Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood 
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 Customer Review: Wood Biography Reads like Tabloid Gossip rather than Serious Research
I found this biography occasionally interesting, but written in such a way that much of it comes across as the author's gossipy opinion rather than a product of her informed research. Natalie Wood is one of my favorite movie stars. She was beautiful, talented and died in a tragic drowning when she was only forty-three years old. This biography is certainly detailed, and contains many fascinating facts about the actress, her career, and her private life. But the book reads much like a very long profile from the National Enquirer, rather than a journalistic effort from a serious biographer. The author inserts so much uninformed psychoanalysis of Natalie Wood's personality into the biography that her unsubstantiated opinions get in the way of any truth she may be imparting. For instance, the author's pet theory about Natalie Wood's persona is that she was in reality two people -- the movie star "Natalie" and the repressed Mama's girl, "Natasha" who did everything either to please or to get back at her overbearing stage mother. Some of this may be true. It would have certainly made an interesting chapter in the book. But the author relates most everything in the book back to this thesis. I found it tiresome after awhile. Another thing which bothered me about the book is the author's conviction that Natalie Wood's death was not an accident -- she seems invested in creating a Marilyn Monroe-type conspiracy around the drowning. The death is foreshadowed throughout the book in Natalie's fear of "dark water," and the facts surrounding the death are steeped in purple prose about what "really happened" that night. I think that the author has undermined her own credibility here. She makes it clear that Robert Wagner would not be interviewed for the book, and so she creates some kind of foul play insinuations. Was she mad that Wagner would not be associated with her book? Or does she have hard evidence that something was not right about the actress' death? The reader doesn't really know. Ultimately the author has made her opinions and gossip the star of this biography, rather than letting Natalie Wood shine through. This is definitely not the definitive biography of this wonderful actress, but may be your cup of tea if you want to wade through titillation rather than hard evidence.
Customer Review: Bright Sun, Dark Water
Too bad Wood's story-book career is overshadowed by the many unanswered questions surrounding her death. How ironic, I suppose, that the high-profile, high-pressure industry she so excelled at also had a lot to do with many of those questions going unanswered. The sorry fact is that LA's biggest industry has long influenced police investigation when scandal threatens the Hollywood image, all the way back to the murder of William Desmond Taylor. In fact, the book's best part is what I take to be the author's no-punches-pulled, eye-witness testimony surrounding that fateful November night. Two particularly damaging aspects of the investigation emerge-- no sheriff's effort at putting together a time-line surrounding Wood's sudden disappearance (p.441), and the sheriff's refusal to even contact credible witnesses overhearing cries for help during that time frame (pps. 431- 432). Couple that with Frank Sinatra's effort to get respected county coroner Thomas Noguchi removed from the case (p.435), and a classic instance of industry string-pulling takes shape. This is not to insinuate that criminal behavior was necessarily involved in the drowning. Neither the book nor I am implying that. However, there is a clear implication of botched procedures that remained remarkably incurious about conflicting accounts and details surrounding the death. Efforts to spare family feelings are understandable. But such factors should not impede justice from being done. Then too, I wonder if family feelings would be such a factor were the deceased from poverty-ridden East LA. In my view, this is another instance of investigation being boxed-in by big money, big reputations, and big industry. After all, as the fan mags liked to brag, Natalie and RJ were Hollywood "royalty". Nonetheless, the little girl many of us grew up with deserved better, royalty or not. Natalie Wood had what amounts to an amazing Hollywood career. Unlike the great majority of child stars, her career remained uninterrupted from childhood through mature adulthood. This was a testament both to her talent and her ability to stay employed through life's inevitable changes. Author Finstad pinpoints the central conflict in her life-- the tension between the person herself (Natasha) and her carefully crafted show-biz persona ("Natalie Wood"). After all, she was a professional actress from age six, so it's not surprising that the real person had little chance to develop and that what there was remained submerged under the movie star creation. Mom comes across as the real culprit behind this split and something of a dark Rasputin-like force in Wood's life. Curiously, little mention is made of the turbulent Vietnam period when old Hollywood was eclipsed by the new, so-called counter-culture. A glance at Wood's movie credits shows a sharp drop-off after 1966, the first big year of the war. Yet, there's not a single mention of Vietnam nor (I believe) of the war itself. This seems odd given the cultural and commercial impact on the movie industry of social and political forces then on the march. It would be interesting to know her reaction since the movement rejected the whole glamor factory concept. I don't know if the absence of material means Natalie and her circle simply floated above the national trauma or what. Anyway, I find this a curious silence in what is otherwise a pretty exhaustive text. All in all, Finstad's biography is a close account of Wood's personal life. I wish there had been more on the business side, but probably sources there were hard to find since insiders play the business dealings pretty close to the vest. Also, the text could have used tighter editing since the detail at times gets somewhat repetitious. Nonetheless, the book is an insightful look into America's great game of celebrity worship and the ups and the downs of a fairy-tale life. I'm just sorry that if a body had to be pulled from the water, it wasn't Natasha's-- it was Natalie Wood's. And from that moment on the interests of the Hollywood glamor factory took over. Even in death, Natasha was suppressed.
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