Wood’s volatile personal life was catnip for fan magazines. She dated actor Dennis Hopper, hotel heir Nicky Hilton and other movie stars while married to Wagner.
After a brief comeback in the 1969 sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Wood acted sporadically, earning critical praise for her performances in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the television miniseries From Here to Eternity.
Natalie Wood grew up in the world of show business. As a child, she received significant media attention and became “the most exciting juvenile motion picture star of the year.” She made nineteen films during her ten-year film career. Most of them weren’t memorable, but she did get to work with some major stars, including Fred MacMurray in Father Was a Fullback (1949) and No Sad Songs for Me (1950), James Stewart in The Jackpot (1950), Margaret Sullavan in Driftwood (1951) and Joan Blondell in The Blue Veil (1952).
At age 16, Wood made the transition from child star to ingenue. She starred alongside James Dean and Sal Mineo in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance. She also landed a series of guest roles on TV shows like Studio One in Hollywood, Camera Three, Kings Row, Warner Brothers Presents and the Kaiser Aluminum Hour.
By the early 1960s, Wood was frustrated with her career and her relationship with her mother. She attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. She was rushed to the hospital and put on a regimen of daily therapy. As she recovered, she began to realize that what she really wanted was a family.
In 1969, she married British producer Richard Gregson. The couple had a daughter, Courtney, in 1974. During her hiatus from acting, Wood worked in a variety of jobs, including fashion modeling and a stint at the GE Theater. She also took up painting and writing.
After returning to acting, she chose a role that was far from typical for her: the suburban housewife turned sexual swinger in Paul Mazursky’s social satire Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). Her character broke ground by using the F-word in a frank discussion with her husband. Elliot Gould called her “the pillar that holds the whole affair together.”
After the film’s box office failure, Wood went back into semi-retirement to focus on her family. She starred in two more movies, the disaster film Meteor (1979) with Sean Connery and the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980). During this period of her life, she struggled with depression. Despite her personal struggles, she remained a committed mother and wife until her death at the age of fifty-one.
Her Film Career
Wood’s career as a movie star spanned over two decades and saw her play roles both young and middle aged. Her early films, notably Miracle on 34th Street (1947) tugged at the heartstrings of audiences and gave her her first taste of fame. The film was a hit and she began to receive regular offers for movies.
She played a teenage girl in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family and then found more success in her role as Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Director Elia Kazan had cast her for the lead because he felt she had “a true-blue quality with a wanton side held down by social pressure.” The film made her an ingenue and it was here that her screen persona was formed.
After Rebel, Wood moved into more mature dramatic roles. She was excellent in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and West Side Story (1961). Both films were huge hits and garnered her Oscar nominations. The films helped to launch her as one of Hollywood’s hottest stars.
In the 1970s she returned to the big screen for a few feature films but spent most of her time on television. She starred in several TV movies and the mini series From Here to Eternity. She starred in a number of anthology series like Studio One in Hollywood, Camera Three, Kings Row, Warner Brothers Presents and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour. She also guest starred in many TV shows.
In the late ’70s she received positive reviews for her work in a televised production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with husband Wagner and Laurence Olivier. She also had a small role in the 1978 film Switch and guest appeared on Hart to Hart in 1979. After her marriage to producer Richard Gregson ended in 1971 she married again to Robert Wagner and had one daughter, Courtney Wagner. She only made four more theatrical films during her career.
Her Marriage
Groomed for stardom by her ambitious Russian mother, Natalie Wood became one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and ’60s. She starred in the iconic movies Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, and Splendor in the Grass. But the actress’s death in 1981 at age 43 remains a mystery to this day. She was a talented, award-winning actress and by all accounts, a lively, spirited woman who everyone enjoyed being around. She was also a devoted wife and mother.
According to the new HBO documentary, Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind, Wood met her first husband, Robert Wagner, who everyone called RJ, when she was just a teenager. They dated for a while and then started dating again after her divorce.
Throughout the years, the couple had several children together, including daughter Natasha. The last film they made together was the 1980 movie Brainstorm.
But despite having two children, the marriage never seemed to work out for them. It wasn’t long before rumors swirled that Wagner had been cheating on her with his Splendor in the Grass costar Warren Beatty, which Wood denied. There were other reasons for their breakup too. One was that Wood became so enamored of her daughter that she couldn’t concentrate on acting anymore, which made the marriage feel secondary.
Eventually, the couple divorced in 1961. Afterward, she took up painting and became a successful art dealer. In 1976, she told People that she considered herself partially retired. “When a woman gets married and has children, other things have to go aside,” she said.
She then started to pick up smaller film roles, including a role in the 1978 movie Peeper and a part as a recurring character on the TV series Hart to Hart. She also appeared in the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980) with George Segal and Valerie Harper. The role broke ground for her because, although she had a clean, middle-class image, it was the first time she used the word fuck in a film.
Her career seemed to stall out in the ’70s, but she would come back with 1969’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and 1972’s The Candidate. Then, tragedy struck.
Her Death
Wood’s death was a shock, and it has left many questions unanswered. The cause of her drowning remains unclear. She had been drinking heavily the night of her disappearance, but her husband and co-star both insist she jumped into the water accidentally.
Wood was a natural beauty and a skilled actress. But her real life was troubled, and she suffered from multiple nervous breakdowns. She tried to commit suicide on several occasions and received daily psychoanalysis. She had also developed a fear of being alone at night, which may have stemmed from a prophecy her superstitious Russian mother believed had been made by a Gypsy.
At the time of her death, she had been semi-retired from acting and focusing on her family. She had only four more theatrical films to make: Peeper (1975), the disaster film Meteor (1979) with Sean Connery, and the comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980). But it was her television work that earned her most attention and accolades.
After the success of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, she gave birth to her daughter Natasha and married screenwriter Richard Gregson. She took a hiatus from her career to focus on her home life, and appeared only in a handful of films in the late ’70s, including the mini-series From Here to Eternity and the science fiction flick Brainstorm.
In her final years, Wood was very fond of her home on Catalina Island. She and her husband often sailed to the island in their yacht, Splendour. The vessel was frequently seen by fellow sailors, and Wood was known for being friendly with her guests.
The night of her death, she was joined on the boat by her costars Christopher Walken and Dennis Davern, who was captaining their own yacht. According to reports, the trio had been drinking heavily. The investigation into her death has been reopened on several occasions, and new details, questions and suspicions have been raised throughout the decades.
However, investigators have never named a suspect in the case and have no evidence to suggest Wagner or Walken had anything to do with Wood’s death.