This month Turner Classic Movies has been showing Natalie Wood movies on Mondays as part of their Star of the Month program. I have always loved Natalie Wood.
I saw West Side Story for the first time when I was around 1o (1971) on TV. Then a little later I saw Gypsy. Who was this beautiful woman in these two musicals? After watching her star in these two musicals, I naturally thought she was a singer. I was surprised to find out later that she was not.
Anyway, when she was about five or six they were filming a movie, Happy Land, in Santa Rosa, where she lived at the time. Her mother took her to the filming location and somehow got her in the movie. All she had to do was drop her ice cream cone and cry. But she did it so well and had so much personality the director, Irving Pichel, was impressed and promised to return one day to use her for another film. In fact he wanted to adopt her, but Nat's dad wouldn't go for that. Her mother, on the other hand may have if it were up to her and the price was right.
Two years later he kept his word and summoned for Natalie for the film Tomorrow is Forever (1946) starring Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles. I saw this the other night on TCM. She was so good. She cried on cue, knew her lines and even spoke Russian.
The first Monday in June on TCM was devoted to her child roles and I watched the whole lineup; Tomorrow is Forever, The Green Promise, Never a Dull Moment, No Sad Songs For Me, Our Very Own and The Star. I passed on The Silver Chalice because she's only in one scene, and by now it was 3:15 am and frankly the movie in boring.
Natalie was nominated for an academy award three times; for Rebel Without a Cause as Best Supporting Actress, and twice as Best Actress for Splendor in the Grass and Love With the Proper Stranger. Some of her other big hits in the 60s were Sex and the Single Girl, The Great Race, Inside Daisy Clover, This Property is Condemned and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
Natalie started acting as a very young child and she continued for most of her life, taking some time off in the 70s to stay home and raise her daughters. She returned to acting in the late 70s in the star studded disaster (literally) Meteor and the comedy, The Last Married Couple in America. For television she starred in the mini-series remake of From Here to Eternity, played an alcoholic wife and mother in The Cracker Factory, and played the title role in The Memory of Eva Ryker (also playing her mother in flashback scenes).
In 1981 she was finishing up the movie Brainstorm and was remarried to Robert Wagner. Over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend she died of drowning in the water off Santa Catalina Island. She was only 43. What really happened on that ill-fated night has never been properly investigated ... but the circumstances remain mysterious and suspicious.
I saw West Side Story for the first time when I was around 1o (1971) on TV. Then a little later I saw Gypsy. Who was this beautiful woman in these two musicals? After watching her star in these two musicals, I naturally thought she was a singer. I was surprised to find out later that she was not.
Anyway, when she was about five or six they were filming a movie, Happy Land, in Santa Rosa, where she lived at the time. Her mother took her to the filming location and somehow got her in the movie. All she had to do was drop her ice cream cone and cry. But she did it so well and had so much personality the director, Irving Pichel, was impressed and promised to return one day to use her for another film. In fact he wanted to adopt her, but Nat's dad wouldn't go for that. Her mother, on the other hand may have if it were up to her and the price was right.
Two years later he kept his word and summoned for Natalie for the film Tomorrow is Forever (1946) starring Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles. I saw this the other night on TCM. She was so good. She cried on cue, knew her lines and even spoke Russian.
The first Monday in June on TCM was devoted to her child roles and I watched the whole lineup; Tomorrow is Forever, The Green Promise, Never a Dull Moment, No Sad Songs For Me, Our Very Own and The Star. I passed on The Silver Chalice because she's only in one scene, and by now it was 3:15 am and frankly the movie in boring.
Natalie was nominated for an academy award three times; for Rebel Without a Cause as Best Supporting Actress, and twice as Best Actress for Splendor in the Grass and Love With the Proper Stranger. Some of her other big hits in the 60s were Sex and the Single Girl, The Great Race, Inside Daisy Clover, This Property is Condemned and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
Natalie started acting as a very young child and she continued for most of her life, taking some time off in the 70s to stay home and raise her daughters. She returned to acting in the late 70s in the star studded disaster (literally) Meteor and the comedy, The Last Married Couple in America. For television she starred in the mini-series remake of From Here to Eternity, played an alcoholic wife and mother in The Cracker Factory, and played the title role in The Memory of Eva Ryker (also playing her mother in flashback scenes).
In 1981 she was finishing up the movie Brainstorm and was remarried to Robert Wagner. Over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend she died of drowning in the water off Santa Catalina Island. She was only 43. What really happened on that ill-fated night has never been properly investigated ... but the circumstances remain mysterious and suspicious.
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