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


From Library Journal
Finstad (Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley) also served as producer of Natasha, an ABC-TV film that aired in January. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Natalie Wood pretty much skipped her childhood and went straight to stardom. She made her first movie at age 6. By the time she died she'd had a lifetime in show biz. Suzanne Finstad seems to have included every detail of that life in this exhaustive biography, going back to her parents' lives in Russia before Natalie was born. Most of the details are intriguing, from the clunky bracelets Wood wore to cover a broken wrist that was never set properly to a minute-by-minute breakdown of the final drunken hours before the beautiful film icon drowned in the "dark water" a gypsy had long ago predicted. Lana Wood, the subject's younger sister, gives an intense, but highly listenable, reading to material that sometimes calls for her to quote herself. Although Finstad comes close to making accusations (not well supported) of foul play in Wood's untimely death, Lana Wood remains objective. She only allows her own emotions to show through at the end--when she cries. Some readers will find themselves crying right along with her. M.C. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
A Hollywood legend is revivified in this responsible biography. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The fruit of nearly 400 interviews, this authoritative biography offers perhaps our first comprehensive view of a woman and movie actress whose life, until now, had remained as much a mystery as her unexplained 1981 drowning. Finstad's zestful research illuminates every phase of Wood's abbreviated life, from her sudden fame as a nine-year-old child star to her last night aboard The Splendour. Apparently, Ms. Wood took her role as sex symbol seriously: The former Natasha Nikolaevna Zacharenko conducted offscreen romances with Elvis Presley, James Dean, Steve McQueen, Warren Beatty, and Robert Wagner.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 shedsan 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 CRITICS

Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post Book World

[Finstad] helps us reach what certainly seems to be a clearer understanding of a woman who, it turns out, was even more interesting, appealing and vulnerable in private than on the screen. A resident of Los Angeles whose previous books include a biography of Priscilla Presley, Finstad also has a keen sense of how that city's dream factory simultaneously turns women into stars and leaves them bereft.

Library Journal

Fans of celebrity biographies will be interested in the life story of Wood, who was born in San Francisco in 1938 to Russian immigrants, the second of three daughters. Her name was Natasha Zakharenko, later Gurdin. Positive that her dark-eyed daughter was destined for fame, Maria Gurdin got Natasha her first screen role at age six, controlling her life and career and providing dire warnings about men and other perils. She did not dispel Natalie's terrible fear of "dark water," which Finstad repeats many times throughout the tale, leading up to the actress's tragic drowning in 1981 at age 43. Wood's screen successes include Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, and The Searchers. She had male companions Raymond Burr, Dennis Hopper, and Frank Sinatra but the great love of her life was actor Robert Wagner, whom she married, divorced, and remarried. The mysterious circumstances of her death are reviewed in detail; Finstad conducted hundreds of interviews with friends, attorneys, the coroner, and other officials. Wood's younger sister Lana's careful reading keeps the story from sounding sensational. For popular collections. Nann Blaine Hilyard, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile