatty's character was deprived of sexual love with Wood's character, and as a result turns to another, "looser" girl. Wood's character could not handle the betrayal and after a breakdown was committed to 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." Her appearance in that film led critic Pauline Kael to comment "clever little Natalie Wood... [the] most machine-tooled of Hollywood ingénues."
thumb|right|Wood and [[Inside Daisy Clover co-star Ruth Gordon at the Golden Globe Awards (1966)]]
thumb|With [[Peter Falk in Penelope (1966)]]
Although many of Wood's films were commercially successful, at times her acting was criticized. In 1966, Wood was given the Harvard Lampoon award for being the "Worst Actress of Last Year, This Year, and Next". She was the first person to attend and accept the award in person. The Harvard Crimson wrote she was "quite a good sport."
Personal struggles and career break
Following a disappointing reception of Penelope (1966), Wood took a three-year hiatus from acting. She was announced for I Never Promised You a Rose Garden but she did not appear in it. Wood later said making Penelope was difficult for her. "I broke out in hives and suffered anguish that was very real pain every day we shot," she recalled. "Arthur Hiller, the director, kept saying, 'Natalie, I think you're resisting this film,' while I rolled around the floor in agony."
By 1966, Wood suffered emotionally and in an attempt to overcome her emotional problems, she sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. $175,000 to cancel her contract and fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. In the following years, Wood focused on her mental health, and began a relationship with Richard Gregson, whom she married in 1969.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
After a three-year break from movies, Wood co-starred with Dyan Cannon, Robert Culp and Elliott Gould in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a comedy about sexual liberation. According to Tibbetts, 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." In between these she made Peeper (1975) with former beau Michael Caine.
She made cameo appearances on Wagner's prime-time detective series Switch in 1978 as Bubble Bath Girl, and his series Hart to Hart in 1979 as Movie Star.
In 1979, Wood received high ratings and critical acclaim for the made-for-TV movie The Cracker Factory and especially the miniseries remake of 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.
After another lengthy break from features, she appeared in the ensemble disaster film Meteor (1979) with Sean Connery, in which she demonstrated her fluency in Russian, and the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980) with George Segal and Valerie Harper. Her performance in the latter was praised and considered reminiscent of her performance in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. In Last Married Couple, Wood broke ground: although an actress with a clean, middle-class image, she used the word fuck in a frank marital discussion with her husband (Segal.) She starred in The Memory of Eva Ryker, released in May 1980, which was her last completed production.
Brainstorm
At the time of her death, Wood was filming the $15-million science fiction film Brainstorm (1983), starring Christopher Walken and directed by Douglas Trumbull. The ending of Brainstorm had to be re-written and Wood's character written out of at least three scenes, while a stand-in and sound-alikes were used to replace Wood for some of her crucial shots. By this time, Wood had already completed all of her major scenes, and Trumbull completed the film by rewriting the script and using Natalie Wood's sister, Lana Wood, for Natalie Wood's few remaining scenes. The film was released posthumously on September 30, 1983, and was dedicated to Wood in the closing credits.
She was scheduled to make her stage debut on February 12, 1982, in Anastasia at Ahmanson Theatre with Wendy Hiller. Wood had also purchased film rights to the Barbara Wersba book, Country of the Heart, and was planning to star with Timothy Hutton in the drama about the professional-romantic relationship between a tough-minded poet and her much younger student. The material was eventually adapted into a 1990 television film starring Jane Seymour. She expected to follow her performance as Anastasia on the stage with a starring stint in a film adaptation of the work. 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 and relationships
thumb|With Robert Wagner, 1960
Wood's two marriages to actor Robert Wagner were highly publicized. They first married on December 28, 1957, in Scottsdale, Arizona, when Wood was 19. At some point during the first half of 1961, according to several published accounts, she caught Wagner having an extramarital affair with another man. The couple announced their separation on June 20, 1961 (though Wagner has since said that they split up in 1960) and divorced on April 27, 1962.
Wood's subsequent boyfriends included Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, and David Niven Jr. She also had a broken engagement in 1965 with Venezuelan shoe manufacturer Ladislav Blatnik.
On May 30, 1969, Wood married British producer Richard Gregson after dating for nearly three years. They had a daughter, Natasha, born September 29, 1970. Wood filed for divorce from Gregson on August 4, 1971. It was finalized on April 12, 1972.
After a short-lived romance with future California governor Jerry Brown, Wood resumed her relationship with Wagner at the end of January 1972. They remarried on July 16 aboard the Ramblin' Rose, anchored off Paradise Cove in Malibu. Their daughter Courtney was born on March 9, 1974.
In 2015, after a third-party source had repeatedly published the claim, former FBI agent Donald Goodwin Wilson openly stated that he and Wood had had a four-year affair, from 1973 to 1977, that began when she was pregnant with Courtney Wagner. In 2016, Wilson spoke on camera about his alleged affair with Wood in a documentary for the cable network Reelz.
Rape allegation
Suzanne Finstad's 2001 biography of Wood alleges that she was raped by a powerful actor when she was 16, but in it, Finstad did not name the assailant. Through the recollection of Wood's close friends, which included actors Scott Marlowe and Dennis Hopper, Finstad said:
During a 12-part podcast about Wood's life in July 2018, Wood's sister Lana stated that Wood was raped as a teenager, and she also stated that the attack had occurred inside the Chateau Marmont during an audition and it went on "for hours." According to Professor Cynthia Lucia, who studied the claim, Wood's rape was brutal and violent. In 2021, a year after the death of Kirk Douglas, Lana published the memoir Little Sister: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood and identified Douglas as Wood's alleged assailant.
Death
On November 29, 1981, Wood died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 43 during the making of Brainstorm. She was on a weekend boat trip to Santa Catalina Island on board Splendour, a motor yacht owned by her husband, Robert Wagner.
She was found dead in the water. Many of the circumstances are unknown; for example, it has never been determined how she entered the water. Wood was with Wagner, her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, and Splendours captain Dennis Davern on the evening of November 28.
Authorities recovered her body at 8 a.m. on November 29, from the boat, with a small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. Wagner said that she was not with him when he went to bed. The autopsy report revealed that she had bruises on her body and arms and an abrasion on her left cheek, but did not indicate how or when the injuries occurred.
Davern had previously stated that Wood and Wagner argued that evening, which Wagner denied at the time. In his memoir Pieces of My Heart, Wagner admitted that he had an argument with Wood before she disappeared. Her sister Lana expressed doubts, alleging that Wood could not swim and had been "terrified" of water all her life, and that she would never have left the yacht on her own by dinghy. Two witnesses who were on a nearby boat stated that they had heard a woman scream for help during the night.
thumb|Natalie Wood's grave at [[Westwood Memorial Park]]
On December 2, Wood was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Three days later, a coroner's office spokesman pronounced the case closed.
In November 2011, the case was reopened after Davern publicly stated that he had lied to police during the initial investigation and that Wood and Wagner had had an argument that evening. He alleged that Wood had been flirting with Walken, that Wagner was jealous and enraged, and that Wagner had prevented Davern from turning on the search lights and notifying authorities after Wood's disappearance. Davern alleged that Wagner was responsible for her death. Wood's sister, Lana Wood, speaking to CBS News, said that Davern called her over a decade after the incident to explain the events, though she did not know why, as he was "not a close friend."
Lana Wood claimed Davern said "it appeared to him as though RJ [Wagner] shoved her away and she went overboard. Dennis panicked and RJ said, 'Leave her there. Teach her a lesson.' Dennis said he was very panicky that he was sitting and RJ kept drinking and kept drinking. And he'd say, 'Come on, let's get her.' And he said RJ was in such a foul mood, at that point, that he then shut up and was waiting for when, when are they gonna go to her rescue, until all the sound stopped."
In 2012, Los Angeles County Chief Coroner Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran amended Wood's death certificate and changed the cause of death from accidental drowning to "drowning and other undetermined factors." The amended document included a statement that it is "not clearly established" how Wood ended up in the water. Detectives instructed the coroner's office not to discuss or comment on the case. Forensic pathologist Michael Hunter speculated that Wood was particularly susceptible to bruising because she had taken the drug levothyroxine. In 2020, a medical doctor and former intern of Noguchi at the time of Wood's death stated that the bruises were substantial and consistent with someone being thrown out of a boat. He claimed that he made those observations to Noguchi.
In February 2018, Wagner was named a person of interest by the police in the investigation. The police stated that they know that Wagner was the last person to be with Wood before she disappeared. In a 2018 article, the Los Angeles Times, citing the coroner's report from 2013, reported that Wood had unexplained fresh bruising on her right forearm, her left wrist, and her right knee, a scratch on her neck, and a superficial scrape on her forehead. Officials said that it is possible that she was assaulted before she drowned.
Portrayals in film
thumb|1979 photograph by [[Jack Mitchell (photographer)|Jack Mitchell]]
The 2004 TV film The Mystery of Natalie Wood chronicles Wood's life and career. Justine Waddell portrays Wood.
Legacy
Wood was one of the few child actors who also achieved success as a movie star in adulthood. Wood's career was also a bridge between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a successful film that Wood made after a period of professional and personal setbacks, cemented her place as an actress who was part of both worlds.
Filmography
Accolades
<!--need citations for awards not already cited in article text-->
{| class="wikitable sortable"
!Year
!Association
!Category
!Nominated work
!Result
|-
|1946
|Box Office Magazine
|Most Talented Young Actress of 1946
|Tomorrow Is Forever||
|-1947 Driftwood.
|1956
|Academy Awards
|Best Supporting Actress
|Rebel Without a Cause||
|-
|1956
|National Association of Theatre Owners
|Star of Tomorrow Award
|||
|-
|1957
|Golden Globe Award
|New Star of the Year – Actress
|Rebel Without a Cause||
|-
|1961
|Grauman's Chinese Theatre
|Handprint Ceremony
|
| align="center" |Inducted
|-
|1962
|Academy Awards
|Best Actress||
|-
|1963
|Golden Globe Award
|Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical
|
| align="center" |Inducted
|-
|2011
|Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars
|Golden Palm Star
|
| align="center" |Inducted
|-
|2016
|Online Film & Television Association
|OFTA Film Hall of Fame
|
| align="center" |Inducted
|}
See also
- List of unsolved deaths
Notes
Footnotes
References
Sources
- Nickens, Christopher. Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs. Doubleday, 1986. .
External links
- Natalie Wood at Who2
- Natalie Wood interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, May 16, 1980
- Interview with Natalie Wood's daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner. Accessed November 17, 2016.