Natalie Wood Wagner in memorium
I have chosen to post this news article and picture from the News.com.au website in tribute to Natalie Wood and the mystery that had surrounded the passing of a screen legend and a woman whose films I admired so much.
I visited her sidewalk star of fame, her hand and shoe prints outside Manns Chinese Theatre and then her grave when I went to Hollywood a couple of years ago. I have often wondered about how she "really" died. Tales of intrigue and affairs have abounded in film, books and magazine articles, but Robert Wagner has broken his silence in a biography and I felt it best rather than to have me re-interpret the story, to quote it verbatim.
I miss her in film, she had a quality I haven't seen in anyone for some time. A strength, a fragility and a true on screen presence that could move you, well it moved me anyway. I stood where she stood in a couple of films and standing at her graveside one time was the closest I ever came to meeting her. She died at 43, That is how old I am now.
Star-crossed lovers ... Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner in 1959.
FOR 27 years, Hollywood actor Robert Wagner has refused to discuss the night his wife and fellow film star Natalie Wood vanished from their yacht and drowned.
Now, at 78, Wagner is to break his silence in the hope of dispelling rumours that he was somehow responsible for the death of Wood, the Oscar-nominated actress he had married twice, or that she fell overboard as they partied drunkenly with another actor, Christopher Walken.
In a forthcoming autobiography, Pieces of My Heart, he admits for the first time that he was jealous of Walken, whose performances in The Deer Hunter and Pennies from Heaven had made him a rising star.
He says he felt his wife was being "emotionally unfaithful" to him on the set of Brainstorm, the film she was then shooting with Walken.
According to Wagner's account, tensions boiled over during a late dinner on the yacht, which was moored off the island of Santa Catalina, near Los Angeles, after Walken suggested that Wood should star in more films instead of caring for two young children.
Wagner lost his temper and, he admits, smashed a wine bottle on the table, prompting Wood to go below to their cabin. He says that when he put his head around the door of the cabin and saw his wife for the last time, she was fixing her hair and apparently preparing for bed.
He and Walken went up on deck to cool down. About midnight he returned to the cabin and discovered Wood was missing. Then he realised that the yacht's dinghy had gone too. He searched for Wood on the yacht, named Splendor, but in vain.
"Now he thinks that Natalie heard the dinghy banging loosely against the Splendor, went to fix it and slipped on the swim step, knocking herself unconscious, and rolled into the water, and the dinghy just floated away," said a friend familiar with Wagner's manuscript.
"There was no conspiracy, nobody walking in on something sexual, nothing absurd like that."
The coast guard found the drifting dinghy a few hours later, the inquest into her death heard. Soon after that, Wood's body was spotted floating nearby.
A coroner found that Wood, a former child star whose roles included Maria in West Side Story, had consumed seven or eight glasses of wine but was probably not drunk. He ruled she had fallen into the water and had been dragged down by her heavy clothing. She was 43.
Wagner's friend added: "He writes that he went through the inquest in a daze and after that he took to his bed for eight days in a catatonic state, blaming himself for her death. He's never entirely recovered, but how can you?"
One horrible irony of her death, revealed in the book, is that Wagner had helped his wife to overcome a childhood phobia about water. She had once told Elia Kazan, the director of her 1961 hit Splendor in the Grass, that she needed an anti-anxiety pill to step over a puddle.
Wagner persuaded her to sail by naming their yacht after that film, one of three for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
Yet Splendor in the Grass was a bittersweet memory, he now admits: during the filming his wife started an affair with co-star Warren Beatty, which destroyed their first marriage.
In the book, Wagner confesses to hanging around Beatty's house with a gun. He apparently hoped Beatty would come out on foot so that he could take a shot at him. Wagner started drinking heavily and brooding about suicide, but a friend talked him into psychoanalysis, which he credits with saving his life.
Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie today, Wagner and Wood were regarded as Hollywood's golden couple. After a brief courtship, they married in 1957.
He was the star of a string of hit movies, including Titanic and Between Heaven and Hell. She had appeared with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.
After Woods and Wagner divorced in 1962, she claimed his obsession with golf had ruined their relationship. However, they could not stay apart.
In 1971, they spied each other across a restaurant and, shortly afterwards, Wood ended her marriage to a British film producer, Richard Gregson. In 1972, they remarried on board their new toy, the Splendor.
The Sunday Times
I visited her sidewalk star of fame, her hand and shoe prints outside Manns Chinese Theatre and then her grave when I went to Hollywood a couple of years ago. I have often wondered about how she "really" died. Tales of intrigue and affairs have abounded in film, books and magazine articles, but Robert Wagner has broken his silence in a biography and I felt it best rather than to have me re-interpret the story, to quote it verbatim.
I miss her in film, she had a quality I haven't seen in anyone for some time. A strength, a fragility and a true on screen presence that could move you, well it moved me anyway. I stood where she stood in a couple of films and standing at her graveside one time was the closest I ever came to meeting her. She died at 43, That is how old I am now.
Star-crossed lovers ... Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner in 1959.
FOR 27 years, Hollywood actor Robert Wagner has refused to discuss the night his wife and fellow film star Natalie Wood vanished from their yacht and drowned.
Now, at 78, Wagner is to break his silence in the hope of dispelling rumours that he was somehow responsible for the death of Wood, the Oscar-nominated actress he had married twice, or that she fell overboard as they partied drunkenly with another actor, Christopher Walken.
In a forthcoming autobiography, Pieces of My Heart, he admits for the first time that he was jealous of Walken, whose performances in The Deer Hunter and Pennies from Heaven had made him a rising star.
He says he felt his wife was being "emotionally unfaithful" to him on the set of Brainstorm, the film she was then shooting with Walken.
According to Wagner's account, tensions boiled over during a late dinner on the yacht, which was moored off the island of Santa Catalina, near Los Angeles, after Walken suggested that Wood should star in more films instead of caring for two young children.
Wagner lost his temper and, he admits, smashed a wine bottle on the table, prompting Wood to go below to their cabin. He says that when he put his head around the door of the cabin and saw his wife for the last time, she was fixing her hair and apparently preparing for bed.
He and Walken went up on deck to cool down. About midnight he returned to the cabin and discovered Wood was missing. Then he realised that the yacht's dinghy had gone too. He searched for Wood on the yacht, named Splendor, but in vain.
"Now he thinks that Natalie heard the dinghy banging loosely against the Splendor, went to fix it and slipped on the swim step, knocking herself unconscious, and rolled into the water, and the dinghy just floated away," said a friend familiar with Wagner's manuscript.
"There was no conspiracy, nobody walking in on something sexual, nothing absurd like that."
The coast guard found the drifting dinghy a few hours later, the inquest into her death heard. Soon after that, Wood's body was spotted floating nearby.
A coroner found that Wood, a former child star whose roles included Maria in West Side Story, had consumed seven or eight glasses of wine but was probably not drunk. He ruled she had fallen into the water and had been dragged down by her heavy clothing. She was 43.
Wagner's friend added: "He writes that he went through the inquest in a daze and after that he took to his bed for eight days in a catatonic state, blaming himself for her death. He's never entirely recovered, but how can you?"
One horrible irony of her death, revealed in the book, is that Wagner had helped his wife to overcome a childhood phobia about water. She had once told Elia Kazan, the director of her 1961 hit Splendor in the Grass, that she needed an anti-anxiety pill to step over a puddle.
Wagner persuaded her to sail by naming their yacht after that film, one of three for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
Yet Splendor in the Grass was a bittersweet memory, he now admits: during the filming his wife started an affair with co-star Warren Beatty, which destroyed their first marriage.
In the book, Wagner confesses to hanging around Beatty's house with a gun. He apparently hoped Beatty would come out on foot so that he could take a shot at him. Wagner started drinking heavily and brooding about suicide, but a friend talked him into psychoanalysis, which he credits with saving his life.
Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie today, Wagner and Wood were regarded as Hollywood's golden couple. After a brief courtship, they married in 1957.
He was the star of a string of hit movies, including Titanic and Between Heaven and Hell. She had appeared with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.
After Woods and Wagner divorced in 1962, she claimed his obsession with golf had ruined their relationship. However, they could not stay apart.
In 1971, they spied each other across a restaurant and, shortly afterwards, Wood ended her marriage to a British film producer, Richard Gregson. In 1972, they remarried on board their new toy, the Splendor.
The Sunday Times
Comments
I would like however to say, that I would rely a little more on Wagner's recollections, though they may have become a little enchanted and the detail may have been lost over time, There were only 3 people on the Splendor that night. Now, if Christopher Walken was ever to give his comments, THAT would be interesting to read.
Thanks for your comments
I assure you that I do not deliberately try to elicit controversy! Oh well, it's all good.
LisC
I submit (to use one of your own favorite words), Craig, that almost all is fantasy, concocted to allow those of us who are not securely grounded to escape into dreamland and evade life's realities.
It was not directed at YOU, personally, nor at any of your readers, but a thought that I just felt I HAD to put down on paper 'for the record', as it were. You and I both love movies, Craig, and often 'lose ourselves', albeit just for a short while, in another world of fantasy and dreamland.
I guess my biggest concern is for the younger audience, those who are so easily influenced and swayed by the seemingly 'larger than life' figures whose life styles they strive to emulate.
Immediately upon hitting the 'publish your comment' button, I wanted to delete and rewrite it, but such an option is not available. It was well-written, but -- even so, somewhat clumsy. I could have done MUCH better!
You will not be disappointed in this book.