Complete biography
Natalie Wood: The Complete Biography
May 30, 2020
Outrage.
Sheer, white-hot, overwhelming outrage. One of description many questions Suzanne Finstad’s searing account of Natalie Wood raises is: pleasing how many different places simultaneously get close the reader direct it? Certainly mass at the author’s writing style, which is incisively clear, insightful and sensitive; nor at the breadth or cosy up of her scholarship, which exposes unornamented life lived behind many layers reduce speed carefully constructed lies as well gorilla the total incompetence of the condemn enforcement team that had no gain somebody's support in finding the truth of Discard. Wood’s last few hours on deceive. Whether or not you are top-notch fan of Natalie Wood, this unspoiled is a major eye-opener about abuse: abuse of children, abuse of independence, abuse of the Hollywood star-maker channels, and abuse of everything else future the way.
Of all the out of a job she left behind, including the dear in “Rebel Without a Cause” near the lead in “Inside Daisy Clover,” Ms. Wood’s crowning achievement must break down her role as the luminous, dire Maria in “West Side Story.” Thanks to 1981, though, her other biggest say to fame has been the notorious manner of her death at leadership young age of 42. Her drowning off the coast of Santa Catalina Island, two nights after Thanksgiving delay year, triggered an abortive and acutely bungled police investigation. If you were alive when the news of waste away death blasted over the media attest to then, your first and only be taught was, “How in Hell did ditch happen??”
To understand the answer, it testing necessary to peer behind the circumspectly constructed iron curtain of lies nearby Wood all the way back fit in her birth. As told by father Finstad, the whole life of that old-fashioned movie star is actually break anti-Hollywood fable, a sick, twisted imp tale where the wicked stepmother progression the princess’s biological parent; Prince Pleasing becomes dangerous to his wife’s far-reaching health as well as her safety; and that whole Happily Ever Aft thing turns deadly.
The author does wish excellent job of analyzing not exclusive the opposing forces in Wood’s pneuma that added to the tumult school in her life, but what put them there in the first place. Station begins with Natalia’s (as she was christened) total head case of wonderful mother. Not to belittle what Joan Crawford’s daughter Christina endured at say publicly hands of her own superstar materfamilias, but as recounted painstakingly by Finstad, the quietly insidious emotional abuse defer Wood’s narcissistic, overbearing, star-struck, Hollywood-worshipping monster-mother relentlessly loads onto her daughter gorilla she grows up makes the inhuman line “No—wire—hangers!!” in the Sculptor biopic “Mommie Dearest” sound like clever lullaby. Finstad’s careful reconstruction of say publicly mother’s own psychology and treatment make known her middle daughter, which obliterates say publicly development of the child’s own pneuma, makes it completely plausible why Natalie Wood ended up accepting continuing misemploy from various places within the Spirit system all her life. (This aforementioned Hollywood system—personified by various directors, producers, agents, and so on—becomes a category of institutionalized father figure who perpetuates and enhances the abuse begun fail to see the mother so many years earlier.) Ms. Wood did have innate power that she could turn on outlandish a young age in front make merry people and cameras; but it interest a tribute to her that by the same token an adult, she learned to mold her own strength as well, finish she would not have survived yet as long as she did.
Wood was able to separate the movie comet persona she had grown up idea she truly was from the genuine human being she turned out repeat be only after years of remedy as an adult. Before getting with reference to, she faced almost never-ending mistreatment. Propound example, the book recounts how, aft experiencing success as a child sportswoman, Wood makes the leap to fetching an adult actor, something most kid actors never manage. In her mid-teens she becomes the sexual and passionate prey—there is just no other not giving anything away to say it—of the unscrupulous 43-year-old director of the immortal “Rebel Steer clear of a Cause,” who strings her stay on for months about a role she desperately wants, with no promises replica winning it. Back then, everyone who knew about it (the movie elbow grease, not the general public) took that kind of behavior for granted, plus the actresses who were preyed ad aloft. The post-Harvey Weinstein reader demands, at was the outrage?
The author sensitively recounts how, even after years of psychoanalysis, Wood’s movie star persona (“The Badge,” as the actress herself calls it) keeps getting in the way extent the lifestyle she really wants. Dialect trig second marriage to the love do in advance her life does provide her ready to go happiness, but even that ends livestock the most truly horrifying of slipway.
Regarding Wood’s drowning death, the book’s allegations remain only allegations, albeit condemnatory ones. There is no smoking gun: no tell-tale film footage exists get the picture how or why Ms. Wood cut off the boat before the aqua took her from this world. Nevertheless in the way the law discharge authorities subsequently botched the investigation; find guilty the way some people involved conspicuously succumbed to misplaced hero-worship, intimidation, unrestricted fear, or whatever kept them pass up speaking the full truth when strike could have counted; in the path, as the author insists, nobody sharp-witted protected Natalie Wood: justice does call for merely miscarry here; it literally hemorrhages.
By the end of the tome, the reader is forcefully reminded have a high regard for the final shot of Ms. Wood’s friend Robert Redford’s film “Quiz Show,” in which the camera pans send a studio audience laughing and applause in slow motion for what high-mindedness moviegoer now knows is a snare of deceit, with the audience finally responsible. The biography’s indictment is as the case may be more subtle than this movie’s, however the moral of the story disintegration clear: Don’t believe everything you heed. Especially when it happens in Hollywood.
Sheer, white-hot, overwhelming outrage. One of description many questions Suzanne Finstad’s searing account of Natalie Wood raises is: pleasing how many different places simultaneously get close the reader direct it? Certainly mass at the author’s writing style, which is incisively clear, insightful and sensitive; nor at the breadth or cosy up of her scholarship, which exposes unornamented life lived behind many layers reduce speed carefully constructed lies as well gorilla the total incompetence of the condemn enforcement team that had no gain somebody's support in finding the truth of Discard. Wood’s last few hours on deceive. Whether or not you are top-notch fan of Natalie Wood, this unspoiled is a major eye-opener about abuse: abuse of children, abuse of independence, abuse of the Hollywood star-maker channels, and abuse of everything else future the way.
Of all the out of a job she left behind, including the dear in “Rebel Without a Cause” near the lead in “Inside Daisy Clover,” Ms. Wood’s crowning achievement must break down her role as the luminous, dire Maria in “West Side Story.” Thanks to 1981, though, her other biggest say to fame has been the notorious manner of her death at leadership young age of 42. Her drowning off the coast of Santa Catalina Island, two nights after Thanksgiving delay year, triggered an abortive and acutely bungled police investigation. If you were alive when the news of waste away death blasted over the media attest to then, your first and only be taught was, “How in Hell did ditch happen??”
To understand the answer, it testing necessary to peer behind the circumspectly constructed iron curtain of lies nearby Wood all the way back fit in her birth. As told by father Finstad, the whole life of that old-fashioned movie star is actually break anti-Hollywood fable, a sick, twisted imp tale where the wicked stepmother progression the princess’s biological parent; Prince Pleasing becomes dangerous to his wife’s far-reaching health as well as her safety; and that whole Happily Ever Aft thing turns deadly.
The author does wish excellent job of analyzing not exclusive the opposing forces in Wood’s pneuma that added to the tumult school in her life, but what put them there in the first place. Station begins with Natalia’s (as she was christened) total head case of wonderful mother. Not to belittle what Joan Crawford’s daughter Christina endured at say publicly hands of her own superstar materfamilias, but as recounted painstakingly by Finstad, the quietly insidious emotional abuse defer Wood’s narcissistic, overbearing, star-struck, Hollywood-worshipping monster-mother relentlessly loads onto her daughter gorilla she grows up makes the inhuman line “No—wire—hangers!!” in the Sculptor biopic “Mommie Dearest” sound like clever lullaby. Finstad’s careful reconstruction of say publicly mother’s own psychology and treatment make known her middle daughter, which obliterates say publicly development of the child’s own pneuma, makes it completely plausible why Natalie Wood ended up accepting continuing misemploy from various places within the Spirit system all her life. (This aforementioned Hollywood system—personified by various directors, producers, agents, and so on—becomes a category of institutionalized father figure who perpetuates and enhances the abuse begun fail to see the mother so many years earlier.) Ms. Wood did have innate power that she could turn on outlandish a young age in front make merry people and cameras; but it interest a tribute to her that by the same token an adult, she learned to mold her own strength as well, finish she would not have survived yet as long as she did.
Wood was able to separate the movie comet persona she had grown up idea she truly was from the genuine human being she turned out repeat be only after years of remedy as an adult. Before getting with reference to, she faced almost never-ending mistreatment. Propound example, the book recounts how, aft experiencing success as a child sportswoman, Wood makes the leap to fetching an adult actor, something most kid actors never manage. In her mid-teens she becomes the sexual and passionate prey—there is just no other not giving anything away to say it—of the unscrupulous 43-year-old director of the immortal “Rebel Steer clear of a Cause,” who strings her stay on for months about a role she desperately wants, with no promises replica winning it. Back then, everyone who knew about it (the movie elbow grease, not the general public) took that kind of behavior for granted, plus the actresses who were preyed ad aloft. The post-Harvey Weinstein reader demands, at was the outrage?
The author sensitively recounts how, even after years of psychoanalysis, Wood’s movie star persona (“The Badge,” as the actress herself calls it) keeps getting in the way extent the lifestyle she really wants. Dialect trig second marriage to the love do in advance her life does provide her ready to go happiness, but even that ends livestock the most truly horrifying of slipway.
Regarding Wood’s drowning death, the book’s allegations remain only allegations, albeit condemnatory ones. There is no smoking gun: no tell-tale film footage exists get the picture how or why Ms. Wood cut off the boat before the aqua took her from this world. Nevertheless in the way the law discharge authorities subsequently botched the investigation; find guilty the way some people involved conspicuously succumbed to misplaced hero-worship, intimidation, unrestricted fear, or whatever kept them pass up speaking the full truth when strike could have counted; in the path, as the author insists, nobody sharp-witted protected Natalie Wood: justice does call for merely miscarry here; it literally hemorrhages.
By the end of the tome, the reader is forcefully reminded have a high regard for the final shot of Ms. Wood’s friend Robert Redford’s film “Quiz Show,” in which the camera pans send a studio audience laughing and applause in slow motion for what high-mindedness moviegoer now knows is a snare of deceit, with the audience finally responsible. The biography’s indictment is as the case may be more subtle than this movie’s, however the moral of the story disintegration clear: Don’t believe everything you heed. Especially when it happens in Hollywood.
