Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood - Softcover

Finstad, Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099431858 ISBN 13: 9780099431855

Publisher: Arrow, 2002

Synopsis

Born Natasha Zakharenko, Natalie Wood continues to haunt us 20 years after her tragic and mysterious death. Her dark hypnotic beauty and passionate performances made her a movie star legend, appearing in over fifty films including West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause for which she was Oscar nominated. The story of her life is tinged with tragedy and drama. Pushed by her domineering, frustrated mother - an alcoholic determined to make her child a star at whatever cost, Natalie grew up fast - lonely and a misfit, uncertain of her identity. At fifteen she had embarked on an affair with a director 30 years her senior, she was brutally raped by a leading Hollywood star when she was sixteen -an attack which her mother forbade her to report. Her leading men frequently became her lovers including Elvis Presley, James Dean , Warren Beatty and the real love of her life, Robert Wagner whom she eventually married twice. Her fear of being alone and the years of exploitation and abuse led to an addiction to sleeping pills and several suicide attempts and for the first time, this book looks at evidence, yet to be published, surrounding her premature and controversial death - drowning at the age of 43. Suzanne Finstad has spent 3 years researching this, the first substantive biography of Natalie Wood, conducting over 400 interviews with friends, family, lovers, co-stars and the police officials who investigated her death.

About this title

Review:

Natalie Wood (1938-81) came from the last generation of movie stars shaped by the Hollywood studio system, and in Natasha Suzanne Finstad gives her life the all-out showbiz celebrity bio treatment. As Finstad sees it, Wood was tortured by the conflict between her real self, born Natasha Zakharenko to Russian immigrants, and the glamorous "Natalie Wood" persona created by her ambitious mother. Wood admired rebellious actors like James Dean, her co-star in Rebel Without a Cause, but she wanted the mink coats, sexy cars, and huge salaries Warner Brothers doled out for appearances in forgettable pictures like Sex and the Single Girl. Working in films from age six, she learned early that the way to get ahead was to please the grownups, a lesson she never really unlearned, even in her wild teens. She ditched a fiancé‚ deemed unsuitable by the studio, to marry suave rising star Robert Wagner, despite warnings from friends that he was bisexual; their first marriage ended when she found him "in a compromising position with another man," but they reunited in 1972 to become Hollywood's golden couple once more. But her attraction to more challenging artists remained; her friendship with Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken sparked the drunken quarrel that in Finstad's account led to Wood's drowning off Wagner's boat. (Chillingly, she had a lifelong fear of water.) Numerous quotes from practically everyone who ever knew Wood evoke Tinseltown's gossipy atmosphere, and Finstad's overwrought prose (she describes Wood as "bound to her mother, as if Maria were a snake coiled around her neck") sustains an appropriately high-pitched mood. Suicide attempts, reckless driving, excessive drinking, rape by an unnamed Hollywood star are all chronicled in detail that might be distasteful if the author weren't so sympathetic towards her vulnerable heroine. --Wendy Smith

Review:

"A gripping tale." (Punch)

"Powerfully gripping" (JG Ballard Daily Telegraph)

"A riveting biography" (Sunday Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0099431858
• ISBN 13: 9780099431855
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 736