Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood
by Suzanne Finstad
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Book Summary Information
Author: Suzanne FinstadEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-04-09
ISBN: 0609809571
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Book Reviews of Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood
Book Review: Call Her Natasha
Summary: 5 Stars
Having heard so much about this book, and having seen the ABC TV movie, "The Mystery Of Natalie Wood" (which was based on this biography), I couldn't refrain from getting a copy and seeing for myself - I have been a fan of Natalie Wood since I was a teenager. Suzanne Finstad did a commendable job, beginning from Wood's ancestral lineage (or as best could be told, since Maria Gurdin was known for misconstruing the facts and fantasizing an aristocratic or gypsy past). The Romanovs and gypsy superstitions reigned in the lives of the Gurdins, which "Mud" inflicted on her appealing second daughter, Natasha. This "Mommie Dearest" lived through this vulnerable child, all the while ignoring her other two girls, Olga and Lana, and relegating her husband Nicholai into the background. This made for tension and domestic violence within the home as little Natasha morphed into "Natalie Wood" a child actress who was her family's breadwinner. All the pressures and phobias took its toll on a frail psyche, with a stage mother from Hell always lurking in the shadows, whispering warnings of dark water, sex, and kidnapping, and never allowing her to be a child, or have playmates her own age. Although she warned Natalie about intimate involvements with unknowns or males of her own age, Mud seems to have had no problem pushing the girl towards powerful Tinsletown personalities to further her career. Even as an adolescent Natalie rebelled, the fears instilled in her scarred her for life, and played a part in many of her relationships, as well as her career. A brutal rape at the hands of a famous actor (who is not named, although it's not too hard to guess his identity, as his family is still very active in the film industry, hint, hint), left her all the more traumatized, and unable to report the crime due to the studio system. Her life had many twists and turns, such as an intense friendship with the ill-fated James Dean, an affair with a middle-aged director, and her marriages to Robert Wagner, which seemed to have much more drama than has ever been publicly acknowledged, and her long-awaited motherhood, only to have her life snuffed out by the element she feared beyond any other - water.
Some of her films are discussed in depth, as well as recalls by friends, coworkers, and her sisters. Robert Wagner refused to meet with Finstad, insisting that a more accurate account of Wood's life was upcoming - the result was "Natalie Wood: A Life" by Gavin Lambert (which, I think, was written as a rebuttal), and I couldn't help but notice that there are less favorable reviews for that biography.
There will probably always be a debate about Natalie's tragic death; there are so many unanswered questions, and until certain parties decide to talk (if ever), the truth may just be carried away with the tide.
Fly free, Natasha.
Summary of Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood was always a star; her mother made sure this was true. A superstitious Russian immigrant who claimed to be royalty, Maria had been told by a gypsy, long before little Natasha Zakharenko's birth, that her second child would be famous throughout the world. When the beautiful child with the hypnotic eyes was first placed in Maria's arms, she knew the prophecy would become true and proceeded to do everything in her power ? everything ? to make sure of it.Natasha is the haunting story of a vulnerable and talented actress whom many of us felt we knew. We watched her mature on the movie screen before our eyes ? in Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass, and on and on. She has been hailed ? along with Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor ? as one of the top three female movie stars in the history of film, making her a legend in her own lifetime and beyond. But the story of what Natalie endured, of what her life was like when the doors of the soundstages closed, has long been obscured.
Natasha is based on years of exhaustive research into Natalie's turbulent life and mysterious drowning in the dark water that was her greatest fear. Author Suzanne Finstad, a former lawyer, conducted nearly four hundred interviews with Natalie's family, close friends, legendary costars, lovers, film crews, and virtually everyone connected with the investigation of her strange death. Through these firsthand accounts from many who have never spoken publicly before, Finstad has reconstructed a life of emotional abuse and exploitation, of almost unprecedented fame, great loneliness, poignancy, and loss. She sheds an unwavering light on Natalie's complex relationships with James Dean, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Raymond Burr, Warren Beatty, and Robert Wagner and reveals the two lost loves of Natalie's life, whom her controlling mother prevented her from marrying. Finstad tells this beauty's heartbreaking story with sensitivity and grace, revealing a complex and conflicting mix of fragility and strength in a woman who was swept along by forces few could have resisted. Natasha is impossible to put down ? it is the definitive biography of Natalie Wood that we've long been waiting for.
From the Hardcover edition.
Natalie Wood (1938-81) came from the last generation of movie stars shaped by the Hollywood studio system, and Suzanne Finstad gives her life the all-out showbiz celebrity bio treatment in this compulsively readable book. 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 6, 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
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