Natalie Wood
Encyclopedia
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American
Americans
The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...

 film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.

Wood began acting in movies at the age of four and at age eight was given a co-starring role in the Christmas classic film, Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street is a 1947 Christmas film written by George Seaton from a story by Valentine Davies, directed by George Seaton and starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn...

. As a teenager, her performance in Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...

 (1955) earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

. She starred in the musicals West Side Story
West Side Story
West Side Story is an American musical with a script by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins...

 (1961) and Gypsy
Gypsy (1962 film)
Gypsy is a 1962 American musical film produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass is based on the book of the 1959 stage musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable by Arthur Laurents, which was adapted from Gypsy: A Memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee.Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics for...

 (1962), and received Academy Award for Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...

 nominations for her performances in Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass is a 1961 romantic drama film that tells a story of sexual repression, love, heartbreak, and manic-depression, which the character Deanie suffers from...

 (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger is a 1963 romantic comedy drama film made by Pakula-Mulligan Productions and Boardwalk Productions and released by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay by Arnold Schulman.The film stars Natalie Wood,...

 (1963).

As her career continued, Wood's output decreased significantly, and she appeared in only two theatrical films during the 1970s. She was married to actor Robert Wagner
Robert Wagner
Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...

 twice, and to producer Richard Gregson. She had one daughter by each: Natasha Gregson and Courtney Wagner. Her younger sister, Lana Wood
Lana Wood
Lana Wood is an American actress and producer. She was born to Russian émigré parents, Nikolai and Maria Zakharenko, and is the younger sister of the late actress Natalie Wood. Her first major role was at age 9 in the John Wayne western The Searchers. She was a regular on the soap opera Peyton Place...

, is also an actress.

Wood starred in several television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity
From Here to Eternity (TV series)
From Here to Eternity was a six-hour 1979 television mini-series, followed by a thirteen episode 1980 television series.The mini-series was a remake of the 1953 film From Here to Eternity and based on the 1951 novel of the same name...

 (1979) for which she won a Golden Globe Award. During her career, from child actress to adult star, her films represented a "coming of age" for both her and Hollywood films in general.

At age 43, Wood drowned near Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...

 at the time her last film, Brainstorm
Brainstorm (1983 film)
Brainstorm is a 1983 science fiction film directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood...

 (1983), was in production with co-star Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...

. Her death was declared an accident, however, on November 17, 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is a local county law enforcement agency that serves Los Angeles County, California. It is the fourth largest local policing agency in the United States, with the New York City Police Department being the first. The second largest is the Chicago Police...

 reopened the case based on new witness statements.

Early years

Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco to Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 immigrant parents Maria Stepanovna (née Zudilova; 1912–1998) and Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko. As an adult, she stated, "I'm very Russian, you know." She spoke both Russian and English. Her father was born in Vladivostok
Vladivostok
The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...

 and he, his mother, and two brothers, immigrated to Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, and later to San Francisco. There, he worked as a day laborer and carpenter. Her paternal grandfather Stepan worked in a chocolate factory in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 and was killed in street fighting between Red
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 and White Russian
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...

 soldiers in 1918. Natalie's mother originally came from Barnaul
Barnaul
-Russian Empire:Barnaul was one of the earlier cities established in Siberia. Originally chosen for its proximity to the mineral-rich Altai Mountains and its location on a major river, the site was founded by the wealthy Demidov family in the 1730s. In addition to the copper which had originally...

, southern Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, but grew up in the Chinese
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

 city of Harbin
Harbin
Harbin ; Manchu language: , Harbin; Russian: Харби́н Kharbin ), is the capital and largest city of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China, lying on the southern bank of the Songhua River...

. She described her family by weaving mysterious tales of being either gypsies or landowning aristocrats. In her youth, her mother dreamed of becoming an actress or ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

 dancer.

Biographer Warren Harris writes that under the family's "needy circumstances," her mother may have transferred those ambitions to her middle daughter, Natalie. Her mother would take Natalie to the movies as often as she could: "Natalie's only professional training was watching Hollywood child stars from her mother's lap," notes Harris. Wood would later recall this time period:

My mother used to tell me that the cameraman who pointed his lens out at the audience at the end of the Paramount newsreel was taking my picture. I'd pose and smile like he was going to make me famous or something. I believed everything my mother told me.

Shortly after Wood's birth in San Francisco, her family moved to nearby Sonoma County, and lived in Santa Rosa, California
Santa Rosa, California
Santa Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. The 2010 census reported a population of 167,815. Santa Rosa is the largest city in California's Wine Country and fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont and 26th...

, 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's younger sister, Svetlana Zacharenko - now known as Lana Wood
Lana Wood
Lana Wood is an American actress and producer. She was born to Russian émigré parents, Nikolai and Maria Zakharenko, and is the younger sister of the late actress Natalie Wood. Her first major role was at age 9 in the John Wayne western The Searchers. She was a regular on the soap opera Peyton Place...

 - who also became an actress and later a Bond girl
Bond girl
A Bond girl is a character or actress portraying a love interest, of James Bond in a film, novel, or video game. They occasionally have names that are double entendres or puns, such as "Pussy Galore", "Plenty O'Toole", "Xenia Onatopp", or "Holly Goodhead"...

. She and Lana have an older half sister, Olga Viriapaeff. Though Natalie had been born "Natalia Zacharenko," her father later changed the family name to "Gurdin" and Natalie was often known as "Natasha," the diminutive of Natalia. The studio executives at RKO Radio Pictures later changed her name to "Natalie Wood", a name she never liked.

Child actress

Wood made her film début a few weeks before turning five during a fifteen-second scene in the 1943 film Happy Land. Despite the brief part, she attracted the notice of the director, Irving Pichel
Irving Pichel
Irving Pichel was an American actor and film director. He married Violette Wilson, daughter of Jackson Stitt Wilson, a Methodist minister and Socialist mayor of Berkeley, California. Her sister was actress Viola Barry...

, who remained in contact with Wood's family for two years 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 at the possibilities, she overreacted and "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.

Wood, then seven years old, got the part and played a German orphan opposite Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

 and Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...

 in Tomorrow Is Forever
Tomorrow Is Forever
Tomorrow Is Forever is a 1946 black-and-white film distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, directed by Irving Pichel, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles and George Brent. The music score is by Max Steiner...

. Welles later said that Wood was a born professional, "so good, she was terrifying." After Wood acted in another film directed by Pichel, her mother signed her up with 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

 studio for her first major role, the 1947 Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street is a 1947 Christmas film written by George Seaton from a story by Valentine Davies, directed by George Seaton and starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn...

; the film made her one of the top child stars in Hollywood. Within a few months after the film's release, Wood was so popular that Macy's
Macy's
Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid-to-high range department stores. In addition to its flagship Herald Square location in New York City, the company operates over 800 stores in the United States...

 invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

Film historian John C. Tibbetts writes that for the next few years following her success in Miracle, Wood played roles as a daughter in a series of family films: Fred MacMurray
Fred MacMurray
Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....

's daughter in Father Was a Fullback and Dear Brat, Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday...

's daughter in No Sad Songs for Me; James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...

's daughter in The Jackpot; Joan Blondell
Joan Blondell
Rose Joan Blondell was an American actress who performed in movies and on television for five decades as Joan Blondell.After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career...

's neglected daughter in The Blue Veil; and daughter of Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

' character in The Star. In all, Wood appeared in over 20 films as a child.

Because she was a minor, Wood's formal education took place on the studio lots wherever she was contracted. California law required that until age 18, 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
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...

, who directed her in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir romantic fantasy film starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It is based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R. A. Dick...

 (1947), said that "In all my years in the business, I never met a smarter moppet." Wood remembered that period in her life:

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 received wide recognition in the general media: By age nine, she had been named the "most exciting juvenile motion picture star of the year" by Parents Magazine. At age twelve, Wood was judged Child Star of the Year by the Children's Day National Council of New York.

Teen stardom

Wood successfully made the transition from child star
Child actor
The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting in motion pictures or television, but also to an adult who began his or her acting career as a child; to avoid confusion, the latter is also called a former child actor...

 to ingenue
Ingenue (stock character)
See also Disingenuous, which is not quite the antonym that it may seem!The ingénue is a stock character in literature, film, and a role type in the theatre; generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent and wholesome. Ingenue may also refer to a new young actress or one typecast in...

 at age 16 when she co-starred with James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...

 and Sal Mineo
Sal Mineo
Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. , was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause...

 in Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...

, Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....

's film about teenage rebellion. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

. She followed this with a small but crucial role in John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...

's western The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...

 which starred John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...

 and also featured Wood's sister, Lana, who played a younger version of her character in the film's earlier scenes.

In the 1953-1954 television season, Wood played Ann Morrison, the teenage daughter in the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 situation comedy
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

, The Pride of the Family
The Pride of the Family
The Pride of the Family was a half-hour situation comedy starring Paul Hartman, Fay Wray, Natalie Wood, and Robert Hyatt, which aired for forty episodes on ABC in the 1953–1954 season....

, with Paul Hartman
Paul Hartman
Paul Hartman was an American dancer, stage performer and television character actor.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, Hartman, like Fred Astaire, began performing as a dancer with his sister...

 cast as her father, Albie Morrison; Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...

, as her mother, Catherine; and Robert Hyatt, as her brother, Junior Morrison.

Wood graduated in 1956 from Van Nuys High School
Van Nuys High School
Van Nuys High School established in 1914, is a high school in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles, California, belonging to the Los Angeles Unified School District: District 2...

.

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
Tab Hunter
Tab Hunter is an American actor, singer, former teen idol and author who has starred in over forty major films.-Background:...

, 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
Kings Go Forth
Kings Go Forth is a 1958 black-and-white World War II film starring Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood. The screenplay was written by Merle Miller from the novel of the same name by Joe David Brown, and the film was directed by Delmer Daves...

 and Marjorie Morningstar
Marjorie Morningstar (film)
Marjorie Morningstar is a 1958 melodrama film based on the 1955 novel of the same name. The film, released by Warner Bros. and directed by Irving Rapper tells a fictional coming of age story about a young Jewish girl in New York City in the 1950s...

. 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

Wood's characters in Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers and Marjorie Morningstar began to show her range of acting style widening considerably, observes Tibbetts. Her former "childlike sweetness" was now being combined with a noticeable "restlessness that was characteristic of the youth of the 1950s." After Wood appeared in the box office flop All the Fine Young Cannibals
All the Fine Young Cannibals
All The Fine Young Cannibals is a 1960 film directed by Michael Anderson, based on the novel by Rosamond Marshall starring Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Susan Kohner, George Hamilton, and Pearl Bailey....

, her career was salvaged by her casting in director Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...

's Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass is a 1961 romantic drama film that tells a story of sexual repression, love, heartbreak, and manic-depression, which the character Deanie suffers from...

 (1961) opposite Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...

, which earned Wood Best Actress Nominations at the Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

, Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards.

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Wood's career was in a transition period, having until then been cast primarily in roles as a child or teenager. She was now hoping to be cast in adult roles. Biographer Suzanne Finstad
Suzanne Finstad
Suzanne Finstad Bestselling American author, biographer, journalist, producer, and lawyer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. .-Work pre-1990:Finstad received the Frank Wardlaw Prize in 1984 for literary excellence for her first book, Heir Not Apparent , drawn from her experiences as a young law clerk...

 notes that a "turning point" in her life as an actress took place upon seeing the film A Streetcar Named Desire: "She was transformed, in awe of director Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...

 and of Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...

's performance... [who] became a role model for Natalie."

In 1961, after a "series of bad films, her career was already in decline," notes Rathgeb. Kazan himself writes that the "sages" of the film community declared her as "washed up" as an actress, although he still wanted to interview her for his next film:
When I saw her, I detected behind the well-mannered 'young wife' front a desperate twinkle in her eyes... I talked with her more quietly then and more personally. I wanted to find out what human material was there, what her inner life was... Then she told me she was being psychoanalyzed. That did it. Poor R.J., I said to myself. I liked Bob Wagner
Robert Wagner
Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...

, I still do.

Kazan cast Wood as the female lead in Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass is a 1961 romantic drama film that tells a story of sexual repression, love, heartbreak, and manic-depression, which the character Deanie suffers from...

, and her career rebounded. He felt that despite her earlier, innocent roles, she had the talent and maturity to go beyond. In the film, Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...

's character was deprived of sexual love with Natalie, and as a result turns to a prostitute; Natalie likewise couldn't handle the issue, but ended up in 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."

Finstad feels that despite Wood never receiving training in Method acting
Method acting
Method acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances...

 techniques, "working with Kazan brought her to the greatest emotional heights of her career. The experience was exhilarating but wrenching for Natalie, who faced her demons on Splendor." She adds that a scene in the film, as a result of "Kazan's wizardry ... produced a hysteria in Natalie that may be her most powerful moment as an actress." Actor Gary Lockwood
Gary Lockwood
Gary Lockwood is an American actor probably best known for his iconic 1968 role as the astronaut Dr. Frank Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey.-Early life:...

, who also acted in the film, felt that "Kazan and Natalie were a terrific marriage, because you had this beautiful girl, and you had somebody that could get things out of her." Kazan's favorite scene in the movie was the last one, when Wood goes back to see her lost first love, Bud (Beatty). "It's terribly touching to me. I still like it when I see it," writes Kazan.

West Side Story (1961)

In 1961 Wood played Maria in the Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...

 and Robert Wise
Robert Wise
Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...

 musical West Side Story
West Side Story (film)
West Side Story is a 1961 musical film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was adapted from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno,...

 which was a major box office and critical success.

Tibbetts notes similarities in her role in this film and the earlier Rebel Without a Cause. Here, she also plays the role of a restless adolescent which reflected the "restlessness of American youth in the 1950s," expressed by youth gangs and juvenile delinquency, along with early Rock and Roll. Both films, he observes, were "modern allegories based on the 'Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

' theme, including private restlessness and public alienation. Where in Rebel she falls in love with the character played by James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...

, whose gang-like friends and violent temper alienated him from his family, in West Side Story she also enters into a romance with a gang member and his threatening world of outcasts, also alienated from their families and the law.

Although the singing parts were sung by Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon is an American soprano and playback singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She has also spent much of her career performing in concerts with major symphony orchestras around the world and in operas and musicals throughout the United States.-Biography:Born Margaret Nixon...

, West Side Story is still regarded as one of Wood's best films. Wood did sing when she starred in the 1962 film, Gypsy
Gypsy (1962 film)
Gypsy is a 1962 American musical film produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass is based on the book of the 1959 stage musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable by Arthur Laurents, which was adapted from Gypsy: A Memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee.Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics for...

. She co-starred in the slapstick comedy The Great Race
The Great Race
The Great Race is a 1965 slapstick comedy film starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood, directed by Blake Edwards, written by Blake Edwards and Arthur A. Ross, and with music by Henry Mancini and cinematography by Russell Harlan. The supporting cast includes Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn,...

 (1965), with Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...

, Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...

, and Peter Falk
Peter Falk
Peter Michael Falk was an American actor, best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo...

. Her ability to speak Russian was an asset given to her character "Maggie DuBois", justifying the character to record the progress of the race across Siberia, and entering the race at the beginning as a contestant. Wood then received her third Academy Award nomination and another Golden Globe award in 1964 for Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger is a 1963 romantic comedy drama film made by Pakula-Mulligan Productions and Boardwalk Productions and released by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay by Arnold Schulman.The film stars Natalie Wood,...

, opposite Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...

.

Although many of Wood's films were commercially profitable, her acting was criticized at times. In 1966 she won the Harvard Lampoon
Harvard Lampoon
The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Overview:Published since 1876, The Harvard Lampoon is the world's longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor...

 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
Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson are the athletic teams of Harvard University. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2006, there were 41 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country...

 wrote she was "quite a good sport." Conversely, director Sydney Pollack
Sydney Pollack
Sydney Irwin Pollack was an American film director, producer and actor. Pollack studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he later taught acting...

 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
Inside Daisy Clover
Inside Daisy Clover is a 1965 American drama film based on the 1963 novel by Gavin Lambert. It stars Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Roddy McDowall and Ruth Gordon in her Academy Award nominated role.- Plot :...

 (1965) and This Property Is Condemned
This Property is Condemned
This Property Is Condemned is a 1966 American drama film starring Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Kate Reid, Charles Bronson and Mary Badham and directed by Sydney Pollack. The screenplay was written by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Coe and Edith Sommer. The story was adapted from the 1946 one-act...

 (1966), both of which co-starred Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...

 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 emotionally and sought professional therapy. During this time, she turned down the Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway is an American actress.Dunaway won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Network after receiving previous nominations for the critically acclaimed films Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown...

 role in Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934...

 because she did not want to be separated from her analyst.
After three years away from acting, Wood played a swinger in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a 1969 comedy-drama film directed by Paul Mazursky. It stars Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon....

 (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, Wood went into semi-retirement and acted in only four more theatrical films during the remainder of her life. She made a very brief cameo appearance as herself in The Candidate
The Candidate (1972 film)
The Candidate is a 1972 American film starring Robert Redford. Its themes include how the political machine corrupts. There are many parallels between the then-recent 1970 California Senate election between John V. Tunney and George Murphy; however, Redford's character Bill McKay is a political...

 (1972), reuniting her for a third time with Robert Redford. She also reunited on the screen with Robert Wagner in the television movie of the week The Affair (1973) and with Sir Laurence Olivier and husband Wagner in an adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...

 (1976) broadcast as a special by NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. She made cameo appearances on Wagner's prime-time detective series Switch
Switch
In electronics, a switch is an electrical component that can break an electrical circuit, interrupting the current or diverting it from one conductor to another....

 in 1978 as "Bubble Bath Girl" and Hart to Hart
Hart to Hart
Hart to Hart is an American television series, starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, a wealthy couple who also moonlighted as amateur detectives. The series was created by writer Sidney Sheldon and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg...

 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.
Film roles Wood turned down during her career hiatus went to Ali MacGraw
Ali MacGraw
Elizabeth Alice "Ali" MacGraw is an American actress. She is known for her role in Love Story, for which she won a Golden Globe and received an Academy Award nomination.-Early life:...

 in Goodbye, Columbus
Goodbye, Columbus (film)
Goodbye, Columbus is a 1969 American romantic comedy drama film starring Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, directed by Larry Peerce and based on the novella of the same name by Philip Roth...

; Mia Farrow
Mia Farrow
Mia Farrow is an American actress, singer, humanitarian, and fashion model.Farrow first gained wide acclaim for her role as Allison Mackenzie in the soap opera Peyton Place, and for her subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra...

 in The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby (1974 film)
The Great Gatsby is a 1974 romantic drama film distributed by Newdon Productions and Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Jack Clayton and produced by David Merrick, from a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola based on F...

; and Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway
Faye Dunaway is an American actress.Dunaway won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Network after receiving previous nominations for the critically acclaimed films Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown...

 in The Towering Inferno
The Towering Inferno
The Towering Inferno is a 1974 American action disaster film produced by Irwin Allen featuring an all-star cast led by Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.A co-production between Twentieth Century-Fox and Warner Bros...

. Later, Wood chose to star in misfires like the disaster film Meteor
Meteor (film)
Meteor is a 1979 science fiction Technicolor disaster film in which scientists detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and struggle with international, cold war politics in their efforts to prevent disaster. The movie starred Sean Connery and Natalie Wood.It was directed by Ronald Neame...

 (1979) with Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...

 and the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America
The Last Married Couple in America
The Last Married Couple in America is a 1980 comedy film released in the US.It was directed by Gilbert Cates, whose most successful film Oh, God! Book II, was released in the same year...

 (1980). She found more success in television, receiving high ratings and critical acclaim in 1979 for The Cracker Factory
The Cracker Factory
The Cracker Factory is an American television movie directed by Burt Brinckerhoff. The teleplay by Richard Shapiro is based on the best-selling 1977 novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt. The film was broadcast by ABC on March 16, 1979.-Synopsis:...

 and especially the miniseries film From Here to Eternity
From Here to Eternity (TV series)
From Here to Eternity was a six-hour 1979 television mini-series, followed by a thirteen episode 1980 television series.The mini-series was a remake of the 1953 film From Here to Eternity and based on the 1951 novel of the same name...

 with Kim Basinger
Kim Basinger
Kimila Ann "Kim" Basinger is an American actress and former fashion model.She is known for her portrayals of Domino Petachi, the Bond girl in Never Say Never Again , and Vicki Vale, the female lead in Batman . Basinger received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture...

 and William Devane
William Devane
William Joseph Devane is an American film, television and theater actor.-Life and career:Devane was born in Albany, New York in 1937 or 1939 , the son of Joseph Devane, who was Franklin D. Roosevelt's chauffeur when he was Governor of New York...

. Wood's performance in the latter won her a Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...

 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 science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 film Brainstorm
Brainstorm (1983 film)
Brainstorm is a 1983 science fiction film directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood...

 (1983), co-starring Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...

 and directed by Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Huntley Trumbull is an American film director, special effects supervisor, and inventor. He contributed to, or was responsible for, the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of...

. She was also scheduled to star in a theatrical production of Anastasia
Anastasia
Anastasia is a personal name and the female form of the Greek male name Anastasius/Anastasios meaning "resurrection." The name, and its male counterpart, were often given to Greek children born around December 2 or around Easter during the early days of Christianity. It is the name of several...

 with Wendy Hiller
Wendy Hiller
Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE was an Academy Award-winning English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. The writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took...

 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
Timothy Hutton
Timothy Tarquin Hutton is an American actor. He is the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which he won at the age of 20 for his performance as Conrad Jarrett in Ordinary People . He currently stars as Nathan "Nate" Ford on the TNT series Leverage.-Early life:Timothy...

. 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
Stand-in
A stand-in for film and television is a person who substitutes for the actor before filming, for technical purposes such as lighting.Stand-ins are helpful in the initial processes of production. Lighting setup can be a slow and tedious process; during this time the actor will often be somewhere else...

 and sound-alikes 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.

Wood 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."

Marriages

Natalie Wood's two marriages to actor Robert Wagner were highly publicized. Wood said 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, a marriage which met with great protest from Wood's mother. In an article in February 2009, Wagner recalled their early romance:


I saw Natalie around town but she never seemed interested. She was making Rebel Without a Cause and hanging out with James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...

; I was with an older crowd. The first time I remember really talking to her was at a fashion show in 1956. She was beautiful, but still gave no hint about the mad crush she had on me. I later found out she had signed with my agent simply because he was my agent. A month later, I invited Natalie to a premiere on what turned out to be her 18th birthday. At dinner, we both sensed things were different. I sent her flowers and the dates continued. I remember the instant I fell in love with her. One night on board a small boat I owned, she looked at me with love, her dark brown eyes lit by a table lantern. That moment changed my life.


A year after their wedding, Wood expressed her feelings in a letter to her new husband:


"You are my husband, my child, my strength, my weakness, my lover, my life."


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 nine years later on November 29, 1981.

Other relationships

Biographer Suzanne Finstad
Suzanne Finstad
Suzanne Finstad Bestselling American author, biographer, journalist, producer, and lawyer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. .-Work pre-1990:Finstad received the Frank Wardlaw Prize in 1984 for literary excellence for her first book, Heir Not Apparent , drawn from her experiences as a young law clerk...

 writes that Wood had a relationship with director Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....

, director of Rebel Without a Cause, when she was 16 and he was 43. During her teens, Wood went on studio-arranged dates with older men, including actors Tab Hunter
Tab Hunter
Tab Hunter is an American actor, singer, former teen idol and author who has starred in over forty major films.-Background:...

 and Nick Adams, and dated actor Raymond Burr
Raymond Burr
Raymond William Stacey Burr was a Canadian actor, primarily known for his title roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. His early acting career included roles on Broadway, radio, television and in film, usually as the villain...

, when she was 17 and he was 38. Wood also dated actors Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....

, Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...

, Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...

 and Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...

, singer Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

, director Henry Jaglom
Henry Jaglom
- Life and career :Born January 26, 1941 in London, England to Simon and Marie Jaglom, Henry Jaglom trained with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York, where he acted, wrote and directed off-Broadway theater and cabaret before settling in Hollywood in the late 1960s...

, and politician Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...

.

Among her celebrity friends were fellow child performers Margaret O'Brien
Margaret O'Brien
Margaret O'Brien is an American film and stage actress. Although her film career as a leading character was brief, she was one of the most popular child actors in cinema history...

, Carol Lynley
Carol Lynley
Carol Lynley is an American actress and former child model.-Life and career:Lynley was born Carole Ann Jones in New York City, the daughter of Frances , a waitress, and Cyril Jones. Her father was Irish and her mother, a native of New England, was of English, Scottish, Welsh, German, and Native...

 and Stefanie Powers
Stefanie Powers
Stefanie Powers is an American actress best known for her role as Jennifer Hart in the 1980s television series Hart to Hart.-Early life:...

.

Death

Wood spent the last few months of her life working on the movie Brainstorm
Brainstorm (1983 film)
Brainstorm is a 1983 science fiction film directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood...

 with co-star Christopher Walken with much of the filming occurring in North Carolina. During this time, her husband Robert Wagner was only able to visit Wood once in Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...

 for a weekend. After Wood returned to California, she worked through November on her final shots while at the MGM lot in Culver City
Culver City, California
Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883, up from 38,816 at the 2000 census. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Culver...

. She returned to her home in Beverly Hills to spend Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...

 with her mother, Wagner and personal secretary Mart Crowley
Mart Crowley
Mart Crowley is an American playwright.Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After graduating from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. in 1957, Crowley headed west to Hollywood, where he worked for a number of television production companies before meeting Natalie Wood on...

. The following day Wood, Wagner and Christopher Walken traveled to Catalina Island
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...

 for the weekend.

On Saturday, November 28, 1981, the Wagners' yacht, Splendour, was anchored in Isthmus Cove
Isthmus of Catalina Island
The Isthmus of Catalina Island is a 770 metre section of land that joins the northwestern portion of Santa Catalina Island to the main part of the island. It lies approximately southwest of San Pedro Harbor....

 off Catalina Island with Wagner, Wood, and Walken, on board. Also on board was the boat's captain, Dennis Davern, who had worked a number of years for the Wagners before Wood's death.

According to Wagner in his 2008 book, Pieces of My Heart, he had been jealous of Wood's friendship with Walken and there had been a fight between him, Walken, and Wood, during which Wagner smashed a wine bottle on a table. Also according to Wagner, it was at this time that Wood left for her stateroom
Cabin (ship)
A cabin or berthing is an enclosed space generally on a ship or an aircraft. A cabin which protrudes above the level of a ship's deck may be referred to as a "deckhouse."-Sailing ships:...

 and Walken retired to his, with Wagner behind Wood. According to Davern, the yacht's captain, it was at this time that he heard the couple fighting; he reports that he turned up his stereo to drown out the argument. Looking out the pilot house window, he saw both Wood and Wagner arguing at the aft deck
Stern
The stern is the rear or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite of the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Originally, the term only referred to the aft port section...

 of the yacht. Shortly after this, Davern claims, Wagner sought him out, saying he couldn't find Wood. Davern unsuccessfully searched the boat for her, also noticing that the yacht's dinghy
Dinghy
A dinghy is a type of small boat, often carried or towed for use as a ship's boat by a larger vessel. It is a loanword from either Bengali or Urdu. The term can also refer to small racing yachts or recreational open sailing boats. Utility dinghies are usually rowboats or have an outboard motor,...

 was missing. According to Davern, Wagner seemed unconcerned about Wood's disappearance and poured drinks for both himself and Davern.

At this point, Wagner's story as told in his book differs from Davern's: he claims when he went to their stateroom to talk to Wood, she wasn't there. Wagner further states that while he and Davern searched the boat for his wife he also noticed the dinghy to be missing. Wagner further wrote that he had assumed Wood had used the dinghy to go to shore as a result of the argument. Davern claims that Wagner not only seemed unconcerned, but that he told Davern not to alert anyone about Wood's absence. According to Davern, Wagner said, "We're not going to look too hard, we’re not going to turn on the search light, we’re not going to notify anybody right at the moment."

Wagner's theory is that Wood tried either 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 a mile from the dinghy on Sunday afternoon, she was wearing a down jacket, a nightgown, and socks. A woman on a nearby yacht reported she had heard a woman calling for help at around midnight. She further reported that 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." According to the witness, "It was laid back, there was no urgency or immediacy in their shouts."

Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi
Thomas Noguchi
is a former Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, who served in that position from 1967 to 1982. Known as the "coroner to the stars", he determined the cause of death in many high profile cases. He is most famous for performing autopsies on Marilyn Monroe, Robert F...

 ruled her death an accident following his investigation.

Natalie Wood was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
The Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery is a cemetery in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, California. It is located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in Westwood....

. Scores of international media and photographers as well as the public tried to attend Wood's funeral at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
The Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery is a cemetery in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, California. It is located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in Westwood....

; however, all were required to remain outside the cemetery walls. Among the celebrity attendees were Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...

, Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

, Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...

, Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson
Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...

, David Niven
David Niven
James David Graham Niven , known as David Niven, was a British actor and novelist, best known for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and Sir Charles Lytton, a.k.a. "the Phantom", in The Pink Panther...

, Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...

, Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...

, Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...

 and Sir Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

. Olivier, who had worked with Wood and Wagner in their 1976 television production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, flew from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 to Los Angeles to attend the service.

Case reopened

On November 17, 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is a local county law enforcement agency that serves Los Angeles County, California. It is the fourth largest local policing agency in the United States, with the New York City Police Department being the first. The second largest is the Chicago Police...

 office announced that it had officially reopened the case, based on new information from the yacht's skipper Dennis Davern.
Sheriff's Office homicide bureau Detective Lieutenant John Corina stated at a press conference, "We recently received information that we deemed to be credible. We're going to follow up on the leads we have." Corina declined to divulge any specific information regarding the new leads but did state that Wood's husband, Robert Wagner, is not considered a suspect.

Film

Year Title Role | Notes
1943 Happy Land
Happy Land (film)
Happy Land is a 1943 film directed by Irving Pichel and starring Don Ameche.-Synopsis:Lew Marsh, s pharmacist to the small community of Hartfield, Iowa, is lunching with his devoted wife Agnes when a telegram arrives notifying them that their only child, Russell, whom they called Rusty, has been...

Little girl who drops ice cream cone uncredited; film debut
1946 The Bride Wore Boots
The Bride Wore Boots
The Bride Wore Boots is a 1946 romantic comedy film with Barbara Stanwyck in the title role, playing opposite Robert Cummings. A very young Natalie Wood is seen in the film, directed by Irving Pichel....

Carol Warren
1946 Tomorrow Is Forever
Tomorrow Is Forever
Tomorrow Is Forever is a 1946 black-and-white film distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, directed by Irving Pichel, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles and George Brent. The music score is by Max Steiner...

Margaret Ludwig First credited role
1947 Driftwood Jenny Hollingsworth
1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir romantic fantasy film starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It is based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R. A. Dick...

Anna Muir as a child
1947 Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street is a 1947 Christmas film written by George Seaton from a story by Valentine Davies, directed by George Seaton and starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn...

Susan Walker First starring role
1948 Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!
Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!
Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! is a 1948 comedy film which is known for being one of Marilyn Monroe's earliest films ....

Bean McGill
1949 Father Was a Fullback Ellen Cooper
1949 The Green Promise
The Green Promise
The Green Promise is a 1949 American film directed by William D. Russell. It is currently in the public domain.-Trivia:Actress Natalie Wood was traumatized during filming as she almost drowned on set and it was filmed and kept in the picture for a scene, contributing to her lifelong fear of water...

Susan Anastasia Matthews
1949 Chicken Every Sunday
Chicken Every Sunday
Chicken Every Sunday is a 1949 American comedy film directed by George Seaton. The screenplay by Seaton and Valentine Davies is based on the 1944 play of the same title by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G...

Ruth Hefferan
1950 Never a Dull Moment
Never a Dull Moment (1950 film)
Never a Dull Moment is a 1950 RKO comedy film starring Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray. The film is based on the 1943 book Who Could Ask For Anything More? by Kay Swift.-Cast:*Irene Dunne ... Kay*Fred MacMurray ... Chris*William Demarest ... Mears...

Nancy 'Nan' Howard
1950 The Jackpot
The Jackpot
The Jackpot is a 1950 American comedy film directed by Walter Lang with James Stewart and Barbara Hale in the lead roles. It features a young Natalie Wood....

Phyllis Lawrence
1950 Our Very Own
Our Very Own (1950 film)
Our Very Own is a 1950 American drama film directed by David Miller. The screenplay by F. Hugh Herbert focuses on a teenaged girl who learns she was adopted as an infant.-Plot:...

Penny Macaulay
1950 No Sad Songs for Me Polly Scott
1951 The Blue Veil
The Blue Veil
The Blue Veil is a 1951 American drama film directed by Curtis Bernhardt. The screenplay by Norman Corwin is based on a story by François Campaux, which was adapted for the French language film Le Voile bleu in 1942.-Plot:...

Stephanie Rawlins
1951 Dear Brat Pauline Jones
1952 The Star Gretchen Drew
1952 Just for You' Barbara Blake
1952 The Rose Bowl Story Sally Burke
1954 The Silver Chalice
The Silver Chalice (film)
The Silver Chalice is a 1954 historical epic film from Warner Bros., based on Thomas B. Costain's 1952 novel of the same name.-Plot:A Greek artisan is commissioned to cast the cup of Christ in silver and sculpt around its rim the faces of the disciples and Jesus himself. He travels to Jerusalem and...

Helena as a child
1955 Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...

Judy Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

1955 One Desire Seely Dowder
1956 The Girl He Left Behind
The Girl He Left Behind
The Girl He Left Behind is a 1956 romantic comedy film starring Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood. The supporting cast includes Jim Backus, Alan King, James Garner, and David Janssen. Written by Guy Trosper and directed by David Butler. It was filmed at Fort Ord, California. For Garner and King it was...

Susan Daniels
1956 The Burning Hills
The Burning Hills
The Burning Hills is a 1956 Warner Bros. CinemaScope Western based on a 1956 novel by Louis L'Amour. The film features young stars popular with the teenagers of the time such as Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood and has a strong emphasis on the importance of tracking....

Maria Christina Colton
1956 A Cry in the Night Liz Taggert
1956 The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...

Debbie Edwards (older)
1957 Bombers B-52 Lois Brennan
1958 Kings Go Forth
Kings Go Forth
Kings Go Forth is a 1958 black-and-white World War II film starring Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood. The screenplay was written by Merle Miller from the novel of the same name by Joe David Brown, and the film was directed by Delmer Daves...

Monique Blair
1958 Marjorie Morningstar
Marjorie Morningstar (film)
Marjorie Morningstar is a 1958 melodrama film based on the 1955 novel of the same name. The film, released by Warner Bros. and directed by Irving Rapper tells a fictional coming of age story about a young Jewish girl in New York City in the 1950s...

Marjorie Morgenstern
1960 All the Fine Young Cannibals
All the Fine Young Cannibals
All The Fine Young Cannibals is a 1960 film directed by Michael Anderson, based on the novel by Rosamond Marshall starring Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Susan Kohner, George Hamilton, and Pearl Bailey....

Sarah 'Salome' Davis
1960 Cash McCall
Cash McCall
Cash McCall is a 1960 movie starring James Garner and Natalie Wood, based upon the novel of the same name by Cameron Hawley about a man who buys businesses in order to sell them at a profit...

Lory Austen
1961 West Side Story
West Side Story (film)
West Side Story is a 1961 musical film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was adapted from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno,...

Maria
1961 Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass is a 1961 romantic drama film that tells a story of sexual repression, love, heartbreak, and manic-depression, which the character Deanie suffers from...

Wilma Dean Loomis Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...


Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
Best Actor in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.-Superlatives:...


Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama
1962 Gypsy
Gypsy (1962 film)
Gypsy is a 1962 American musical film produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass is based on the book of the 1959 stage musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable by Arthur Laurents, which was adapted from Gypsy: A Memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee.Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics for...

Louise Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1963 Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger is a 1963 romantic comedy drama film made by Pakula-Mulligan Productions and Boardwalk Productions and released by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay by Arnold Schulman.The film stars Natalie Wood,...

Angie Rossini 1st Runner Up — New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
The New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress is one of the awards given by the New York Film Critics Circle to honor the finest achievements in filmmaking.-1930s:-1940s:-1950s:-1960s:-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:...


Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...


Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama
1964 Sex and the Single Girl
Sex and the Single Girl (film)
Sex and the Single Girl is a 1964 American comedy film directed by Richard Quine and starring Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall, and Mel Ferrer....

Helen Gurley Brown
Helen Gurley Brown
Helen Gurley Brown , is an author, publisher, and businesswoman. She was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.-Personal life and career:...

1965 Inside Daisy Clover
Inside Daisy Clover
Inside Daisy Clover is a 1965 American drama film based on the 1963 novel by Gavin Lambert. It stars Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Roddy McDowall and Ruth Gordon in her Academy Award nominated role.- Plot :...

Daisy Clover Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
Won—World Film Favorite – Female
1965 The Great Race
The Great Race
The Great Race is a 1965 slapstick comedy film starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood, directed by Blake Edwards, written by Blake Edwards and Arthur A. Ross, and with music by Henry Mancini and cinematography by Russell Harlan. The supporting cast includes Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn,...

Maggie DuBois
1966 Penelope
Penelope (1966 film)
Penelope is a 1966 comedy film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Peter Falk, Jonathan Winters, and Dick Shawn.-Plot:Penelope Elcott is the wife of wealthy banker of James Elcott...

Penelope Elcott
1966 This Property Is Condemned
This Property is Condemned
This Property Is Condemned is a 1966 American drama film starring Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Kate Reid, Charles Bronson and Mary Badham and directed by Sydney Pollack. The screenplay was written by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Coe and Edith Sommer. The story was adapted from the 1946 one-act...

Alva Starr Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama
1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a 1969 comedy-drama film directed by Paul Mazursky. It stars Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon....

Carol Sanders
1972 The Candidate
The Candidate (1972 film)
The Candidate is a 1972 American film starring Robert Redford. Its themes include how the political machine corrupts. There are many parallels between the then-recent 1970 California Senate election between John V. Tunney and George Murphy; however, Redford's character Bill McKay is a political...

Herself cameo
1973 The Affair Courtney Patterson TV movie
1975 Peeper Ellen Prendergast
1976 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...

Maggie TV movie
1979 From Here to Eternity
From Here to Eternity (TV series)
From Here to Eternity was a six-hour 1979 television mini-series, followed by a thirteen episode 1980 television series.The mini-series was a remake of the 1953 film From Here to Eternity and based on the 1951 novel of the same name...

Karen Holmes Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama
1979 The Cracker Factory
The Cracker Factory
The Cracker Factory is an American television movie directed by Burt Brinckerhoff. The teleplay by Richard Shapiro is based on the best-selling 1977 novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt. The film was broadcast by ABC on March 16, 1979.-Synopsis:...

Cassie Barrett TV movie
1979 Meteor
Meteor (film)
Meteor is a 1979 science fiction Technicolor disaster film in which scientists detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and struggle with international, cold war politics in their efforts to prevent disaster. The movie starred Sean Connery and Natalie Wood.It was directed by Ronald Neame...

Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya
1980 The Last Married Couple in America
The Last Married Couple in America
The Last Married Couple in America is a 1980 comedy film released in the US.It was directed by Gilbert Cates, whose most successful film Oh, God! Book II, was released in the same year...

Mari Thompson
1980 The Memory of Eva Ryker Eva/Claire Ryker TV movie
1980 Willie & Phil Herself (cameo)
1983 Brainstorm
Brainstorm (1983 film)
Brainstorm is a 1983 science fiction film directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood...

Karen Brace Nominated—Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress

Television

Year Title Role | Notes
1953 Jukebox Jury
Jukebox Jury
Jukebox Jury was an hour-long television series hosted by disc jockey Peter Potter which aired in the 1953-54 season on the American Broadcasting Company. It was thereafter syndicated in 1959....

as Herself Guest appearance
1953 Pride of the Family Ann Morrison One season
1954 The Public Defender
The Public Defender (TV series)
The Public Defender is a half-hour 69-episode television dramatic series starring Reed Hadley as Bart Matthews, an attorney for the indigent. The series aired on CBS from March 11, 1954 to June 23, 1955, a season and a half.-Premise:...

Rene Marchand One episode, "Return of the Dead"
1969 Bracken's World
Bracken's World
Bracken's World is an American drama series broadcast on NBC from September 19, 1969 to December 25, 1970. The series was created and produced by Dorothy Kingsley.-Synopsis:...

Cameo Guest appearance
1978 Switch
Switch (TV series)
Switch is an American action-adventure, tongue-in-cheek detective series starring Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner, who worked as private eyes, for a deceptive sting operation...

Girl in the Bubble Bath Guest Appearance
1979 Hart to Hart
Hart to Hart
Hart to Hart is an American television series, starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, a wealthy couple who also moonlighted as amateur detectives. The series was created by writer Sidney Sheldon and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg...

Movie Star Pilot episode, as Natasha Gurdin

Other awards

Year Organization Award Film Result
1946 Box Office Magazine Most Talented Young Actress of 1946 Tomorrow Is Forever
Tomorrow Is Forever
Tomorrow Is Forever is a 1946 black-and-white film distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, directed by Irving Pichel, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles and George Brent. The music score is by Max Steiner...

 
Won
1956 National Association of Theatre Owners
National Association of Theatre Owners
The National Association of Theatre Owners is a trade organization based in the United States whose members are the owners of movie theaters. Most major theater chains are members, as are many independent theatre operators; collectively, they account for the operation of over 26,000 motion...

 
Star of Tomorrow Award Won
1957 Golden Globe Award  New Star Of The Year – Actress Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...

 
Won
1958 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Dramatic Performance Marjorie Morningstar
Marjorie Morningstar (film)
Marjorie Morningstar is a 1958 melodrama film based on the 1955 novel of the same name. The film, released by Warner Bros. and directed by Irving Rapper tells a fictional coming of age story about a young Jewish girl in New York City in the 1950s...

 
Nominated
1958 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (13th place)
1959 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (7th place)
1960 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (9th place)
1961 Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a movie theater at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. It is on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame.The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922...

 
Handprint Ceremony Inducted
1961 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (14th place)
1962 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Dramatic Performance Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass
Splendor in the Grass is a 1961 romantic drama film that tells a story of sexual repression, love, heartbreak, and manic-depression, which the character Deanie suffers from...

 
Nominated
1962 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (5th place)
1963 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Musical Performance Gypsy
Gypsy (1962 film)
Gypsy is a 1962 American musical film produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass is based on the book of the 1959 stage musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable by Arthur Laurents, which was adapted from Gypsy: A Memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee.Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics for...

 
Nominated
1963 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (2nd place)
1964 Mar del Plata Film Festival
Mar del Plata Film Festival
The Mar del Plata International Film Festival is an international film festival that takes place every November in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina...

 
Best Actress Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger is a 1963 romantic comedy drama film made by Pakula-Mulligan Productions and Boardwalk Productions and released by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay by Arnold Schulman.The film stars Natalie Wood,...

 
Won
1964 New York Film Critics Circle Awards
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
New York Film Critics' Circle Awards are given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide by an organization of film reviewers from New York City-based publications. It is considered one of the most important precursors to the Academy Awards....

 
Best Actress Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger is a 1963 romantic comedy drama film made by Pakula-Mulligan Productions and Boardwalk Productions and released by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay by Arnold Schulman.The film stars Natalie Wood,...

 
Nominated
1964 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Dramatic Performance Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger
Love with the Proper Stranger is a 1963 romantic comedy drama film made by Pakula-Mulligan Productions and Boardwalk Productions and released by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay by Arnold Schulman.The film stars Natalie Wood,...

 
Nominated
1964 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (3rd place)
1965 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (6th place)
1966 Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...

 
World Film Favorite Won
1966 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (8th place)
1967 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (3rd place)
1968 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (12th place)
1970 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (9th place)
1971 Golden Laurel Awards Top Female Star Nominated (9th place)
1987 Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...

Inducted

External links

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