These days, Natalie Wood's Hollywood career is overshadowed by her tragic death in 1981 at age 43, drowning while on a weekend boating trip with her husband Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken, co-star of her last film.
Her death was ruled an accident — Wood had been drinking — but the case was reopened in 2011 after the boat's captain claimed a fight between Wood and Wagner led to her death. Her amended death certificate blames "drowning and other undetermined factors,'' but no charges have ever been brought.
The subject of an all-day "Summer Under the Stars'' tribute today on TCM, the gorgeous Wood was considered a huge star in several important movies in her heyday, the early 1960s. Never mind that she never lacked for critical detractors like The New Yorker's Pauline Kael, who called her "brassy and mechanical, with wind-up emotions.''
Everett Collection / Everett Col
Natalie Wood in "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955).
Photos: The Natalie Wood festivalThe day begins with Stuart Heisler's "The Star'' (1952), with 13-year-old Natalie as fading star Bette Davis' daughter, capping a childhood career that stretched back to 1943 and most famously included "Miracle on 34th Street'' (1947).
Wood came back to films two years later as a contract player at Warner Bros. Her breakthrough came when was cast opposite James Dean in the iconic "Rebel Without a Cause'' (1956) and was nominated as Best Supporting Actress — though the Harvard Lampoon griped about her "saccharine, whining caricatures of American girlhood.''
She had a supporting role as the kidnapped half-breed who John Wayne seeks in the John Ford classic "The Searchers'' (1956), but other films she made for Warners — like Frank Tuttle's thriller "A Cry in the Night,'' as another kidnap victim — were less successful, and she was suspended after refusing a loan-out to Universal Pictures.
Wood bounced back after 18 months for the coveted lead, Maria, in Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' "West Side Story'' (1961), despite the need to dub her singing voice and complaints she made a less than convincing Puerto Rican. The film won 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, but Wood wasn't nominated.
She did receive the first of her two Best Actress nods (the other was for "Love With a Proper Stranger,'' not being shown on TCM) for the film she made right after "Story,'' though it was released a month before. She gives arguably her best performance as a young Kansas woman in the 1920s who goes bonkers because she can't sleep with Warren Beatty in Elia Kazan's "Splendor in the Grass'' (1961).
Almost everyone agrees that the not particularly well-endowed Natalie, who had to be dubbed again for musical numbers, was miscast as stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in Mervyn LeRoy's "Gypsy'' (1962). But it was a big hit and she displayed her modest comic talents in the likes of Richard Quine's "Sex and the Single Girl'' (1964), loosely based on Helen Gurley Brown's nonfiction bestseller, and Blake Edwards' star-filled period auto racing comedy "The Great Race'' (1965).
She returned to drama playing a 15-year-old movie star inspired by Judy Garland in Robert Mulligan's "Inside Daisy Clover'' (1965), with Robert Redford playing the possibly gay actor she briefly marries. Her two musical numbers were dubbed in this critical and financial disaster.
Wood made a spectacular comeback in Paul Mazursky's wife-swapping comedy "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice'' (1969), but then retired for a while to have children. She worked mostly in television after that. The film she was working on when she died, "Brainstorm,'' was released two years after her death.
How did Wood become such a big star? Partly, it was lack of competition from contemporaries when older stars like Bette Davis were aging out of lead roles.
"She is pretty, she is vivacious, she is competent, she is always watchable,'' wrote David Shipman in "The Great Movie Stars: The International Years'' (1972). "It could be maintained that she was lucky, that she happened to be around in an era deficient in leading ladies.''
The Natelie Wood Festival
Today on TCM
6 a.m. THE STAR (1962)
7:30 a.m. A CRY IN THE NIGHT (1956)
9 a.m. WEST SIDE STORY (1961)
11:45 a.m. THE SEARCHERS (1956)
1:45 p.m. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)
3:45 p.m. SPLENDOR IN TH E GRASS (1961)
6 p.m. SEX ANDTHE SINGLE GIRL (1964)
8 p.m. THE GREATRACE (1963)
11 p.m. GYPSY (1962)
1:30 a.m. BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (1969)
3:30 a.m. INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (1965)
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