Natalie Wood: A Life

Gavin Lambert knew Natalie Wood, but he manages to refer to himself very rarely in this biography of the famous actress who drowned mysteriously one night on the family yacht. Nor does he manage to shed much light on the peculiar events of that sad ending, although he clears away the debris of gossip and hearsay spread by unscrupulous people who were out to make a buck. (POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW)

What he does do is present his subject first and foremost as an actress, shedding considerable light on the “studio system” of the time, which consciously compromised her sincere attempts to be an actress, rather than simply a movie star. He also explains her lifelong fear of dark water, the result of an unscrupulous director and her stage show more mother, who conspired to trick her in a movie scene where a bridge collapses. Their purpose was for the child to register genuine fear – which she did -- but she almost drowned, and never got over the trauma. Her mother observed no limits in promoting Wood’s career, even turning a blind eye to her daughter’s affair at 16 with Nick Ray, a man in his forties and the director of Rebel without a Cause, although she put a stop to Natalie’s simultaneous affair with the young Dennis Hopper, who could offer her daughter no career opportunities. (END OF SPOILERS)

Lambert lets us see how these beginnings guided Wood’s life, but all along the way he shows genuine sympathy for a woman who never got past a few excellent roles, and suffered the humiliation of so many terrible ones in which she was over made-up and under directed. His final chapter outlines again the progress of her career on a purely professional basis, carefully describing each scene in which she achieved real acting skill and artistic brilliance. Natalie would have appreciated that. I came away with more respect for the writer than the subject, who in the final analysis was a very pretty woman whose talent was never fully realized. show less