In a career that spanned almost 40 years, Natalie Wood succeeded in making the difficult transition from child star to ingenue to serious actress. On July 20, 1938, she was born Natasha Gurdin in San Francisco, California. Her parents were Russian immigrants who found work in the entertainment industry—her father as a set designer, her mother as a ballet dancer.
At five, Natasha made her film debut in Happy Land (1943). Her next movie had her playing opposite Orson Welles in Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). While working on the film, she was first dubbed Natalie Wood—“Natalie” as an Americanization of her given name and “Wood” as a tribute to the film director Sam Wood. Throughout the rest of her youth, Wood was in constant demand. Her winsome combination of intelligence and sweetness was most memorably captured in Miracle on 34th Street, in which she played a practical little girl who comes to believe in the magic of Christmas. At 17, Wood re-created herself as a teen star in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). The film captured the anxieties of 1950s adolescents and made her an icon to her generation. Revealing a tender vulnerability, Wood won her first Academy Award nomination for the film.
Rebel also made Wood a star of the tabloids due to her romance with costar James Dean. She was linked with other rising celebrities, including singer Elvis Presley and actor Robert Wagner. Wood and Wagner were married in 1957 and starred in All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960). They were divorced in 1962. In Splendor in the Grass (1961), which costarred Warren Beatty in his film debut, Wood made the jump to adult dramatic actress. Playing a young woman driven insane by sexual repression, she was nominated for her second Oscar. Wood also found success as a musical star, even though she could not sing or dance. She appeared (with her singing dubbed) as Maria in West Side Story (1961) and as GYPSY ROSE LEE in Gypsy (1962).
Throughout the 1960s, Wood played young women searching for their identity in a series of films. The most effective was Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), for which she received another Oscar nomination. At the end of the decade, she showed a newfound talent for comedy in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a satire of middle-class sexual mores.
In 1969, Wood married Robert Gregson, with whom she had a daughter, Natasha. After divorcing Gregson in 1972, she remarried her first husband, Robert Wagner. They had one child, Courtney, and Wagner adopted Natasha, who would grow up to become a film actress. In the 1970s, Wood teamed with Wagner for several television projects, including a production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976). She had less success finding suitable film roles. Among her last movies were the disaster film Meteor (1979) and the science fiction thriller Brainstorm (1983). While still filming Brainstorm, Wood disappeared during a yachting vacation with Wagner and their guest, Wood’s costar Christopher Walken. On November 29, 1981, her body was found off the coast of California’s Santa Catalina Island. The victim of an accidental drowning, Natalie Wood died at the age of 43.
Filmography
Year Film1943 Happy Land
1946 The Bride Wore Boots
Tomorrow Is Forever
1947 Driftwood
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Miracle on 34th Street
1948 Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!
1949 Father Was a Fullback
The Green Promise
Chicken Every Sunday
1950 Never a Dull Moment
The Jackpot
Our Very Own
No Sad Songs for Me
1951 The Blue Veil
Dear Brat
1952 The Star
Just for You'
The Rose Bowl Story
1954 The Silver Chalice
1955 Rebel Without a Cause
One Desire
1956 The Girl He Left Behind
The Burning Hills
A Cry in the Night
The Searchers
1957 Bombers B-52
1958 Kings Go Forth
Marjorie Morningstar
1960 All the Fine Young Cannibals
Cash McCall
1961 West Side Story
Splendor in the Grass
1962 Gypsy
1963 Love with the Proper Stranger
1964 Sex and the Single Girl
1965 Inside Daisy Clover
The Great Race
1966 Penelope
This Property Is Condemned
1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
1972 The Candidate
1973 The Affair
1975 Peeper
1976 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
1979 From Here to Eternity
The Cracker Factory
Meteor
1980 The Memory of Eva Ryker
The Last Married Couple in America
Willie & Phil
1983 Brainstorm
Further Reading
Finstad, Suzanne. Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood. New York: Crown, 2001.
Nickens, Christopher. Natalie Wood: A Biography in Pictures. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1986.
Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Gypsy (1962). Warner Home Video, DVD/VHS, 2000.
Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Twentieth Century-Fox, DVD/VHS, 1999/1999.
West Side Story (1961). MGM/UA, DVD/VHS, 1998/1998.