Natalie Wood was a child actress who transitioned into teenage, young adult, and middle-aged roles before her death in November 1981. She was the daughter of a housewife and a janitor, and she was born in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents who used multiple aliases.
At the age of four, she appeared in several films. She was often told she was a natural, but it wasn’t easy for the feisty young girl to control her emotions on camera. In her role as the ingenue Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), she had to cry on cue. “It was almost too much for her,” a director said. “She’s a very emotional person.”
After receiving her first Academy Award nomination for Splendor in the Grass (1961), she made a successful transition to an adult actor. She also starred in the musical West Side Story and burlesque film Gypsy Rose Lee (1962), earning more Oscar nominations. She rounded out her career with modern romances Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) and Sex and the Single Girl (1964).
During this time, Wood began dating entertainers like Elvis Presley and heartthrob Tab Hunter. She fought hard for her ability to choose her own films and advocated for equal pay, women’s rights, and helping the LGBTQ community. She sought therapy during a three-year dark period in her mental health, and she hired writer Mart Crowley to help her with a play she was working on.
Miracle on 34th Street
After an erratic start to her career (she had a string of minor film roles and was micromanaged by her mother) Miracle on 34th Street set Natalie Wood on the path toward stardom. The film was a box office hit and earned Wood an Oscar nomination. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz says he cast her because he thought she possessed “a true-blue quality with a wanton side that was held down by social pressure.”
In the movie, Wood plays Susan Walker, a precocious little girl whose well-meaning mother (played by Maureen O’Hara) doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. When Susan meets Kris Kringle, an elderly man who’s hired to play Santa at New York City’s Macy’s department store, she begins to suspect he might be the real thing.
Mankiewicz and screenwriters George Seaton and Valentine Davies crafted a film that’s both gentle and charming. It’s a movie that proves Hollywood sentimentalism can be done with style.
The DVD features a fine soundtrack and a host of behind-the-scenes anecdotes from O’Hara, who recorded this 2006 commentary at the age of 87. Her Irish brogue and warm recollections are a delight. The extras also include a brief interview with Wood and some of her co-stars.
Splendor in the Grass
The film that brought Natalie Wood to the spotlight, Splendor in the Grass, was a drama about love and sexual frustration during the 1920s. It starred Wood and Warren Beatty (in his screen debut) as high school sweethearts Deanie Loomis and Bud Stamper. The film explores their feelings of repressed love and the tension between family morality and sexual desires at a time when “good people” don’t talk about these taboo subjects.
Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by William Inge, this film was a daring and provocative film for its time. The Production Code was in effect at the time, and the director and producer of the film were threatened with censorship when the film was filmed. It was not until 1961 that the film could be released.
Although the film seems dated to some today, it is still a moving drama. In her role as a girl who loses her way in adulthood, Natalie Wood gives a fine performance. She possesses the beauty and radiance to carry off her character’s violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength.
The film also marks one of Natalie Wood’s earliest roles with an off-screen lover, actor Robert Wagner. She married him in 1957 at the age of 18. The marriage lasted only eight years before they separated. The following year, Wood began an affair with Beatty that lasted until 1966, when she attempted suicide.
West Side Story
Wood had earned particular acclaim as the precocious Santa Claus skeptic in Miracle on 34th Street, and she moved into leading roles with Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She won an Academy Award nomination for Splendor in the Grass (the same year she married fellow actor Robert Wagner; they divorced in 1962 and remarried in 1972).
In West Side Story, she delivers a stunning performance as Maria, the star-crossed lover of rival gang members Tony and Riff Randell. Her wide-eyed swooning, as well as her ability to sell both intimate and Broadway bombastic, is the film’s secret weapon. Her co-stars also shine. Ariana DeBose makes for a radiant Anita, while Rita Moreno adds a no-frills luminosity to the role of soda shop owner Valentina.
Wood continued to receive top billing in films until she was no longer a child, and her performances became increasingly layered. The Searchers (1956) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) both received critical praise, and she garnered a Golden Globe for her work in the latter. Although she acted more sparingly in the years to follow, Wood remained popular with audiences; her performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976) and the miniseries From Here to Eternity (1979) were particularly memorable. In her last film, Brainstorm (1983), she starred opposite Christopher Walken and James Dean in a science fiction thriller that didn’t fare so well.
Love with the Proper Stranger
Wood starred in another film with McQueen that year, this one a contemporary drama about an innocent New York City sales clerk (Wood) who begins a tumultuous affair with a jazz musician who also works as a waiter. The story is somewhat bold for the times, as an illegal abortion is a recurring theme in the plot, and both stars are very appealing, particularly in the way they make it clear that their characters are pragmatists and too practical to fall into romance no matter how fate might push them toward it.
Modestly photographed in black-and-white, this film reflects a realistic view of 1960s working class life and makes fine use of urban Big Apple locations. Its deft screenplay emphasizes human quirks and foibles, celebrates ethnicity, and makes a strong point about the importance of family support – all with a surprisingly light touch for such a serious subject matter. Director Mulligan, like his star, keeps the tone just right, never allowing technique or superfluous trimmings to get in the way of the underlying material.
It’s a film that’s a solid, effective work and a great showcase for its stars, and it’s another example of how carefully calculated her career was at RKO on a movie-by-movie basis to stretch her acting abilities and grow her in the eyes of audiences. Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray offers a nice HD presentation of this underrated and exceptionally performed film, with a valuable commentary.
Sex and the Single Girl
Sex and the Single Girl is one of a handful of flicks that made it clear that the 1960s would be a decade where women gained new freedom and attitudes towards sex. This bouncy comedy benefits from a game cast led by Tony Curtis still riding high after Some Like It Hot and Natalie Wood showing that she could handle both the sexy and the comedic with aplomb.
Bob Weston (Curtis) is a writer for the scandal mag Stop, and he wants to sully the reputation of Helen Gurley Brown (Wood). At just 23 years old, the gorgeous and intellectually prodigious psychologist gained celebrity as the author of the best-selling Sex and the Single Girl, a book that extolled female empowerment in the bedroom.
But Weston is suspicious that she may be a fraud and wants to dig deeper. So he impersonates her pantyhose magnate neighbor Frank Broderick and his acerbic wife Sylvia, and gets them to visit Brown as patients.
Then he starts to fall in love with her. But is he a sleazy magazine editor or just a good guy in love? This is a crazy, over the top, arrhythmic sixties comedy, and it can be quite fun if you’re willing to go along with its nonsensical plot. It also gives you the chance to see some of Hollywood’s great faces acting like adorable fools, especially Natalie Wood.