In life, Natalie Wood was one of Hollywood’s most alluring actresses. But in death, she remains a mystery.
Fresh scrapes and bruises on her body suggested that she may have been assaulted before she died, but the investigation was closed without any charges. Wagner, Walken and Davern’s accounts shifted over time and they have never fully clarified what happened that night.
In the early stages of her career, Wood was a popular child star. She appeared on the television shows The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse, Mayor of the Town, Four Star Playhouse, The Ford Television Theatre, and General Electric Theater. In the 1953-54 television season, she played Ann Morrison, the teenage daughter in the ABC situation comedy The Pride of the Family. She also had roles in the feature films The Silver Chalice and One Desire.
Wood successfully made the transition from child star to ingenue at age 16 with her role as the girlfriend of a troubled outsider in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). This film, Nicholas Ray’s groundbreaking depiction of teenage rebellion and angst, garnered her an Academy Award nomination. She followed this with a small, but crucial role in John Ford’s The Searchers (1956).
As an actress under contract to Warner Brothers, Wood often made movies she did not want to and was criticized for her bland performances. For example, she disliked her part as a white girl abducted and raised by Native Americans in The Searchers. She felt the script lacked depth and her performance was uninspired. Despite these missteps, she continued to receive positive reviews from critics for her work in films such as The Cracker Factory and the mini-series From Here to Eternity.
Although she had a number of hit films in the early part of her adulthood, Wood’s career seemed to stagnate after 1969’s social comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. She did not make any significant appearances in theatrical films in the ensuing years, and instead focused on her personal life. She married screenwriter Richard Gregson in 1972, had a daughter with him named Natasha, and then divorced him before marrying Wagner in 1974.
Her marriage to Robert Wagner
The old-fashioned studio system set Wood and Wagner up on a date in 1956, ostensibly to garner publicity for the star. They hit it off, and soon the couple were married. It was a happy marriage until he began to sulk in the face of less-than-stellar films. He eventually cheated on her, and she dumped him. She dated numerous men afterward, including singer Frank Sinatra and actor Henry Jaglom. She also had a brief dalliance with Elvis Presley, according to Bobbie Ann Mason’s book.
Wood starred in many of the most popular movies of the 1950s and 1960s, including a starring role alongside Maureen O’Hara in Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street and as brooding James Dean’s love interest in Rebel Without a Cause. She was also a top star in the 1961 Broadway musical West Side Story, which she starred with Richard Beymer and Rita Moreno. Her career slowed down in the 1970s, but she continued to work and occasionally appeared on TV.
After Wood’s death, rumors swirled that Wagner was involved in her death. However, Gregson Wagner tells the documentary that her mother didn’t want to die and that she didn’t have a high enough blood-alcohol level to cause drowning. He claims that her dinghy was found nearby, and he believes that she may have fallen into the water while trying to secure it.
Not long after Wood’s death, Wagner moved on and started a relationship with Jill St. John, who he had known since they were both contract players at 20th Century Fox. The couple married in 1990. St. John was familiar with the pain of losing a spouse as she had lost her first husband, Lance Reventlow, in a plane crash in 1972.
Her roles in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and West Side Story (1961)
In 1955, when she was only 16 years old, Wood was cast in the role of Judy in the blockbuster film Rebel Without a Cause. This success set her on the path to a series of roles as the neglected daughter of other actors, including Fred MacMurray in Father Was a Fullback and Dear Brat, Margaret Sullavan in No Sad Songs for Me, and James Stewart in The Jackpot. During this period, she also appeared in several TV shows and made numerous television movies.
In 1961, she starred in West Side Story, directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise. The film was a major box office and critical success, and it earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. According to Tibbetts, this and the previous year’s Rebel Without a Cause were “modern allegories based on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ themes, including private restlessness and public alienation.”
While making the film, Wood had to perform a number of sexually explicit scenes, which were controversial for its time. The Production Code Administration, led by Geoffrey Shurlock, monitored the picture and forced Kazan to cut many of them. During one scene, Wood had to swim into a lake in the dark of night while wearing only her bathing suit. She was nervous about the sequence, and worried that she would drown. The director reassured her by getting into the water with her.
In 1962, Wood starred in the musical Gypsy, a role that brought her even more critical acclaim. She was praised for her performance as the headstrong stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, and she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She made her final appearance in the sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice in 1969, and she acted only occasionally after that.
Her divorce from Robert Wagner
Wood was an Oscar-winning actress, a devoted family woman and a lively person who made everyone around her happy. She was America’s sweetheart thanks to her numerous gigs as a child actress and her lead role in the 1961 film West Side Story. But that doesn’t mean that her personal life was easy. She suffered through several divorces and rumored flings with male co-stars. But even though she had a rough start in her youth, she managed to find happiness later on.
She married twice during her lifetime and had two children with both of her husbands. Her first marriage to Robert Wagner lasted for seven years before the couple separated in 1962. Rumors had it that the reason behind the split was Wagner’s infidelity with his Splendor in the Grass costar Warren Beatty. But he denied the allegations. The following year, he remarried to actress Marion Marshall.
In a recently published book titled Fatal Voyage: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood, author Laura Finstad claims that Wood found Wagner in flagrante delicto with his butler David Cavendish at their Beverly Hills home. According to her sister Lana, the actress became hysterical and smashed a glass window before fleeing the scene in her nightgown.
Police investigated the incident, but the case was closed. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reopened the investigation in 2011 after receiving scores of tips. They labeled Wagner as a person of interest, but he denied any involvement in his wife’s death.
Wood was 43 when she died during a Thanksgiving weekend boat trip off the coast of California with her son from her second marriage, actor Christopher Walken and their friend, producer Richard Gregson. Her body was found floating in the ocean. The cause of her death was never determined but it was ruled an accident.
Her death
Groomed for stardom from birth by her ambitious mother, Maria, Natalie Wood died mysteriously in a drowning accident off the coast of Southern California in 1981. Her death remains a mystery to this day, and it’s likely that it will remain so.
Wood was filming the thriller Brainstorm during her final days when she died. She and co-star Christopher Walken, as well as the boat captain, had been drinking all night. The film’s director, Doug Trumbull, had to rewrite the ending of the movie, and a stand-in and sound-alikes were used in place of her for some scenes.
The four had dined at Doug’s Harbor Reef in Two Harbors and then returned to their yacht, named Splendour. According to the restaurant’s manager, Don Whiting, the group was very intoxicated at the time of Wood’s disappearance. He said he believed that Wagner and Walken had gotten into an argument. Ten to 15 minutes passed before Wagner called Harbor Patrol to report Wood missing. Her body was found the next morning about a mile from the yacht, with a small dinghy beached nearby.
There have been many theories about the cause of Wood’s death, but nothing has ever proven conclusive. In 2011, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials reopened the investigation and changed the cause of death from accidental drowning to undetermined factors. The coroner also noted fresh bruises on Wood’s body, but the investigation was closed and no charges were ever filed. Wagner, now 91, has always denied any involvement in the actress’s death. He has not been interviewed by police for several years. The case is still classified as suspicious.