She had one of the most expressive looks in the history of cinema and reflected the evolution of the woman of her time like no other. It was Natalie Wood, the actress who would have turned 85 today, July 20. However, the story of Natalie Wood was forever marked by her mysterious death, which today, almost 40 years later, continues to arouse doubts and intrigues that her daughter wanted to end in the documentary that premieres tonight (10:00 p.m.) in exclusive channel TCM, Natalie Wood: Behind the scenes.
This fiction, in which interpreters such as Mia Farrow or Robert Redford also take part, in addition to trying to clear up all doubts about her death, recalls the two times she married Robert Wagner, her courtship with Warren Beatty, and her marriage to the producer and screenwriter Richard Gregson.
He also speaks openly about his emotional instability, his suicide attempt after filming The Race of the Century and the psychoanalytic therapies he underwent throughout his life. And she is also shown as an actress who wanted to take the reins of her career. However, the mystery of her death is the common thread of a documentary with previously unpublished testimonies and images.
“I remember it was Sunday morning after Thanksgiving. I was 11 years old and had spent the night at my best friend Tracy’s house. The radio alarm clock went off. I woke up to a news preview that It said that my mother’s body had been found on the coast of Catalina Island. This is how Natasha Gregson Wagner, creator of the documentary, found out that her mother had drowned. It happened on November 29, 1981 when she was aboard her yacht, the Splendor, named after one of his greatest film successes, Splendor in the Grass, a film that she had shot in 1961 with Warren Beatty.
He was 43 years old and at that time he was already one of the most beautiful faces in classic Hollywood. The protagonist of mythical films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Centaurs of the Desert (1956) or West Side Story (1961), his death impacted the entire society of that time.
Natalie Wood’s death immediately sparked all kinds of rumors and theories, not just in the weeks after her death but many years later when the investigation was reopened. The HBO Max documentary supports the official version of the case. Natalie Wood, her husband Robert Wagner and fellow actor Christopher Walken, who was shooting Project Brainstorm with the actress, had dinner that night on Santa Catalina Island, off the California coast, where they had arrived on the couple’s yacht.
Back on the yacht, the actress retired to sleep. Wagner and Walken, however, as the documentary reveals, got into a heated discussion about the professional future of the actress. Robert Wagner acknowledges in the documentary that he broke a bottle of wine and threatened Christopher Walken, although, as he explains, he later calmed down and the two withdrew. As Wagner recounts in the documentary, Walken told him how important it was for Natalie to work, something that made Wagner feel very bad, who told him not to interfere in his life.
“Suddenly I was saying what your mother should do and how she should behave and that made me very angry,” Wagner explains to Natasha Gregson Wagner. “Your mom went downstairs to get ready for bed and I was with Chris telling him to stay out of his life. And I picked up the bottle and slammed it against the table. I was really mad at him. Looking back I think he there was no justification. He got up and left. And he keeps telling him not to interfere. I was a little drunk, but I calmed down. We went back downstairs and we stayed for a while chatting, “says Wagner.
The actor also remembers that he himself stayed to collect the glass remains of the bottle together with the captain of the ship Dennis Davern, who years later would become one of the protagonists of the story. So he went down to the cabin and that’s when Wagner discovered that his wife was not on board. Neither did he find a small boat moored alongside the ship. “If he had started the boat, we would have heard it,” says the actor. “God, the eternal hours seemed to me!” He assures. A few hours later, the coast guard found the boat empty and, immediately after, the body of Natalie Wood appeared floating in the sea next to some cliffs. “Everything fell apart,” recalls Wagner. “I’ve remembered that night so many times…” he concludes.
The official version was always that Natalie Wood came out of her cabin at one point in the night and wanted to tie up the boat, which was hitting the hull of the yacht. That’s when she hit something or got dizzy and fell into the water. Her death was, therefore, according to the Police, “a painful accident.” Two weeks later, authorities certified her death as an accident.
Several decades later, in 2011, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the death of the actress, the Los Angeles Police reopened the case. The yacht’s skipper, Dennis Daver, and the actress’s sister, Lana Wood, claimed that Robert Wagner was involved in the actress’s death. In fact, it was the captain’s statement that reopened the case by assuring that he was a witness to an argument between Wood and Wagner.
The Police then considered Wagner a “person of interest”, something like a suspect, but after a few weeks of investigation the file was closed again. Still, a year after the reopening of the case, his death certificate was changed to “drowning and undetermined factors” and the record now indicates that “the circumstances are not clearly established.”
The documentary denies, as has been rumored ever since, that the argument between Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken was due to Walken and Natalie Wood having an affair during the filming of Project Brainstorm. “There was a sex scene in the movie and I found there was no chemistry between them. That convinces me that the idea that there could be a love triangle between Natalie, Christopher and Robert is not true. It’s impossible.” says the director of that film, Douglas Trumbull.
Although the documentary shows the testimonies of the last people who saw Natalie Wood alive, her death continues to arouse interest, which for Wood’s daughters is the reason why they still cannot close that tragic episode in their lives. They assure that it is the morbidity of the media that periodically reopens the case and, therefore, the documentary not only tries to clear up all the mysteries surrounding the death of the actress but also to show her most intimate and personal side, especially her role as a mother, because the story of Natalie Wood was not only the story of her death.
Wood was born in San Francisco in 1938. She was the daughter of Russian emigrants and her real name was Natalie Zacharenko. Her mother, a domineering woman, pushed her to be a child star, so she knew her pressure and anxiety from a very young age. She took Wood as her stage name after director Sam Wood. Her first opportunity came from one of the greatest, Orson Welles. “I was his first partner in the cinema and for six or seven takes I was still wrong, but Natalie was not. It was his first film, but she was already a small and perfect professional,” Welles recalls in the documentary.
She acted while still a child in films such as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and in De ilusión se también se vive and as a young woman in Centauros del desierto. She was nominated for an Oscar three times, the first in 1955 for Rebel Without a Cause, the second in 1961 for Splendor in the Grass and the third in 1964 for Love with a Stranger, but probably her most remembered role is that of María in the musical West Side Story.
“I’m an actress first and foremost and I think the moment you become a star, you think about the job and not the stardom that comes with it. I’ve enjoyed the part where you act, when the red light comes on and the camera rolls and you can do your job”, explained the actress herself in an unpublished interview that is included in the documentary.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
