Authors: Suzanne Finstad
Mason sensed that Natalie was going through a rough patch in her life because of her age, commenting, “Natalie, at that time, didn’t seem very happy.” Mason, who was an attractive and younger thirty-six, considered Natalie to be “really rude” to her, behavior that was uncharacteristic of Natalie, “who went out of her way to be kind to people,” observed Sugar Bates, who had worked with Natalie for over fifteen years.
Natalie discussed with Bates, during filming, her concerns about how she was aging on screen, revealing that she would not have more than one glass of wine at night because it would show up the next day on camera. “She used to chew bubble gum to exercise her chin, because she was worried she had a double chin, and I said, ‘Come on! You’re so perfect!’ She would laugh about stuff like that.”
Bates ascribed Natalie’s concern to “professional vanity,” her legitimate worry that she would get fewer offers if she looked older. “Which was really smart, because she was selling herself as a product, and she wanted to look good.” Natalie toyed with the idea of plastic surgery
around her eyes, but in the end her phobia of doctors prevailed. Her friend Griffin observes, “Natalie was one of those people who would only think of surgery if it was life or death.” Ironically, Mud, the source of her paranoia, had her eyes done then.
Ginger Mason noticed that when R.J. visited the set, Natalie was “insecure and possessive,” which Mason interpreted as part of Natalie’s concern about turning forty. “It was just my instinct… from whatever she was going through at the time, that period of life or something. He would always say hello or try to talk to me, and then he would back off. She was always very somber.”
According to Lana, Natalie had an abiding fear that she would lose R.J. because of what had happened in their first marriage, and watched him closely.
Production designer Richard Sylbert, Natalie’s friend since
Splendor in the Grass
, sat next to her and R.J. at a tribute to John Houseman during
Meteor
, accompanied by his wife, Sharmagne. Both were struck by how melancholy Natalie was, “one of those curious details” that lingered in their minds. Sharmagne Sylbert watched Natalie follow R.J. with her eyes all night, acting “horribly insecure.” Natalie became distressed by a comment that she might be too old to play the schizophrenic teenager in
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
, the passion project she had been trying to get made for years. “She looked really depressed,” Richard Sylbert appraised that night, noticing a similar malaise in R.J. “She was not happy. I could feel it coming out of her pores. She really wanted this marriage to work.”
Natalie’s longtime friend and hairdresser, Bates, saw strains in the marriage during
Meteor
that were not present when she worked with Natalie on
The Affair
. Natalie suggested the cause was R.J.’s drinking. “That was how the industry was. After work, he’d have a few drinks, and it takes its toll.” Natalie enjoyed her Pouilly Fuissé, but she was not by nature or by choice a heavy drinker, because of what she had witnessed with Fahd. “It was a way to relax after a hard day of shooting,” as her stand-in and friend of twenty years, Roselle Gordon, describes.
No one questioned whether Natalie and R.J. were devoted to each other, or to their girls. “They
just adored
each other,” extols Gordon, who watched them together over many years. “It was wonderful to see. What a caring, loving relationship, both of them. Sometimes you’d ask her something and she’d say, ‘Well, let me ask R.J.,’ and she would consult
him. They were just courteous and kind and gentle with each other and loved each other. And I think it was better the second time than the first time, because they were both older, and lived longer and were able to find each other again and appreciate the marriage.”
Natalie had another of her freakish water-related incidents while filming
Meteor
, when she and the rest of the cast were nearly buried in special effects water-based mud (“evil-looking stuff—thin and runny”) on the MGM lot. “I remember tremendous courage from her,” states Neame, who knew that Natalie was afraid to shoot those sequences. “I said, ‘Natalie, how can I help you?’ and she insisted on doing it.”
Even her ultramasculine costars, Sean Connery and Karl Malden, had trepidations. Malden recalls, “Those were difficult scenes for everybody, because it was very real. It was very real. The whole set was filled with tanks which would throw the mud down. There were a couple of times when I was
under
—when that mud was above me—and it was heavy mud, it wasn’t just water. It was heavy, and you had a hard time raising yourself, and if you were under, you had a hard time to get up. And so you had to be careful and protect yourself as much as you could. But Natalie never said anything.” According to Neame’s on-set assistant, Connery “protected” Natalie during shooting the same way his character did, “and it wasn’t theatrics.”
During a break in filming the mud scene, Natalie had what is now a haunting interview with a reporter, foreshadowing her death. “My major concern isn’t remembering the Russian, or getting my accent straight, it’s not
drowning
in the mud. It’s unpredictable. There’s no question that there’s a certain amount of pain. People can break an elbow or a leg or whatever by slipping and falling in their bathrooms or kitchens from a little water on the floor. But when you’re involved with slippery mud and you don’t know what kind of objects are in it—they can control it only to a certain point—there is always the possibility of something going awry. So everybody, including the stunt people, is a little nervous about this sequence.”
In the same conversation, Natalie talked about her recurring near-accidents in water scenes, starting with
The Green Promise
. She brought up another one, from
The Great Race
, that the actors with her in the scene—Jack Lemmon, Peter Falk and Tony Curtis—strangely would not recall. Natalie’s account was eerily prescient of the way she
would drown, off Catalina, a few years hence. “I remember there was an iceberg, and we got swept under it! I was wearing all of these furs and heavy things and because there was machinery underneath—the wave-makers that made everything move—if you got swept underneath there, I hate to think about what could have happened.”
Meteor
was not only a difficult shoot for Natalie physically and emotionally, “the special effects were so disastrous,” Neame forthrightly admits, “the picture also was a disaster.” Natalie would promote it with her usual enthusiasm when it came out late in 1979, over a year behind schedule, though for the first time since the early sixties, she requested to travel by train.
Though she concealed it, Natalie was still a prisoner of her fears and phobias, which made her continuing confrontation of them all the more brave.
Around the time she turned forty, July 1978, Natalie began acting more, unable to completely exorcise “Natalie Wood,” the actress personality that dominated her life from the age of six to twenty-eight. “I think that’s what I
do:
I’m an actress,” as she struggled to explain the next year. “That’s my work. That’s what I know how to do, and that’s what I get pleasure out of doing. That’s my
expression
.”
She admitted in interviews that she needed a “balance” between family and career, something Mud had taught her to believe was impossible. Natalie’s solution was to take Natasha and Courtney, who were seven and four, to the set with her. “She loved the acting,” acknowledges Peggy Griffin. “And quite frankly, to make a good living.”
R.J. and Natalie reconfirmed their agreement that if one of them was on location, the other would stay at home with their daughters. When Courtney was born, they had been fortunate to find a live-in cook/nanny named Willie Mae, who had become a trusted member of the family.
Although Natalie, with Elizabeth Taylor, was considered the last of the great movie stars, she was not a box office attraction, or a leading lady, anymore.
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice
was her last commercial success, a sixties film that seemed frozen in another era. Natalie was clear-eyed about her declining stature, following R.J.’s lead by accepting a miniseries, where her illustrious name assured her a star
role and star treatment, if not prestige. “She didn’t hesitate to do television,” Griffin recalls.
Natalie’s choice in projects was the Deborah Kerr role in a CBS remake of
From Here to Eternity
, which she shot in Hawaii that summer. R.J., whose TV series had been abruptly canceled that spring, filmed the ABC miniseries
Pearl
in Hawaii prior to Natalie’s television movie, providing the Wagners with a tropical summer vacation with Natasha and Courtney. Natalie had fun making
From Here to Eternity
for CBS, receiving a Golden Globe for her work, but it was not
Splendor in the Grass
, nor was it
Rebel Without a Cause
, or
Gypsy
.
R.J. was acutely aware that he was a television star, married to a legend. That June, while he was in Hawaii, director Tom Mankiewicz flew to the island to offer him what would be his next television series, the romantic comedy-drama
Hart to Hart
, which Mankiewicz was hoping he could convince R.J. and Natalie to star in together for ABC. Mankiewicz would later recall R.J.’s poignant response. “I sell soap,” he told Mankiewicz. “My wife sells tickets.”
Natalie did appear in the pilot episode of
Hart to Hart
in a cameo that fall, dressed as Scarlett O’Hara, the Vivien Leigh role she had always longed to play, listed in the credits as “Natasha Gurdin.”
Hart to Hart
, which was produced by the Wagners’ company, would make them wealthier than they already were, and enshrine R.J.’s television persona as the David Nivenish sophisticate he had been mimicking since he was a teenaged caddy. It would also foster a friendship between R.J. and his costar, Stefanie Powers, including Natalie, according to her friend Faye Nuell, who described R.J. and Powers as “brother and sister.”
By November 1978, Natalie and R.J. seemed to have regained their emotional footing since the rocky period surrounding
Meteor
. R.J. was content starring in
Hart to Hart
, a surprise hit, and Natalie was in heaven portraying a vulnerable, wisecracking wife and mother admitted to a psychiatric ward for alcoholism, a role that finally gave expression to her passion for a project about emotional illness. The story also touched on subjects Natalie knew intimately: therapy, and drinking problems. The movie for television was based on a true story based on the life of producer Joyce Burditt, from Burditt’s autobiographical book,
The Cracker Factory
.
“She had read the book,” recalls Burditt, “and she loved it. She thought it was a real story about a real person, and it resonated with
her. What the heroine in the book goes through requires some courage, and I think she identified with that. She loved the character, and I began to feel in the course of making this movie with her that I understood why it resonated with her: I think
she
was a very brave person with a good heart.”
After the debacle of
Meteor
, Natalie leapt to appear in the very sort of movie that appealed to her: an intense drama with a character she related to, shot in a structured, controlled setting. “I’ve decided to go on instinct a lot,” she told reporter Brian Linehan, “in terms of how I respond to material, rather than following a lot of advice. The times that I have done something that I didn’t respond to emotionally right away, it’s generally not worked out too well.”
When Burditt found out that Natalie Wood was interested in playing her in the TV movie, “my first reaction was, ‘My God, she’s a movie star!’ I was amazed.” Burditt worked closely with Natalie, who originally wanted to produce the movie, but ABC had already optioned the book.
According to Burditt, Natalie took charge, quasi producing and directing the ABC movie, which was shot in Cleveland, and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in west L.A. “She had sort of an extreme focus on what she was doing, and what was going on around her in the production. She was a better producer than the producer. She was like the antithesis of the prima donna. It was not only ‘Let’s get it done,’ but ‘Let’s get it done
right.’
She was a particular person. She was particular about the lighting, her makeup had to be right, the atmosphere on the set had to be right, it had to be totally professional. She didn’t like a lax set, which I admired. She would have just been a great producer. It was her film.”
Natalie said later, “I was just in
love
with
Cracker Factory
. They don’t come along every minute. I think it’s very fortunate to get a project like that once in a while, that your whole heart and soul is in.”
She was the Natalie of old during
The Cracker Factory
, impassioned with every aspect of the movie, impressing each person by her kindness. John Martinelli, then a young assistant director, was charmed by Natalie’s refusal to let him run any errands for her. “She did everything herself and demanded nothing from anybody. She was a delight. It was a role that called for no makeup in some scenes and she took it off and
had no complaints. Just a beautiful lady.” Richard Shapiro, the writer-producer, recalls, “It was sincere, she really wanted people to love her.”
Natalie told Shapiro there were three things that were important to her. “The first thing was family—and her house, whatever project she was working on at the house. The second thing was work, which was very important to her. And she talked about a third, friendship. The first and most important was the family, then friends. People
adored
Natalie.”
The production manager, Ed Ledding, would later make the comment that it sold Natalie short to call her a consummate professional. “She was gifted, and knowledgeable. A lot of people are professional that aren’t necessarily gifted.
And
she was very nice. A lot of people that are professional are not particularly nice. She was very nice, she was very talented, and she was
very
knowledgeable.”