Natalie Wood

NATALIE WOOD

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Actress. She is most remembered as a child prodigy in the Christmas classic movie "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), where she played the role of Susan Walker. She appeared in over 56 movies on the silver screen and television and was nominated three times for an Oscar. She was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, of Russian immigrants in San Francisco, California. Natalie won a bit part at age 4 in a movie, "Happy Land" (1943), which was shot in her Santa Rosa neighborhood. The family then moved to Los Angeles, hoping to land more film roles for her, but her second role did not come until 1946, when she appeared in "Tomorrow is Forever." In 1947, she won the role of Susan Walker in "Miracle on 34th Street," and began a successful career as a child star, appearing in 18 films. In 1955, she played in "Rebel Without a Cause", the famous James Dean movie, and won an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. She played opposite John Wayne in "The Searchers" (1956) and in "Kings Go Forth" (1958). Roles continued to come to her. She appeared in "Splendor in the Grass" (1961), "West Side Story" (1961), as Gypsy Rose Lee in "Gypsy" (1962), and in "Love with the Proper Stranger" (1963), for which she earned her third Academy Award nomination. She earned a second nomination for an academy award as best actress for "Splendor in the Grass." In 1966, the Harvard Lampoon voted her the year's worst actress, and she made Harvard history by appearing at the celebration to accept the award (she was the first person ever to appear in person to accept the award). After filming "This Property is Condemned" (1966), she took a hiatus from films for 3 years, returning to play the role of Carol Sanders in "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" (1969). After that, she made a few appearances on television but spent most of her time with her family. Her only major role until 1980 was in the television mini-series "From Here to Eternity." In 1981, she began work on "Brainstorm" (released in 1983), but she did not live to see it finished. While sailing on her yacht off Santa Catalina Island with her husband, Robert Wagner, and their friend, Christopher Walken, she disappeared one night, supposedly while trying to get into a dinghy. Her body was found just offshore the next morning, and the circumstances of her death have never been fully determined. The cause of death was determined as drowning. In a book written by her actress sister, Lana Wood, Natalie was portrayed as insecure and unhappy in life. She was married three times, first to Robert Wagner (1957 to 1962), then to Richard Gregson (1969 to 1971) with whom she had a daughter, Natasha. After discovering that Gregson was having an affair, she divorced him and soon remarried her first husband, Robert Wagner, on 16 July 1972. They had a daughter, Courtney Brooke Wagner, in 1974.

[Before reading the very good but incomplete Yahoo News article below, please read this excellent article from Los Angeles Magazine FIRST:
https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/natalie-wood-biography-exclusive...]

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As a child star who won acclaim for her role in Miracle on 34th Street when she was only nine, Natalie Wood easily moved into teenage and adult leading roles in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Splendor in the Grass (1961), West Side Story (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), earning Academy nominations for three of the films. She was one of Hollywood’s brightest stars and a legend both on and off the silver screen.

She was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko (Russian: Наталья Николаевна Захаренко) on July 20, 1938 to Russian American immigrants Maria Stepanova (née Zudilova) and Nikolai Zacharenko. Her father was born in Vladivostok and the family fled Russia during the Revolution. He was sent to live with relatives in Canada, but later moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a day laborer and carpenter. Wood's mother originally came from Siberia, but grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin.

Shortly after her 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 had one younger sister, Svetlana Zakharenko (better known as Lana Wood), who also became an actress and later, notably, a Bond girl. She and Lana have an older half sister, Olga Viriapaeff. Though Natalie had been born "Natalia Zakharenko," her father later changed the family name to "Gurdin" and Natalie was often known as "Natasha," the diminutive of Natalia. Hollywood would later change her name to "Natalie Wood," a name she really never cared for.

Wood made her film debut a few weeks before turning five, in a fifteen-second scene in the film Happy Land (1943). Despite the brief part, she attracted the notice of the director, Irving Pichel, who remained in touch with her family for two years until another role came up. The director phoned Natasha's mother and asked her to bring Natasha down to Los Angeles for a screen test. Her mother became so excited at the possibilities, she overreacted and "packed the whole family off to Los Angeles to live," writes Harris. Her husband opposed the whole idea, but his wife's "overpowering ambition to make Natasha a star" took priority.

Wood, then seven years old, got the part and played a German orphan opposite Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert in Tomorrow Is Forever. Welles later said that Wood was a born professional, "so good, she was terrifying". After doing another film directed by Pichel, her mother signed her to a role with 20th Century Fox studio for her first major role, the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which made her one of the top child stars in Hollywood. Within a few months after the film's release she was so popular that Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

She would eventually appear in over 20 films as a child, appearing opposite such stars as Gene Tierney, James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Bette Davis and Bing Crosby. As a child actor, her formal education took place on the studio lots wherever she was acting. 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 successfully made the transition from child star to ingenue at age 16 when she co-starred with James Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray's film about teenage rebellion. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She followed this with a small but crucial role in John Ford's western The Searchers which starred John Wayne and also featured Wood's sister, Lana, who played a younger version of her character in the film's earlier scenes. She graduated from Van Nuys High School in 1956.

Signed to Warner Brothers, Wood was kept busy during the remainder of the decade in many 'girlfriend' roles that 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. Among the other films made at this time were 1958's Kings Go Forth and Marjorie Morningstar. As Marjorie Morningstar, she 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.

After appearing in the box office flop All the Fine Young Cannibals, Wood's career was salvaged by her casting in director Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961) opposite Warren Beatty, which earned Wood Best Actress Nominations at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards.

Also in 1961 Wood played Maria in the musical movie West Side Story by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, which was a major box office and critical success, however, the singing parts were sung by Marni Nixon. 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. 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 an emotional breakdown and sought professional therapy. During this time, she turned down the Faye Dunaway role in Bonnie and Clyde because she didn't want to be separated from her analyst.

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, she went into semi-retirement and only acted in four more theatrical films during the remainder of her life.

She appeared 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 Affair (1973), a television adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976) and made cameo appearances on his shows 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.

Among the 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. Instead, Wood chose to star in misfires like the disaster film Meteor (1979) with 007 star 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 sci-fi film Brainstorm (1983), co-starring Christopher Walken [Pulp Fiction, Hairspray, Batman Returns] and Louise Fletcher [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest, Flowers in the Attic], and directed by Douglas Trumbull [Silent Running, Back to the Future: The Ride at Universal Studios]. She was also scheduled to star in a theatrical production of Anastasia 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. 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-a-likes 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.

She 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."

PERSONAL LIFE

Wood's two marriages to actor Robert Wagner were highly publicized. Wood said she 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, which met with great protest from Wood's mother. Wood and Wagner separated in June 1961 and divorced in April 1962.

On May 30, 1969, Wood married British producer Richard Gregson. The couple dated for two and a half years prior to their marriage, while Gregson waited for his divorce to be finalized. They had a daughter, Natasha Gregson (born September 29, 1970). They separated in August 1971 after Wood overheard an inappropriate telephone conversation between her secretary and Gregson. The split also 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, just five months after reconciling and only three months after she divorced Gregson. Their daughter, Courtney Wagner, was born on March 9, 1974. They remained married until Wood's death seven years later on November 29, 1981.

The day after Thanksgiving, Wood, Wagner and Christopher Walken went to Catalina Island for the weekend and on the night of November 28, the Wagners' yacht (Splendour) was anchored in Isthmus Cove. Also on board was the boat's skipper, Dennis Davern, who had worked for the couple for many years. The official theory is that Wood either tried 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, she was wearing a down jacket, nightgown, and socks. A woman on a nearby yacht said she heard calls for help at around midnight. 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". "It was laid back", the witness recalled. "There was no urgency or immediacy in their shouts". There was much partying going on in the area, though, and while it has never been proven that the woman calling for help was, indeed, Natalie Wood, no other person ever has been identified or come forward as having called out for help on that night. An investigation by Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi resulted in an official verdict of accidental drowning. Noguchi concluded Wood had drunk "seven or eight" glasses of wine and was intoxicated when she died. There were marks and bruises on her body which Noguchi speculated could have been received as a result of her fall. Noguchi later wrote that had Wood not been intoxicated, she likely would have realized her heavy down-filled coat and wool sweater were pulling her underwater and would have removed them. Noguchi also wrote that he found Wood's fingernail scratches on the side of the rubber dinghy indicating she was trying to get in. Wood was 43 at the time of her death and is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. On March 11, 2010 Wood's sister Lana Wood decided to re-open the case of her death.

For her contribution to motion pictures, Natalie Wood received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7000 Hollywood Blvd.

See also

http://news.yahoo.com/captain-wagner-responsible-natalie-wood-death...

Натали Вуд (англ. Natalie Wood, урождённая Захаренко, затем Гурдин, в замужестве Вагнер),[6] 20 июля 1938 — 29 ноября 1981) — американская актриса, трижды номинантка на премию «Оскар».

Дочь русских эмигрантов Николая Степановича Захаренко, родом из Владивостока, и Марии Степановны Зудиловой, родом из Барнаула, которые, став гражданами США, изменили фамилию на Гурдин[7][8]. Натали свободно говорила как на английском, так и на русском (с американским акцентом) языках, и считала себя «очень русской»[9][10].

Её актёрская карьера началась в возрасте четырёх лет[11], и вскоре Вуд стала успешным актёром-ребёнком, снявшись в таких фильмах, как «Чудо на 34-й улице» (1947), «Призрак и миссис Мьюр» (1947) и «Звезда» (1952). Роль Джуди в фильме «Бунтарь без причины» с Джеймсом Дином в главной роли, принесла ей в 1955 году номинацию на «Оскар» и помогла ей выбиться в более взрослые и серьёзные роли.

Мировую славу Натали Вуд принесло участие в фильмах «Вестсайдская история» (1961), «Джипси» (1962) и «Большие гонки» (1965), а роли в фильмах «Великолепие в траве» (1961) и «Любовь с подходящим незнакомцем» (1963) принесли ей ещё две номинации на премию Американской киноакадемии. Её карьера успешно продолжалась в течение 1960-х годов, а с началом нового десятилетия Вуд стала сниматься намного меньше, посвятив себя семье. Одну из последних крупных ролей актриса сыграла в телефильме «Отныне и навсегда» в 1979 году, за которую была удостоена премии «Золотой глобус».

Во время проживания в Лос-Анджелесе была прихожанкой Спасо-Преображенского собора (РПЦЗ)