She was a true Hollywood star. Her beauty, charm and performance in classic movies earned
her recognition on the big screen. But a trip on a yacht meant the end of her life, and the
beginning of a great mystery. Today in Hollywood Confidential we will talk about Natalie Wood.
Natalie Wood was born as Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, on July 20,
1938, in San Francisco. As her parents were Russian immigrants,
once they got to the United States, their father changed their last name to Gurdin. Natalia,
at the age of four was registered as Natalie. The father was introvert and longed for Russia,
but the strong one in the family was Maria Stepanovna, the mother. She always aspired
to greatness, and her obsessions grew even more while Natalia was still on her womb, when a seer
told her on the street, “Your daughter will be a superstar, but will have to be aware of the
dark waters.” Maria believed her words and worked hard for her daughter to succeed in cinema, and
decided to changed her daughter’s alias to Natalie Wood, in honor of director Sam Wood. What’s more,
Maria taught her that she had to be careful around water, that’s why Natalie never learned to swim.
Natalie debuted at the age of five in the movie Happy Land, from 1943. The director,
Irving Pichel, also considered her for his next films, starred by stars like Orson Welles and
Barbara Stanwyck. Then came Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,
but it was after Miracle on 34th Street, from 1946, that her career as a child actress boosted.
During her career as a child, Maria was always by her side. Her mother’s determination for
her daughter to become a star could take dark turns: when she wasn’t able to cry for a scene,
Maria showed Natalie how she pulled out a butterfly’s wings.
But the shooting that truly marked Natalie was The Green Promise. In a very important scene, she was
to run through a bridge that would collapse just as she reached the other end. However,
due to a malfunction, the bridge fell down while she was running. Instead of stopping the scene,
the director, William D. Russell kept filming the girl as she fought the river that seemed to want
to take her away. Subsequently, Natalie, of 11 years, fractured her wrist and learned to truly
fear water. Far from doing something about it, Maria managed to hide her daughter’s fracture,
saying that true movie stars didn’t break. Hence, the injury never healed as it should, and Natalie
had to cover the marks with a bracelet. Natalie kept on working on films,
and was part of some tv series, until 1955, when she secured her place as Judy, the girl who wins
James Dean’s heart in Rebel Without a Cause. A part that gained her popularity and her first
Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Although Natalie Wood’s professional life
was a blast, her personal life was another story. Besides María’s disturbing presence,
it was known that when Natalie was 16, she was abused by a famous actor and producer.
According to Suzanne Finstad —author of Natasha, A Biography of Natalie Wood—
María made sure to hide the abuser’s identity so it wouldn’t stain her daughter’s career.
Despite working exhaustively, her mother and Hollywood’s predators, Natalie still was able to
have a love life. For a short time she dated Dean, Dennis Hopper —who also worked in Rebel Without
a Cause— and Nicholas Ray, the film’s director. She was also seeing together with Elvis Presley,
and dated Nicky Hilton, owner of the hotel chain, Hilton. But she settled down with Robert Wagner.
Born on 1930, Wagner was a handsome young man hired by the Twentieth Century Fox,
who worked as supporting actor and then got leading roles. His height helped him gain
the female audience. It was in the 20th Century Studios where Natalie, who was 11, came across
Wagner, who was 20, and told her mother, "it's Robert Wagner, when I'm older, I'll marry him."
They met only years later, at a party. Wagner invited her to go sailing. She agreed to go,
despite being terrified of water. Nothing bad happened to Natalie,
and then they joined in marriage, around 1957. Her mother approved their relationship from the start.
Meanwhile, Wood continued working on new blockbusters, such as the musical, West
Side Story, and Splendor in the Grass. Because of this last film, their marriage hit a rough patch,
as Natalie was seduced by her co-star, Warren Beatty. Their separation in 1962 was inevitable.
Besides, this film had underwater scenes, but Wood was entitled to refuse to film them. So,
Elia Kazan, the director, used a double. Without Wagner by her side, Natalie found love
in Richard Gregson, a British producer. They got married in 1969 and a year later Natasha was born,
her first daughter. Motherhood turned her attention away from her career to
dedicate time to her family, and also let her escape from her mother’s claws.
However, in 1971, Natalie left Gregson when she found out he had been cheating on her.
Once single, she had a fling with Steve McQueen, but started seeing Wagner again,
who had been married to Marion Marshall and also dated Tina Sinatra, Frank Sinatra’s daughter. It
was a total success: they remarried in 1972 and soon after Courtney was born,
her second daughter. Now, as both were more matured, it seemed that love would last forever.
But there was tension from the very beginning. When Natalie returned to the studios,
she couldn't close deals, and the studios were run by younger people, who preferred
young actors and filmmakers. Wood was considered to be representative from the old Hollywood. On
the other hand, Wagner knew how to transition to work in series like It Takes a Thief and,
from 1979, in the well-known, Hart to Hart. In 1981, Natalie joined the sci-fi film,
Brainstorm. She was the protagonist alongside Christopher Walken, who had just won an Oscar
for Best Supporting Actor in The Deer Hunter. They got along on set, and became friends. Of course,
Wagner noticed it and wasn't very happy about it. Either way, during a break from filming
Brainstorm, Natalie and Wagner decided to invite Walken and other friends to spend Thanksgiving at
Catalina Island, California. Most of them didn't go as a storm was forecast, only Walken showed up.
According to testimonies, this is what happened in the last 48 hours that Natalie was alive.
On November 27, 1981, the couple and their guest boarded Wagner's new yacht, called Splendour,
after Splendor in the Grass, which they considered the highlight of Natalie's
career. They anchored off the Avalon Coast —the only tourist center of the island— to reach the
shore they took a boat named Valiant, for Prince Valiant, one of Wagner’s famous
roles. They went to El Galleon to drink shots and margaritas to then return to Splendour.
Despite having a good time, Natalie was anxious. She didn't enjoy being surrounded only by water.
And to make it worse, the sea was uneasy due to the storm —which began at 9 o’clock at night— and
she couldn't get out of her head the words of her daughter when she said: "mom, please don't go."
After talking with Wagner, they decided she'd returned to the island in the Valiant after
having dinner. But during dinner, where they continued drinking, Wagner said it'd be better
to move the yacht near the coast, saying it'd be safer there. Natalie refused and they started
arguing. After that, the yacht’s captain, Dennis Davern, took Natalie to Avalon. They
stayed in the Pavilion Lodge hotel. Although she had reserved two rooms, she asked Davern to stay
with her that night, because she didn't want to sleep alone. The captain slept with one eye
open on the floor. Meanwhile in the yacht, Wagner and Walken slept in their cabins.
On the morning of November 28, Natalie called a friend. She told him about the fight they had the
night before and that she suspected her husband was jealous of Walken. Trying to make things
right, she and Davern returned to Splendour. The next few hours were peaceful: they had
breakfast, Davern was told to move the yacht to still water, they had lunch and snoozed.
Natalie and Walken woke up first and went to the island to have some drinks at Doug's Harbor Reef,
the only restaurant and bar of the area. They had left a note to Wagner, who appeared two hours
later hiding his unease. The three of them dined there, and returned to the Splendour at 10 pm.
In the yacht’s saloon they had more drinks. There, in the intimacy, surrounded by water,
far from civilization, Wagner burst out. According to Wagner, Walken was talking
about their career being more important than their relations and accused him of trying to
meddle in his wife's life saying: "She has enough people around telling her what to
do." After hearing his words, Wagner grabbed a bottle of wine and smashed it on the table.
Natalie stood up, left the saloon, stopped in the cabin to clean herself
up... and Wagner thought she had gone to sleep. As a way to calm down after a heated argument,
Wagner and Walken when to the deck to get some fresh air. Walken went back
inside to his cabin. Wagner stayed a little while outside with Davern and then went to his cabin,
thinking Natalie would be there waiting for him. But she wasn’t. He went back to the deck,
but didn’t find her there either; though, noticed that the Valiant was missing. Considering his wife
was terrified of water, he didn’t think she would jump into the boat by herself,
least of all in the middle of the night. Wagner used the radio to call the Coast Guard
and went to Doug’s Harbor Reef, but it was closed. He searched around the dock without any luck.
It was 1:30 in the morning of Sunday, November 29, when Wagner called the Coast Guard that registered
the Splendour. Davern contacted a harbor patrol. There were no signs of Natalie. Soon after, the
Coast Guard used helicopters to search for her. At 5:30, they found the Valiant past Blue Cavern
Point. The engine was dead. The way the oars were and the scratches on the boat,
made them assume that someone had tried to get in. The actress’ body was found two hours later,
floating not far from where the boat was. She had marks on her right arm,
and a few little ones on her left wrist, her legs, left knee and on her right ankle, apart
from a blistering in her left cheek. She wasn't wearing a bracelet in her wrist, which meant she
had no intentions of leaving the Splendour. Wagner and Walken were on the yacht when they
received the news. Wagner didn't want to recognize the body, as he preferred
to remind her alive. Davern took care of it. The media got the news so quickly that Natasha
and Courtney didn't have to speak to Wagner to know about their mom. Her family, Hollywood,
her fans, and the entire world was shocked. Her body went under an autopsy. It was shown
that her blood alcohol content was 0.14%, just above the 0.10% allowed in California. According
to the examining judge, it was equal to seven or eight glasses of wine. Thomas Noguchi, the
coroner, said that the marks on her body didn't indicate that she had been physically abused,
but that she got them trying to get in the boat. Wagner, who help in the investigation for a long
time, had his own hypothesis: after leaving the room and cleaning herself up in the restroom,
Natalie noticed that the Valiant was hitting the yacht because of the waves, and when she went out
to fix it, she fell into the water, and she tried to get into the boat, but she drowned instead.
The police made Wagner's theory public. After two weeks of investigation, it was concluded
that Natalie Wood's death was accidental. She was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park
in Los Angeles, very close to where she lived. But this theory sounds too simple, and since
the internet, simple theories are never enough. For decades, Natalie Wood's death prompted many
legends. She also became part of the known “curse of Rebel Without a Cause,” alongside James Dean,
who died unexpectedly in a car accident, and the murder of Sal Mineo, a supporting actor.
In 2009, Rulli and Davern published Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour. In those pages the
captain confessed that it was Wagner's fault, and that the couple had a heated argument. He
also added that when Natalie disappear from the yacht Wagner didn't look for her right away.
Thirty years later, in 2011, the case was reopened by Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department. Two years later, they ruled that the cause of death was “drowning and other
undetermined factors”. The cause was closed again until 2018. Then, new witnesses in the
nearby boats appeared. They testified hearing noises and screams. One of them said to have
seen a man and a woman fighting in the poop. With this new perspective on the case, the LAPD
reclassified Natalie Wood's death as “suspicious”. Robert Wagner, who had remarried —to actress Jill
St. John this time— confessed in his autobiography that he was jealous of his wife’s friendship with
Christopher Walken, and also admitted they had argued. Nonetheless, he refused to talk to the
police when the case was reopen. Because of this, he became a “person of interest”.
Term to refer to someone who might be involved in a case or that could help
to solve it, but is not legally a suspect. There's another theory on the internet,
that comes supposedly from Davern himself, who collaborated with the LAPD in 2011 and gave new
information about the case. According to this theory, the fight they had was very aggressive,
and Wagner saw Natalie falling from the yacht, but didn't do anything to save her. Natalie screamed
for several minutes and Davern wanted to help her but Wagner had locked him up in his cabin
and told him to mind his own business. Walken went out from his cabin, and the three of them
started arguing. And after a moment, they couldn't hear Natalie's cries. Desperate, the three men
invented a version of the story and swore that if one fell, the other two would follow. They
immediately contacted a famous Hollywood lawyer, who managed to make the authorities close the
case. There’s nothing that can prove this theory right, as Davern's information given to the police
is not public. But if we consider the witnesses on the nearby boats, you can't deny that there's
a lot about this that is not clear. What happened to the people in Natalie's
life? Well, Christopher Walken continued with his successful career. He never talked publicly about
what happened in the Splendour, but he continued collaborating with the investigation in secret.
Her mother, Maria, died alone and with Alzheimer's in 1998, at 86. Taking all dreams and ambitions
on her famous daughter to her grave. Meanwhile, Wood's case made it to the TV,
thanks to the small-screen film, The Mystery of Natalie Wood. Aired in 2004,
it recreates what could have happened in the Splendour. Beside dramatizations, it includes
testimonies of Lana Wood —sister and also actress— and of other actors and directors who knew her.
Just like the seer warned her mother, Natalie Wood couldn't escape from the
dark waters. Immersing herself, and us, in one of Hollywood's most intriguing deaths.