Natalie Wood, original name Natalie Zackharenko, also known as Natasha Gurdin, was an American film actress who transitioned from child stardom to a successful movie career as an adult. She was best known for ingenue roles that traded on her youthful appeal.
Background
Natalie Wood was born Natalia Zakharenko on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco to Russian and Ukrainian immigrant parents Maria Stepanovna (née Zudilova; 1912–1996) and Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko (c. 1912–1980). Nikolai was a son of two Ukrainians from Kharkiv, then part of the Russian Empire: Stephan Zakharenko and Eudoxia Sauchenko. Nikolai was born in Vladivostok in the Russian Far E. As a child, he immigrated with his mother and two brothers to Montreal, Quebec. Later they moved to San Francisco. There, he worked as a day laborer and carpenter.
Natalia's mother was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia. Her father Stepan worked in a chocolate factory in Russia. He was killed in street fighting between Red and White Russian soldiers in 1918 during the Russian Civil War. After Stepan's death, Maria's mother left the country with her children, resettling as a refugee in the Chinese city of Harbin. Maria married Alexander Tatuloff, in China, and had a daughter, Olga (1927–2015).
Natalie liked to describe her family as having been either gypsies or landowning aristocrats in Russia. In her youth, her mother had dreamed of becoming an actress or ballet dancer. As an adult, she stated, "I'm very Russian, you know." She spoke both English and Russian with an American accent.
Shortly after Natalia was born in San Francisco, her family moved to Santa Rosa in nearby Sonoma County. Natalia (often called "Natasha", the Russian diminutive) was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot in downtown Santa Rosa. Her mother soon moved the family to Los Angeles in order to pursue a film career for her daughter. After Natalia started acting as a child, David Lewis and William Goetz, studio executives at RKO Radio Pictures, changed her name to "Natalie Wood".
Wood's younger sister, Svetlana Gurdin (the family had changed their surname), was born in Santa Monica after the move. Now known as Lana Wood, she also became an actress.
Education
Wood was encouraged to pursue performing arts from young age; she was enrolled into ballet class by her mother and at the age of 4 she got an opportunity to act in the movie titled ‘Happy Land’ in 1943.
Because Wood was a minor during her early years as an actress, she received her formal 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.
Natalie made other film appearances. Wood tugged on the heart strings of audiences with her small role as an orphan in the 1946 drama Tomorrow Is Forever with Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles. In 1947, she again won over move-goers with her first starring role, in Miracle on 34th Street. This movie, about a girl who questions the existence of Santa Claus, made Wood as a star.
At the age of 16, Wood began filming one of her most famous films. She co-starred with James Dean and Sal Mineo in the 1955, groundbreaking depiction of teenage rebellion and angst, Rebel Without a Cause. In the film, Wood played the girlfriend of a troubled outsider, played by James Dean. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her work.
As an actress under contract, Wood sometimes had to make movies that she didn't want to. Her mother also pressured her at times, too. One of her least favorite projects was The Searchers, a 1956 western starring John Wayne. Wood felt she had been miscast as a white girl who was abducted and then raised by Native Americans.
Wood struggled to get good acting parts, but in the 1960s she landed some of her most famous roles. In 1961, she starred opposite Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass, playing the part of young girl torn by desire and social conventions. In this role, Wood showed great range as an emotionally fragile young woman driven to madness. That same year, she starred in another troubled romance, West Side Story, in which she falls for a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. This urban retelling of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet proved to be a hit. Wood did all her own dancing in this popular musical, but her singing was done by Marni Nixon, a Broadway performer.
Mirroring her own life story in a way, Wood played the title character in 1962's Gypsy, the musical about stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Rosalind Russell co-starred as her domineering stage mother who drove her daughter to perform.
Wood returned to the big screen with the 1969 comedy Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, co-starring alongside Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon, and Robert Culp. After that film, she took on few acting roles. Wood earned positive reviews for her performance in a televised version of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1976. Three years later, she received acclaim for her role in the television miniseries From Here to Eternity.
That same year, Wood paired up with Sean Connery for the poorly received sci-fi film Meteor. She next appeared in the 1980 comedy The Last Married Couple in America, but again commercial and critical success alluded her. In 1981, Wood worked on her final film Brainstorm, a science-fiction thriller, with Christopher Walken.
In November 1981, Wood took a trip with husband Robert Wagner to California's Catalina Island on their boat Splendour. Her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken was also on board. On the night of November 29, the three actors had been drinking. Wagner reportedly broke a bottle during a fit of anger over Wood's relationship with Walken. He thought the pair seemed too close. After that incident, Wood and Wagner allegedly argued.
Later that evening, Wagner was unable to find Wood. Her body was discovered the following morning, floating in the water off Catalina along with a dinghy from the Splendour. Her death was ruled an accidental drowning. It was theorized that Wood fell in the water after attempting to secure the dinghy to prevent it from banging into the boat. Some objected to this explanation, as Wood had a lifelong fear of the water.
Her family and friends gathered at Los Angeles's Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery to say good-bye to the lovely, yet troubled, star. Mourners included Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Elia Kazan. Former colleagues and associates also shared their remembrances.
Over the years, Wood's turbulent life and its unexpected end have been the subject of numerous books and television programs. Wood's younger sister, Lana Wood, and Dennis Davern, the captain of the Splendour have been especially outspoken about Natalie's death. Davern even co-authored a book about that fateful night, claiming that he had not told the authorities the truth. He later indicated he thought that Wagner was responsible for Wood's death. There were also reports of other boaters hearing a woman cry out for help late that night.
In November 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced that it would be reopening the investigation into Wood's death. The department received new information about the case and would be following up on these new leads. While no specific details were released, authorities indicated that Wagner was not an official suspect. In June 2012, the mystery was further prolongued, when the official cause of Wood's death was changed from an "accident"—as originally noted by L.A. County coroner Thomas Noguchi—to "undetermined" on her death certificate.
In the more than 30 years since her passing, the public still remains haunted by Wood's untimely end.
Natalie Wood was a famous American film and television actress who appeared in 56 movies in her career. Wood became a successful Hollywood young adult star, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old. The versatility of her acting in these movies paved a smooth way for her to enter into the world of cinema and she won many awards in her acting career, like, National Association of Theatre Owners’ Star of Tomorrow Award, three Golden Globe Awards, Mar del Plata Film Festival Award, etc.
Natalie and her sisters were raised Russian Orthodox Christian and remained in the church.
Views
Quotations:
"The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby."
"At night, when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space."
"I couldn't even go to the bathroom alone. My mother or a social worker always went with me."
"I was so young, and making movies, going to the studio every morning at dawn was magic."
"I never saw film stars at home. We had no maid, no cook, no swimming pool."
Personality
At 5’3”, she was self-conscious about her diminutive height and preferred shoes with 6” stiletto heels. She also favored low-cut dresses, heavy make-up, and flashy jewelry. Once on her way to lobby for a role as a virginal small-town girl, a companion suggested she tone down her makeup and wear a less revealing outfit. “I’m Natalie Wood,” she said in response, “and this is how I look when I go out.” For a time, she was a fixture on “Hollywood’s Worst Dressed Women” list.
She Suffered from Aquaphobia. Wood had a fear of deep water and would not swim in the ocean. Director Elia Kazan had to trick her into doing the reservoir scene in Splendor in the Grass.
She always wore large bracelets on her left wrist to cover a bone protrusion from a traumatic accident that occurred while filming The Green Promise (1949).
Her signature scent was gardenia. She fell in love with the smell when she starred in a picture with Barbara Stanwyck as a child. When filming wrapped, Stanwyck gave Wood a bottle of the perfume as a parting gift. She wore the scent the rest of her life.
Physical Characteristics:
She was dark-haired and doe-eyed girl.
Quotes from others about the person
Director Sydney Pollack said that Wood "was a sensational actress, often underrated because she was a 'movie star' and as pretty as she was. She had a combination of vulnerability and a kind of aura."
Interests
Her favorite actress was Vivien Leigh, whose performance in A Streetcar Named Desire inspired Wood's acting and marked a turning point in her career.
Connections
Wood had two highly publicized marriages to actor Robert Wagner. Wood said that 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; it was a union that her mother argued against.
Wood and Wagner separated in June 1961 and divorced in April 1962.
On May 30, 1969, Wood married British producer Richard Gregson. The couple had dated for two and a half years prior to their marriage, while Gregson waited for his divorce to be finalized. In 1970 they had a daughter, Natasha. They separated in August 1971 after Wood overheard an inappropriate telephone conversation between her secretary and Gregson. The split 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, five months after reconciling and three months after she divorced Gregson. Their daughter, Courtney Wagner, was born in 1974.
Wood's sister, Lana Wood, recalls this period: "Her marriage was considered to be one of the best in Hollywood, and there is no question that she was a devoted, loving — even adoring — mother and stepmother. She and R. J. had begun with love and built from there. They had overcome each other's problems and had reached an accommodation with time and the changes time brings. As with anybody else who has settled into making a long marriage work, they were far more determined than most people to make it work ..."
They remained married until Wood's death seven years later on November 29, 1981, at age 43.
Father:
Nicholas Stephen Gurdin
(1912–1980)
Mother:
Maria Stephen Zudilova Gurdin
(1912–1998)
Sister:
Lana Wood
(b. March 1, 1946)
She is an American actress and film producer. She is best known for her role as Plenty O'Toole in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Her elder sister was film star Natalie Wood.
Sister:
Olga Viriapaeff
(1927–2015)
spouse(1,3):
Robert John Wagner Jr.
(b. February 10, 1930)
He is an American actor of stage, screen, and television, best known for starring in the television shows It Takes a Thief (1968–70), Switch (1975–78), and Hart to Hart (1979–84). He also had a recurring role as Teddy Leopold on the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men and has a recurring role as Anthony DiNozzo Sr. on the police procedural NCIS.
Spouse (2):
Richard Gregson
(b. 1930)
He is a British agent, film producer and screenwriter. He married the American actress Natalie Wood on 30 May 1969. The couple filed for divorce on 1 August 1971, and the divorce was finalised in April of the following year. Together they had the actress Natasha Gregson Wagner, born 1970.
Daughter:
Natasha Gregson Wagner
(b. September 29, 1970)
She is an American actress. Wagner was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Richard Gregson, a film producer, and actress Natalie Wood.
