Oscar Profile #312: Natalie Wood

Born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, California on July 20, 1938, the future Natalie Wood’s parents were Russian and Ukraine immigrants who barely spoke English. They changed the family name to Gurdin when they became U.S. citizens. At the age of four, while the family was living in Santa Rosa, the production company for 1943’s Happy Land came to town and Natalie was cast in an uncredited role. With stars in her eyes, her mother packed up the family and moved to Los Angeles hoping Natalie would get more roles. She was finally cast in an important role in 1946’s Tomorrow Is Forver at the age of seven. Her breakthrough role came a year later in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street.

Wood continued to play important roles as a child actress, most notably as Margaret Sullavan’s daughter in 1950’s No Sad Songs for Me, Joan Blondell’s daughter in 1951’s The Blue Veil, Bing Crosby’s daughter in 1952’s Just for You and Bette Davis’ daughter in the same year’s The Star. In numerous TV series for the next few years, her career reached a milestone with 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause for which she received her first Oscar nomination. In 1956 she had another iconic role as the kidnapped girl in The Searchers and played her first starring roles in The Burning Hills and The Girl He Left Behind, both opposite Tab Hunter.

Married to Robert Wagner in 1957, Wood was a major star now, in leads opposite Gene Kelly in 1958’s Marjorie Morningstar, Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis in the same year’s Kings Go Forth, James Garner in 1960’s Cash McCall and Wagner in the same year’s All the Fine Young Cannibals. An affair with Warren Beatty during the making of 1961’s Splendor in the Grass led to her divorce from Wagner in 1962. That film, however, earned her a second Oscar nomination, while her follow-up film, the same year’s West Side Story was that year’s Best Picture Oscar winner.

At the peak of her stardom now, Wood was a sensation in 1962’s Gypsy in support of Rosalind Russell and earned a third Oscar nomination for 1963’s Love With the Proper Stranger opposite Steve McQueen. 1964’s Sex and the Single Girl and 1965’s The Great Race, both opposite Tony Curtis, were box office hits but critical duds. 1965’s Inside Daisy Clover and 1966’s This Property Is Condemned, both opposite Robert Redford, were hits with slightly better reviews. 1969’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a forced comedy about the then topical issue of wife swapping, was a major success but both Wood and co-star Robert Culp were upstaged by newcomers Dyan Cannon and Elliot Gould. Her career subsequently suffered, as did her marriage to writer-producer Richard Gregson to whom she was married from 1969 to 1972 and with whom she had her first child. She remarried Wagner in 1972 with whom she had a second child. She and Wagner starred in a successful 1976 TV adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Laurence Olivier. Her last role of consequence was a 1979 TV mini-series of From Here to Eternity in the role Deborah Kerr played in the 1953 Oscar-winning film for which she won a Golden Globe.

While on a break from filming 1983’s Brainstorm with co-star Christophe Walken and husband Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident on California’s Catalina Island on November 29, 1981. She was 43.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, directed by George Seaton (1947)

Wood was 8 when she played the daughter of divorced Macy Special Events Director Maureen O’Hara’s who hires Edmund Gwenn to be Macy’s Santa, not knowing he’s the real thing. They, as well as John Payne as the young lawyer who defends Gwenn at his sanity hearing, Gene Lockhart as the judge, an unbilled Thelma Ritter as a harried shopper and many others, are all working at the top of their respective games in this Thanksgiving Day-Christmas morning classic. Nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, it won three including Best Supporting Actor for veteran character actor Gwenn.

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, directed by Nicholas Ray (1955)

This teen classic was released less than a month after James Dean’s fatal car crash cut his brilliant career short. It was the second of only three films in which he starred. With a choice between this film and East of Eden, released earlier in the year, Oscar voters chose to nominate him for that film, but gave supporting nominations to Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood as his equally rebellious friends here. Dean would be nominated posthumously again the following year for Giant, but Wood would have to wait another five years to receive her second nomination, her first in lead for Splendor in the Grass

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, directed by Elia Kazan (1961)

Wood’s career had reached a peak with 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause, 1956’s The Searchers and 1958’s Marjorie Morningstar, but the flop of 1960’s All the Fine Young Cannibals put her career into a tailspin. Kazan, who had directed Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront and James Dean in East of Eden found the perfect vehicle for her to give an emotionally riveting performance as strong as Brando and Dean in her emotionally scarred girl on the brink of womanhood in Splendor in the Grass.

WEST SIDE STORY, directed by Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins (1961)

Although it was Splendor in the Grass which earned Wood her Oscar nomination for films released in 1961, it was West Side Story with its elven Oscar nominations and ten wins including Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (George Chakiris) and Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno) that would bring her lasting fame. The film version of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim musical eclipsed even Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause and The Searchers as Wood’s favorite film amongst her legion of fans the world over.

LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER, directed by Robert Mulligan (1963)

Mulligan was fresh office his Oscar nomination for To Kill a Mockingbird, Wood was fresh off the back-to-back successes of West Side Story and Gypsy and Steve McQueen was fresh off the box-office bonanza, The Great Escape. All three together were sure to light up the Christmas, 1963 box-office and they did. Wood was an Italian Catholic Macy’s salesgirl left pregnant by love ‘em and ‘leave ‘em McQueen. The film was nominated for five Oscars including another Best Actress nod for Wood. Wood and McQueen were both nominated for Golden Globes.