For all but Baby Boomers, it is probably puzzling
to see murder headlines about a starlet who allegedly drowned drunk when she
fell off her yacht “Splendor” near Santa Catalina 43 years ago.
But no actress who lived such a short life
figured more in the lives in those born after World War II than Natalie Wood.
There were no videos and not much TV. Just
the movie show or the drive-in.
Orson Welles said even as a youngster she was
“so good she was terrifying.” She earned three Academy Award nominations before she was 25.
Wood had just turned 43, virtually completed
her 56th film, while working in film 39 of those years with few
breaks.
She was headed to Broadway for her dream
role: the mysterious Anastasia. There have been many claims, none proven, that
Tsar Nicholas II’s youngest daughter survived a massacre by Russian
Bolsheviks.
Wood, who was born in San Francisco of
Russian parents who had fled Siberia, had taught herself about movies while
watching them on her mother’s lap. She thought the cast was talking to her.
Who can forget John Wayne chasing her down on
horseback in “The Searchers” in 1956 as she ran away to stop him from killing
her in revenge for having been kidnapped and living with a tribe of Comanche
led by the warrior Scar? Wayne’s character, Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards, had
just scalped Scar for murdering his family and others.
But instead of killing his niece, Wayne lifts
her up and says: “Let’s go home Debbie.”
In 1981, many movies later, including the
storied “West Side Story,” and the generation-defining “Rebel Without A Cause,”
she starred with Steve McQueen, James Dean, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon. and
Laurence Olivier, Welles, James Garner, Christopher Walker and Robert Wagner,
who married her twice. Wagner was eight years her senior, and Hollywood wags
said the studio arranged their marriage when she was 18.
When she was found drowned Nov. 29, 1981, police treated it as an accident
brought on by drink. Wood could not swim. There were many unanswered questions,
most important why no one noticed her missing overnight on a small boat.
Friends and family never bought that
narrative.
Wagner kept quiet until giving an interview
to the Daily Mail, in which he admitted there had been angry words with yacht
guest Christopher Walken, mostly over whether Wood she devote more attention to
her career.
Three years ago police began revisiting the
case, partly because the yacht’s captain doubted the official version of
events.
Celebrity Journal claims Wood’s body will be
exhumed to determine the exact cause of death and whether there were any
injuries.
Homicide detectives investigating the mysterious death of
NATALIE WOOD 33 years ago should exhume the body to determine whether or not
Robert Wagner killed her.
“That’s the bombshell demand from the chief investigator on
the cold case who claims to have unearthed new evidence suggesting the screen
siren’s skull was brutally bashed in before she plunged to a watery death off
Catalina Island in 1981,” The National Inquirer said.
Sources:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1145430/I-blamed-Natalie-Woods-death-Robert-Wagner-night-wife-disappeared.html
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