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[TV static drones]
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[anticipatory string music]
♪ ♪
- I remember it was Sunday morning after Thanksgiving.
I was 11 years old,
and I had spent the night
at my best friend Tracy's house.
♪ ♪
The clock radio went off and woke me up,
and I heard a news report say
my mom's body was found off the coast of Catalina.
♪ ♪
The next thing I knew, my stepdad's driver
was there with our nanny, Willie Mae.
They had come to pick me up and take me home.
♪ ♪
It had rained, and the streets were wet,
and I was asking, "Is Mommy okay?"
But they were just comforting me,
and they weren't really telling me what happened.
♪ ♪
When I got home, I got into my mom's bed
and tried to comfort myself.
I said, "Maybe she just has a broken leg
or something like that."
Then my stepdad came back.
I went down the steps, and I could tell,
just when I looked at his face,
that something awful had happened.
♪ ♪
The day my mom died, my entire world was shattered,
and our family has never been the same.
♪ ♪
Since then, there's been so much speculation
and focus on how she died
that it's overshadowed her life's work
and who she was as a person.
I'm Natasha Gregson Wagner,
and my mom was Natalie Wood.
[gentle orchestral waltz]
♪ ♪
- Hello, Natalie. - Oh, hello again.
Please sit down. - Thank you.
How's the food?
- Best location food I ever ate.
- Well, I must say, you certainly seem
to thrive on it.
- Well, I was brought up on it.
I've been eating lunch on the set
since I was four years old.
- That's correct. Natalie's a movie veteran.
Been in pictures since 1941. Is that correct?
- That's right.
My original real name
was Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko.
Zakharenko was always being mispronounced.
It was very difficult, so my parents
changed their name to Gurdin,
and then that got mispronounced a lot,
so when I was five years old
and William Goetz put me into my first film,
he that that Gurdin was not a good name,
and at this point, I was being called Natasha,
which is really a nickname for Natalia,
so he chose Natalie, and then he chose Wood
in honor of his friend Sam Wood, the director.
So that's how I got named.
Oh, daisies on your coffeepot!
They're my favorite flower.
- With Natalie Wood,
one of the most fascinating things about her is,
generations of people watched her grow up,
and so it was congruent
with what was happening with their own development.
- No, Mom. We haven't gone too far.
- When you're an adolescent, you're a very different person
than you were when you were five years old,
and she certainly was that but on steroids,
'cause she was a movie star.
- Wish me luck!
I'm gonna make a noise in the world!
- The business she was in is a tough business,
and to survive in that business,
you had to have a tough side to you,
and so I think she had to develop that.
But it wasn't comfortable.
What she really wanted to do was to laugh and have fun
and just be a regular person.
But mainly, she had a big heart,
and that showed up in her work.
- You can't pinpoint what it is that draws you to a character.
You just suddenly say, "I know her.
I know that I can make her be real."
- People knew she was smart and incredibly well-organized,
and in a town where women were
not always respected,
not in their work and not socially,
she was an exception.
[bell rings] She knew how it should be lit,
she knew how the sound should be,
she knew how she should look,
and she sure knew how to give a great performance.
- I know this may come as a great big shock
to the both of you,
but underneath all this hair and skin
is a human girl
with all the regular things going for me,
and believe it or not,
I don't want to spend the rest of my life
married to a man who's doing me a big favor!
Primarily, I'm an actress, and I think that at the point
when you're a star,
mainly, I was thinking of the work,
not of the stardom that follows it.
I've enjoyed the part where you act,
where the red light goes on and the camera rolls
and you really can do your work,
and in the film business, there are so many other things
that enter into making it possible
for those moments
where you just are able to do your craft
without the interference of a lot of other things.
[gentle music]
♪ ♪
- I always knew that she was an actor,
but, you know, around the house,
my mom didn't wear a lot of makeup,
and she was very casual,
so I would look at her and think,
"What is--what's the big deal about you, lady?"
But then she and my stepdad would get dressed up,
and they would go out to dinner or something,
and she was amazing-looking.
But we weren't raised by someone
who seemed like a movie star at all.
All she just seemed was sort of larger than life
but not because she was famous,
more because she was just her.
♪ ♪
- I was seven when she passed away,
and I feel like my memories of her
are just ever-evolving.
You know, there's her beautiful face
and her voice and her hands
and all those things that I remember.
But when I try to think of my mom now,
it's so hard; like, I will literally
come across a picture, and I'll just look at it,
and I'll look at it a little bit more, thinking,
"Is that really my mom?
How is it that she's my mom?"
I just have this famous mother,
and she's like this mythology character.
I--you know.
I hope one day, I'll get to a place
where I can really access the true feeling
that this was my mother, that I came from her
and that she was mine
for a short time, you know?
Like, I feel like
it's just been very hard to hold on to that.
- I have two fathers.
My biological father is Richard Gregson.
I call him Daddy Gregson.
My stepfather is Robert Wagner,
who everyone calls RJ,
and I call him Daddy Wagner.
My mom was the one that started calling them
Daddy Gregson and Daddy Wagner
to clarify who was who in case people got confused.
[laughs] And then it's just nicknames that have stuck.
From the age of two, I was primarily raised
by my Daddy Wagner,
and in all that time,
he treated me like his own blood.
♪ ♪
So, Dad, I just want to say
that I'm really excited to talk to you about my mom...
- Yes, I am too.
- And everything we've been through,
the highs and the lows,
how we've always stayed
connected through all of it.
- I don't think there's a day
that has ever gone by in my life that
there hasn't been a moment
that I haven't thought about Natalie
and how much she meant to me
in my heart and in my soul.
We started so young.
To see her evolve over the years
into the woman that she was
was very special.
- How did you two meet? I want to hear both versions.
- Well, actually, when I was ten years old
and RJ was about 18, I guess,
when you were first under contract,
I remember walking down the hallway with my mother,
and I saw him, and I said to my mother,
"When I grow up, I wish that I could marry him."
- Did you really? - I really did.
- Did you really know that she...
- Well, I didn't know it then.
It sure could've saved me a lot of trouble,
I'll tell you.
[laughter]
- Could I ask for your version of when you met?
- When I came into Natalie's life,
I was sort of a Happy Jack Squirrel kid,
you know, with nothing on my mind much but my hair
and... [laughter]
She sort of resisted me a bit, actually,
at the beginning, because-- - I did?
- I was--yeah, well, I was so different
than all the rest of the-- - I don't remember that.
- Well, yes, you did, and then I finally started
taking you--I remember I took you out on--
- On my 18th birthday, mm-hmm. - On your 18th birthday.
I took her out on her birthday,
July 20, 1956.
I had done a picture
with Spencer Tracy called "The Mountain,"
and we went to the premiere, and that sort of started it.
- Everybody knew about Robert Wagner,
and my dad had introduced me to RJ
when I was maybe nine
when he did "Prince Valiant,"
which was, at the time, my favorite movie,
and there he was, Prince Valiant.
There was nobody handsomer.
And he was so kind to me.
- On December 6, 1957, I made a reservation
at a restaurant in Beverly Hills
called Romanoff's.
Man, I got Natalie down there,
and I opened a bottle of champagne.
- We had some champagne,
and I suddenly looked in my glass,
and there was a ring in it,
and I took the ring out and looked,
and he said, "Look, guys," and, "My God, what is this?"
Then he said, "Look on the inside,"
and it said, "Marry me."
[laughs] [applause]
♪ ♪
- We got married in Scottsdale, Arizona,
and I got a private railroad car.
♪ ♪
After the ceremony, we went to the private car,
and a big train came by and picked us up,
and off we went to Chicago.
It was pretty exciting.
♪ ♪
- Maybe we should stay too.
- Well, I think you ought to go.
I really think you ought to.
Maybe she'll be better by the morning.
Here.
- Will you come back to the apartment?
- Yeah, yeah. It's 695 Park Avenue.
Yeah, I'll come back.
- I loved working with RJ and Natalie.
There was something about her
that was incredibly ingratiating.
She made you feel important, not her.
Something that's one of the tricks of life
and success
is to make other people feel important
when they're around you, not because you are
an important person.
- While here, still enjoying the plaudits
for his "In Love and War" role,
is Robert Wagner
with his lovely wife, Natalie Wood.
- The studios were always anxious to get publicity,
and at that time,
the movie magazines were the thing--
"Photoplay," "Modern Screen"--
and Natalie and I were one of the hot things
for the magazines,
so they were very much involved
in our relationship.
- Nat and RJ were both major stars,
and I didn't feel like one was outshining the other.
There's a sort of royalty to that business,
and RJ and Nat were that royalty.
♪ ♪
- So why don't we start by you telling me
how you and my mom met?
- Oh, okay. [coughs]
Let's see. How did we meet?
Well, I met your mother and Daddy Wagner
the same day, the same moment,
because I was working for the director Elia Kazan,
and I was a production assistant
on "Splendor in the Grass."
There, I had to go and get your mother
every morning.
Therefore, we talked an awful lot,
and it was clear to me
that there was trouble in their marriage.
- Mm.
- I discovered that my mom had written an article
for "Ladies' Home Journal" in 1966
that was never published.
It was called
"Public Property, Private Person."
It was amazing to read this article.
I found out so many things about my mom's life
that I didn't know,
especially during a really challenging time
for her.
- "After two years of marriage,
"things began to change.
"We were aware that we had problems,
"but we tried to avoid the real conflicts.
"We maintained a superficially happy relationship
"and hoped that by pretending there was nothing wrong,
"the problems would go away.
"How do you separate reality from illusion
"when you have been trapped in make-believe all your life?
"Marriage requires patience and work,
"as well as the capacity to accept another human being,
"flaws and all, without cloaking him
in a smothering mantle of perfection."
- With the pressure of being this wonderful couple
and the marriage starting to have difficulties in it,
I could feel it unraveling, and so could she,
and that time,
her career really started to catch on fire.
It was like striking a match.
And when she did "Splendor" with Kazan,
I mean, this was a dream come true for her.
- "Though nothing can bring back the hour
"of splendor in the grass,
"glory in the flower,
"we will grieve not,
"rather find the strength
in what remains behind."
- And on that picture, she knew
that she was not Kazan's first choice,
and she was out to prove
that she was a serious actress.
- Miss Metcalf,
may I please be e--
[sobbing]
The opportunity to work with Kazan
was just fantastic,
but it was emotionally a very demanding role,
and it--I don't know.
It had quite an effect on my life, I think.
- "As RJ and I struggled to make our marriage work,
"the problems continued to pile up.
"After finishing work on 'Splendor in the Grass,'
"I went directly into 'West Side Story'
"for another solid and rigorous eight months.
"The rest of the cast had been rehearsing together
"for a month while I finished 'Splendor.'
"Now I had to cram four weeks of rehearsals
"into weekends.
"I was worn out,
"and I didn't have time to be the kind of wife
"I wanted to be.
"During this hectic period,
"RJ went through an ordeal
"that all performers, including myself,
"have to face.
"His career hit a momentary lull.
"Sometimes I waited for him to complain
"or start a fight,
"but his calm exterior remained intact.
His coolness drove me frantic."
- My career was not igniting like hers was,
but that wasn't really a very big factor
in the fact that we separated
and then finally divorced.
It was the pressure on her and her career
that caused that, and also,
I think that I might have been able
to handle it a little bit better.
If I'd have been a little bit older
and had more experience,
I might have been able
to have worked it out.
- Any rumors that you've heard--
I mean, I'm here to say
that Warren Beatty, who was her costar
in "Splendor in the Grass,"
was not the problem at all,
and there definitely did not develop
a relationship between them
until long after "Splendor" had wrapped.
- We were separated, and Warren, I think,
was very much taken by her, and why wouldn't he be?
But that was a very difficult time
because I was so upset
and so disturbed by everything,
I was ready to go after him.
I can talk about that pretty easily now,
but at the time, it was a little bit difficult,
as you can imagine.
- The relationship between her and Warren Beatty was hot.
You could almost not look at them.
Your eyes were gonna burn out.
They were so good-looking.
- I was alone,
I didn't have anybody in my life,
and I just couldn't stay in Los Angeles anymore
and be alone,
and I made a decision
to move to Europe.
So I talked to her,
and I said I was going to Europe.
"Do you feel like you'd want to come there?"
And she said, "No, I have other plans,"
and I said, "Okay," and I hung up the phone,
and that was it.
- "Neither Warren nor I was ready
"for a permanent relationship,
"although our romance lasted approximately two years.
"Our affair was a collision from start to finish.
"While RJ never did express hostility,
"Warren couldn't stop,
"and I contributed my share of fireworks too.
"In fact, we were both so confused
"that we thought fighting and hostility
meant real emotional honesty."
After her relationship with Warren had broken up,
my mom had a string of relationships,
and during the '60s,
before she married my Daddy Gregson,
she had a couple of broken engagements,
one with Arthur Loew Jr.,
who remained a very close friend of hers,
another with Ladislav Blatnik,
who was known as the shoe king of Venezuela,
but I think that my mom was longing
to be taken care of emotionally,
and I think that's what she was looking for
during that time.
- I was flattered that I was, I think,
the only one she ever dated who was younger than she,
and I was four years younger than she was.
Didn't bother me. Didn't bother her.
But it was never gonna go anywhere.
It was never supposed to go anywhere.
It was fun for as long as it lasted,
and it--the friendship lasted way beyond the dating period.
[somber music]
- "For the first time in my life,
"I considered, in horror,
"the possibility that I might join
"that sad parade of famous movie ladies
"who wind up desperately lonely
"with nothing more substantial to sustain them
"than their scrapbooks and old photos
"and memories of romances and divorces.
"My ex-husband's first child had just been born.
"I cried when I heard the news.
"It wasn't only from the sense of loss I felt
"for something we never shared.
It was also happiness for him."
- My mom's name was Marion Marshall
when she was in the picture business,
Marion Donen when she was married to Stanley Donen,
and she had two boys,
my brothers Josh Donen and Peter Donen,
who are eight and ten years older than me.
♪ ♪
- I left Los Angeles and lived in Rome
for three years,
and I saw Marion,
and Marion and I started going out,
traveling all over Europe together,
and fell in love with each other
and got married and came back to the United States.
She had two sons, Peter and Josh.
I loved these two boys,
and we had a wonderful life together,
and I had a daughter with her called Katie,
and that was a joy in my life.
- Here we are in Wales
at my father Richard Gregson's house.
My dad has Parkinson's at this point in his life,
and this might be one of the last times
we get to speak about my mom.
- I was with her the night she met your father.
They started seeing each other, dating,
and it got serious.
- Richard Gregson was my agent,
and then he became a producer
from being my agent,
and right from the beginning, I saw him
as a very, very smart, elegant guy
and very, very sophisticated,
more so than any of the agents that I knew in Hollywood.
And I was best man at their wedding.
- I remember a story with him saying
that he asked all his wives to marry him
but they turned him down,
so he then had to wait for them to ask him.
And eventually, Natalie asked him
to marry him, and they'd been together
for three or four years at that time.
- And they had a big, big, fancy wedding
at a Russian church, Russian ceremony,
and it was beautiful.
♪ ♪
- How long have you been married now?
- Five months. - Five months.
And they said it wouldn't last.
[laughter] - Don't say that!
- And you've been quoted as saying
you wouldn't now take a film
that was thousands of miles apart?
- Not if it meant being away from Richard,
no, I wouldn't.
- How long have you been married, Robert?
- 11 years.
[applause]
[laughs]
- And what advice would you give this young couple?
- Yes, Redford, tell us what to do.
- Well, just try to keep track
of how many years you're married
and, you know, remember the dates when they come up.
- That's right, 'cause somebody asked you last week,
and they said, "What day were you married on?"
and simultaneously, I said May 30th,
and he said May 31st.
- You don't need to ask who was wrong, right?
- Yeah. - [laughs]
- There's nothing quite like finding out
for the very first time
that you're gonna be pregnant
and to go through that first pregnancy.
There's just nothing ever quite as miraculous as that.
Ah. - She didn't "get pregnant."
She got pregnant because she wanted a baby,
so she was doing what she wanted
and doing it well, and then the work,
she put it aside for a while.
She knew she'd get back to it.
There was nothing more important to Natalie
than being a mom; that was really clear.
- I once walked in, and she was coddling you,
and she just looked up at me and said,
"Who needs show business when one has this?"
My God, you were the spitting image of her,
you know, when you were born and a child.
It was incredible.
- Before Natasha was born,
she would do a great deal of things with us.
We'd go out, we'd go to SeaWorld,
we'd go to Disneyland,
but then when Natasha was born,
her sole focus, really, I would say, was on Natasha.
♪ ♪
- Richard felt that Natalie was so involved
and emotionally connected to Natasha
that there wasn't any room for him,
so he did something really stupid
and got thrown out.
- What happened when you and Mommy got divorced?
- Changed the locks, I think.
- I love the story
about how you and Mommy reconnected
at your friend John Foreman's party.
- We saw each other at this party,
and so the sparks sort of flew a little bit,
and then I offered to drive her home,
and I did drive her home and dropped her off
and said good night to her, and...
- And then she got into her house on Bentley
and started to cry,
and then what did you do?
- I drove down the street, and I stopped,
and I had tears in my eyes as well.
- Because you guys realized
that you still missed each other.
- How come you got married to Bob Wagner again?
- Again? - I mean, and how does it feel
when you marry your husband after you divorced him?
And if you don't want to talk about it, we'll pass.
- Oh, it feels terrific.
I don't mind talking about it. - Okay.
- I was just fortunate, you know?
Timing was on our side.
We happened to meet at a time when we were both free.
The fact that we both had feelings toward the other one
we didn't keep to ourselves.
I mean, we managed to convey that.
Because I really had no idea that RJ
felt something still toward me, even though I knew that I did,
and he felt the same way and didn't know if I did.
But luckily, we didn't keep that to ourselves.
- I came into Natalie's life through RJ.
RJ married my mother,
and when RJ and my mother divorced,
I remained very close to RJ,
so when he started seeing Natalie again,
naturally, that's how I was introduced to Natalie,
and after college,
Natalie said, "Come and live in our guest house,"
and I stayed there for years,
and that's when we became really close.
You know, and it was clear, seeing them together,
that they loved each other, but it was more.
It seemed to me that they should be together.
This seemed right.
- When you and Mommy got back together,
she was a mom and you were a dad.
- That's right. - And you guys had had
ten years between.
So had you both really grown up?
- I think so.
You know, when we were younger,
we were very interested in our careers
and where we could go with it,
and that became less important the second time.
I mean, it had more to do with us
and you and Katie.
- It was pretty exciting to be a part of that
relationship and that love affair.
And then they got married the second time around
on the "Ramblin' Rose,"
and it was just an incredible day.
It was a small group of people,
probably about 30 people.
[gentle music]
- We got married in Paradise Cove,
and then we went from Paradise Cove
over to the Isthmus,
and we spent our honeymoon in Catalina.
♪ ♪
- Clearly, RJ was the love of her life,
because when they got back together,
it was like just two parts of the same whole
coming together again,
and I saw her in a more complete way.
You know, she was totally happy.
♪ ♪
- Natalie, you tried natural childbirth
with your second child.
- Well, with my first child, I did have--
- You tried it? - I was awake,
and I watched Natasha being born.
- Mm-hmm. - And with Courtney,
suddenly, there were complications,
you know, after about 17 or 18 hours of labor,
and all of a sudden, the doctor said,
"Oh, no, this is gonna be an emergency section,"
and he got Courtney out in two minutes,
saved her life.
♪ ♪
- I was born March 9, 1974,
and I think there was a big--
like, a whole thing in the paper
saying that, like, I was near death and--
but I was the lovechild. [laughs]
♪ ♪
- I had had Katie with Marion,
and she had had Natasha with Richard,
and we had Courtney together,
so we were--we were thrilled.
- Do you know something more the second time around?
- I know to appreciate him for what--
- Oh, you're taking the blame, huh?
You didn't appreciate him first time around?
- No, no, no. Not necessarily.
I think we both appreciate each other more,
and I think we know each other better as people,
and we're kind of on the same wavelength.
You know, we like to do the same things,
and we like hanging out together.
We like hanging out with the kids.
♪ ♪
- When we got married, we were living in the Springs.
I had this home in Palm Springs.
And then we found this house
on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills,
and then we bought that and moved into there.
- When we were all very much a family in the '70s,
it was you, Mommy, Courtney, and I,
and Katie came and lived with us,
and that was our group
with visits from Josh and Peter,
Sarah, Charlotte, and Hugo.
- The guest house was rather filled, wasn't it?
- Yeah, it was always turning over,
and many, many dogs,
many cats, many birds, many--
- Lizards. - Lizards.
- Ducks. - [laughs]
- We had this amazing nanny named Willie Mae
who lived with us until she passed away
at the age of 90.
- Great lady.
- I was really attached to Willie Mae.
I was always much more attached to Willie Mae,
really, than my mom.
I felt that Natasha had my mom
and I had Willie Mae.
And then, you know, we had each other,
but I just--I don't know what it was about Willie Mae.
I just loved Willie Mae so much.
- Willie Mae Worthen was the nanny,
who I adored.
Everybody adored her.
She was this six-foot giant from down South,
very brusque but loving.
She was part of the family.
And I was Natalie Wood's personal assistant
for four years.
My office was literally
in the corner of the master bedroom.
These two were in bed. [laughs]
It was quite-- it was quite funny, actually,
to be in that situation, having come from an office.
And Natalie would give incredible parties,
but the main one each year
would be the New Year's Eve party.
The guests would come.
There would be George Segal and his wife.
There would be Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart,
Roddy McDowall.
- I look to my right,
and there I saw,
I swear to God,
Fred Astaire singing Cole Porter
with a pianist accompanying him,
and he finished his song,
and everybody burst into applause.
- Those parties were the best.
You'd be talking to someone
and turn around, and, ooh, Sir Laurence Olivier.
Now I have to figure out what kind of conversation
I can have with him.
And the house was just so full of love
and happiness,
it made you feel good to be there.
- So many people coming and going
in the Cañon Drive house that were not only famous
but just friends, you know,
really, really great friends.
They had parties all the time.
You know, our holidays were huge.
Courtney got as many presents at Natasha's birthday
as Natasha got at Courtney's birthday.
[gentle piano music]
♪ ♪
- Everything was heaven.
The house was so beautiful and also welcoming,
and Natalie was so candid,
and the focus was the children, not the grown-ups.
♪ ♪
- I remember the parties. I remember the laughter.
I remember they were so in love with each other,
and my mom would always say,
"Oh, RJ, honestly!"
but then she would, like, break out laughing.
They were just always laughing.
- That connection that they had
is what I remember growing up.
And they were always buying each other presents,
and my mom was always concocting
some kind of an incredible surprise
for my dad that she would tell us about.
- The most important thing for me is my family
and my husband, my kids.
That's why we like spending a lot of time on the boat,
where we really are just a family
and there aren't a lot of other things to relate to.
- We got a boat together, the "Splendour,"
and we spent most weekends
and most vacations in Catalina.
We spent a lot of time on that island.
- Natalie never cooked at home,
but she would always cook breakfast on the boat,
and it was huevos rancheros,
and she enjoyed the boat.
You know, she'd have the hat on and the outfit.
It was fun for the family, and it was fun
for RJ and Natalie to get away as well.
♪ ♪
- My parents were very relaxed on the boat.
They'd bring other friends, or we'd bring our friends.
We'd go to Catalina. We'd go to Emerald Bay.
We'd go to the Isthmus.
And it was a really happy time for us there.
- As we reported earlier, actress Natalie Wood
was found dead today.
Her body was discovered fully clothed
in waters off Santa Catalina Island.
Los Angeles County officials can only confirm
the 43-year-old Ms. Wood drowned,
but nothing further on the circumstances.
David Burrington reports.
- Natalie Wood and her husband,
actor Robert Wagner,
had sailed to Catalina Island
to spend the holiday weekend with friends.
Apparently, they had returned to their yacht,
the "Splendour," after dinner,
when Natalie went back out on the water
in this rubber boat.
Exactly what happened then, nobody knows,
but her body was found after dawn this morning
in a small cove not far from the rubber boat.
- It was on the news,
and I called our mutual friend Leonard Gershe,
and I said, "Is Natalie all right?"
And he said, "No. Nat's..."
[somber music]
♪ ♪
Natalie was gone.
- I remember being devastated by that news
and, having such affection for her,
hurt by the news.
- The phone rang,
and I pick up the phone...
[clears throat] And RJ screams
into the phone...
[sighs]
♪ ♪
"She's gone!"
- My brother Peter Donen called me--my late brother--
called me about 6:00 in the morning,
and he--I picked up my phone in my room,
and he said, "Natalie's dead. She drowned."
And I thought to myself, "Well, she drowned,
but she'll be back, right?"
I mean, that weird thing that you think
when you hear something like that.
- I was walking along the beach,
and it was early in the morning,
and I saw my brother
came out onto the beach,
and he came over to me; he put his arms around me.
He said, "Natalie's died."
And I was just in a state of shock.
- That was one of the worst mornings
that we've ever experienced.
So we got in the car and went over to Cañon,
and already, there was press out in the street
and cameras and all of that,
and we were there before RJ was there.
- Eventually, RJ came home,
and we went downstairs,
and he came in looking like death.
- I remember Willie Mae woke me up,
and I could hear my sister Natasha crying,
and I saw all of these people
in the living room,
and I was walking down the steps,
and my dad was at the edge of the steps,
and he said to me, "You know, you're not gonna see
your mom anymore."
- He said, "But I want you to know
"that we're going to be all right.
"We're staying together,
"we're still a family,
and we're gonna get through this."
It was heavy-duty stuff,
and he just clung on to them
and they on him.
- It's like, the instant that my mom passed away
is like the air in the balloon that was our life, you know,
it just--it just--
you know, it just-- the party was over.
- I remember hearing that my grandma fainted,
but I remember that I didn't want
to be around my grandma
because she was too hysterical.
I think I was more of a private griever,
and my grandma was so kind of colorful
with her grief,
so I didn't feel safe around her.
- I remember my grandmother being really--
I mean, talk about someone that was checked out.
I mean, she would just faint, you know.
She was very dramatic too.
I mean, there would be times where you would hear
that, like, she suddenly just got frightened
and she ran into a wall
because she wasn't paying attention.
I mean, she was just-- you know, this was a woman
that was grief-stricken
and whose whole life revolved around her daughter.
[pizzicato music]
- My mom's parents, my grandparents,
were Nick and Maria Gurdin.
They spoke with these thick Russian accents
because they were both immigrants
who met and married in San Francisco.
My mom called her parents Mud and Fad,
short for Mudda and Fadda.
My mom was the middle child of three girls.
She had an older half sister named Olga
who was ten years older than her
and a younger sister, Lana, who was eight years younger.
- My parents moved from San Francisco
to Santa Rosa when I was about two, I think,
and then a movie company came to Santa Rosa
on location, and they needed a little girl
to drop an ice cream cone and cry,
and I think my mama gave me a little nudge
in the right direction and said,
"Why don't you go talk to that nice man,
sing him some of your songs?"
And... [laughs]
So I did, and he chose me to drop the ice cream cone,
and then he remembered me a year later
when he was doing "Tomorrow is Forever."
His name was Irving Pichel,
and he wrote to my parents and said
that he would like to have me come
to Los Angeles and do a screen test
because he had a part for a young German girl,
and against my father's deeper wishes,
my mother and I traveled down by train,
and I made the screen test, got the part,
and it seemed a good idea to move down to Los Angeles,
which we then did, and my father began working
in the miniature prop department at the studios,
so we would sometimes bump into each other.
We were both working.
Shall we go away soon, Father?
[mournful orchestral music]
- Go?
- You said maybe we would leave here.
- I was her first leading man,
and for six or seven takes,
I kept blowing my lines.
Not Natalie.
I think it was her first picture,
but she was already a perfect little pro.
- Well, young lady, what's your name?
- Susan Walker. What's yours?
- Mine? Kriss Kringle.
I'm Santa Claus.
Oh, you don't believe that, do you?
- Mm-mm.
You see, my mother's Mrs. Walker,
the lady who hired you. - Oh.
- But I must say,
you're the best-looking one I've ever seen.
- Really? - Your beard doesn't have
one of those things that goes over your ears.
- Well, that's because it's real,
just like I'm really Santa Claus.
- What stands out about Natalie Wood's performance
in "Miracle on 34th Street" is,
there's no artifice.
She's so watchful and skeptical
and very sure-seeming in who she was,
and then in the end, she had the same dreams
and fantasies as everybody else,
and I think that's what was so appealing about it.
- "The reality of Hollywood was a dash of cold water.
"Instead of glamour, I found myself immersed
"in work and study.
"By the time I was 12,
"my father suffered the first of a series of heart attacks.
"For a few years, he couldn't work at all.
"This meant my acting was the sole economic support
"of my family,
"and therefore, getting jobs
"became a tremendous responsibility.
"Sometimes I had nightmares
about the family starving if I didn't act."
- The story I remember
Natalie telling me about her mother
was an audition she went to,
and her mother felt it hadn't gone terribly well,
and on the way out of the studio,
she said to Natalie,
"Well, that wasn't very good, was it?
No new shoes for your sister."
Of course, Natalie was called back
and did get the role, so presumably,
Lana did get her new shoes.
[thunder booming]
But there was a lot of pressure
on young Natalie.
- When she did a film called "The Green Promise,"
she injured her wrist...
And it never healed properly,
and so her wrist bone was bigger
on one wrist than the other,
and she felt self-conscious about it,
so she always wore a bracelet to cover it up.
- She had a bracelet she always wore,
and it covered up a thing on her wrist,
and it always kind of made me think,
"This is a woman in total control
but had a flaw that she was aware of."
Didn't mean anything, but in a way,
it made me feel a connection with her vulnerability
and this childhood stardom that she had had
that she was childhood star, huge.
- Don't you know that children should be seen and not heard?
- Not according to Jeremiah.
"Say not I am a child,
"for thou shalt go to all that I shalt send thee,
and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak."
- Steven, will you take her away from here?
- Did you not feel that you were missing
a lot of the fun of being a child?
- Well, I wasn't aware of it at the time, you know?
I mean, I guess I wasn't aware
that other kids did other things.
And then when I was about 12,
I started going to a regular school
in between jobs,
and I did feel a bit of a misfit then
during that period,
because I was so comfortable with adults
and rather uncomfortable with kids,
having not been around very many.
♪ ♪
- I met Natalie Wood in junior high.
She was very nice, very pleasant.
She wasn't, "Ha, look at me. I'm a movie star,"
not with anyone in the school,
and they didn't treat her like she was.
But we became fast friends,
and her mother was very protective
of who she chatted with, who she went out with,
and I passed her mother's test.
[laughs] So that was good.
- Natalie's parents were very involved with her.
They knew everything that she did
and where she went and what she wore,
and they were helicopter parents, you know?
They were always hovering around her all the time.
- Natalie's father, Nick, he was very quiet.
When I met him,
I think he had developed a heart problem,
and he generally was a quiet, gentle man,
that I knew.
Didn't have a lot of dialogue with him,
but with Maria, I did.
She was a strange lady.
She would say, "Don't walk on that side of the road
"when the sun is shining,
because you'll be struck down."
And lots of little fears.
- My grandma was incredibly superstitious,
so she filled my mom's head
with all kinds of crazy stories.
- I've always been terrified-- still am--of water,
dark water, seawater or, you know, river water.
- There's this story that a gypsy told my grandma
that her second daughter would become world-famous...
- Oh!
- But to beware of dark water.
- Can you swim?
- A little!
- All right, cut.
- People are fixated on the fact
that my mom was afraid of dark water,
I think, simply because she drowned.
But, you know, as a child, she was in the pool with us
all the time, and she and I
never talked about her fear of dark water,
so it never felt like this big thing.
I mean, who likes dark water?
It's not very enticing.
But my grandma was so fantastical.
She was so twirling and swirling with stories
that I don't know what was real and what wasn't.
- I remember Natalie was in bed,
studying her script,
and Maria was in one of the second bedrooms,
and all of a sudden, she started to tremble,
and her eyes rolled up,
and I dashed back into the room to Natalie.
I put her on the bed, and I said, "Natalie,
"your mother, she's ill.
I think she's having an epileptic fit."
And so Natalie said...
"She'll be all right in a minute."
Never blinked an eye.
And it was from then I learned
that this was a regular habit of Maria's to get attention.
- My mom's very complicated relationship
with my grandma and being a daughter
of a narcissistic, controlling,
possessive mother--
I mean, that's played out in so many of her films.
- On "Gypsy," your mother actually said to me,
"I don't know how I'm gonna play
this last scene,"
and I just nearly fell on the floor, and I said,
"What?" [both laugh]
"You don't know how to play that scene?
"I mean, just look at Rosalind Russell in the eye
"and pretend it's your mother,
"it's Maria Gurdin,
and you got it."
- Mama, look at me now! I'm a star!
Look! Look how I live!
Look at my friends. Look where I'm going.
I'm not staying in burlesque.
I'm moving, maybe up, maybe down,
but wherever it is, I'm enjoying it.
I'm having the time of my life
because for the first time,
it is my life, and I love it.
I love every second of it,
and I'll be damned if you're gonna take it away from me!
- Her mother was
like a lot of mothers of successful people.
She was determined
that her daughter was going to be successful,
I think, and Natalie was.
- I think she once told me that she didn't really decide
that that was what she wanted to do
was be an actress
until Nick Ray and "Rebel,"
and then it was clear to her
that she was not just being pushed by her mother
any longer. - Mm-hmm.
- He looks at me like
I was the ugliest thing in the world.
He doesn't like my friends.
He doesn't like one thing about me.
And he called me...
he called me a dirty tramp!
My own father!
- It was a very important film for me personally
because up until then, I had worked as a child,
and I had always just done as I was told.
I was--you know, "You do this picture next,
and then you do that picture next,"
and I was a rather dutiful child.
And when my parents read the script of "Rebel,"
they said, "Oh, no, not this one,"
'cause this, you know, showed parents
in a rather unsympathetic light,
and yet I read it, and for the first time in my life,
I said, "Oh, wait a minute.
I have to do this. I love this."
You know, I love Judy, and I felt
very much of a connection, identification with the part,
and I guess I was going through my first rebellion.
- My mom wanted to make "Rebel Without a Cause"
because she knew that it was gonna take her
away from these sort of good little girl roles
into leading lady roles,
and so she fought really hard to get that part.
- When I was 15 years old
and doing "Rebel Without a Cause,"
at that time,
the director and the studios and so forth
said I was too young,
even though I was exactly the right age.
They were sort of testing older girls,
and they also saw me in pigtails with a pinafore,
because those were the kind of parts
that I was associated with.
So I tested for it
a number of times, as a matter of fact.
Well, it's all right now.
You're our baby now.
I think I also got into a car accident,
and instead of telling them to call my parents,
I told them to call the director
because one of the policemen
called me a juvenile delinquent,
and I said, "Oh, well, then that must mean
that I have the part." [laughs]
"Call Nick Ray."
- There's sort of a famous story
where she went to the Chateau Marmont
to get together with Nicholas Ray,
the director of "Rebel Without a Cause,"
and something intimate went on with the two of them,
a risky business back then.
She was underage, and he was older,
right, so that would've been a problem today.
- I met Nicholas Ray a couple of times
even before she was in "Rebel,"
and I knew when we went to Nicholas Ray's apartment
that I never went upstairs.
And she would tell me the next day or two
she just thought she was in love with Nicholas Ray,
and I said, "Natalie, he's so old."
She's, "Well, you know I like older men."
I said, "But this is really old."
- At no time did any of the gentlemen
who were considered your bosses--
did they ever ask you to do something
that might be considered immoral?
- No.
[light music]
- Natalie is a product of the studio system:
getting there on time in the morning,
working all day long,
knowing all of her lines all the time.
That was the training in that system,
and she came out of it in such a good way.
Not everybody did,
because that system
controlled everything in your life.
You were just told what pictures you're gonna do
and what time to report.
- She was owned by the studio,
and she didn't want to be owned.
She wanted to have control over the choices.
I mean, if she's gonna spend three months doing a film,
she wants to believe in it,
so she took on Jack Warner and told him,
"I'm gonna go on strike
"because I don't like the roles
that you're choosing for me."
- The suspension lasted about 18 months,
so that--the punishment was
that if you wouldn't work for them,
you couldn't work anywhere else either.
- Right. - It wasn't that I was
trying to get more money.
That really wasn't it at all.
But what I eventually did get the right to do
was the right to choose one picture a year
that, you know, was my choice.
The first one that I was able to choose
was "West Side Story."
Tonight is the real beginning of my life
as a young lady of America.
- With "West Side Story," she became iconic,
a great legend.
I remember going to train stations with Natalie
or going to airports with her,
and there--hundreds of people would recognize her.
- Madre de Dios, I will do anything.
Make me die,
only please make it to be true!
- Today she would never be cast in that role
because she's not Puerto Rican.
That was obviously a different time.
- It's sort of interesting
that Natalie Wood would not have
one of her iconic roles today, for sure.
- You didn't get nominated for an Academy Award
for "West Side Story,"
but there was a particular reason why.
- Well, I was nominated for "Splendor in the Grass."
- Right. [both laugh]
- By the age of 25, my mom had been nominated
for three Oscars.
She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress
for "Rebel Without a Cause,"
she was nominated for Best Actress
for "Splendor in the Grass,"
and she was nominated for Best Actress
for "Love with the Proper Stranger."
Unfortunately, she never won,
but I remember, in 1980,
my parents getting dressed up
to go to the Golden Globe Awards,
and she won.
- Natalie Wood. [applause]
- She won a Golden Globe for the television version
of "From Here to Eternity" with William Devane.
- This really feels nice.
Thank you very much.
I'm completely surprised.
- She always had the ability
to recognize good material,
and when she did "Splendor"
and after "West Side Story" was a tremendous hit,
she could start to make her own decisions
on what she wanted to do
and what was available for her.
She stepped out there and took risks.
- I'm a female past the age of consent.
I was the first woman to edit the newspaper at my college.
And I shall remain handcuffed to this door
until I become the first female reporter
of the "New York Sentinel." - Over my dead body.
- In "The Great Race,"
even though it was a comedy,
she still was playing a character
who was defending women, believed in women,
but she found out that she was not
being paid or treated equally
to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon,
so she went to all kinds of extremes
to make sure that everything was equal,
down to the length
of the phone cord in their rooms.
- And she was one of the few women
that had the power to do that at that time.
There weren't a lot of women that did
and who were outspoken enough
and could back it up with her knowledge,
and everyone who worked with her knew it.
They all learned from her.
- There's a picture of her
where she's at the head of the table,
and then there's her publicist, her agent,
her business manager.
They all work for her.
She's the only woman,
and she's at the head of the table.
And she wasn't afraid to be empowered.
- I certainly owe the beginning
of my career in film to her
'cause I was an actor on Broadway in the theater,
and so she came to see a play that I was in,
came backstage to say hello.
I was very flattered, and then that was that.
Then a while later, when they were getting her
to do "Inside Daisy Clover," my name came up,
but I wasn't known at all in Hollywood,
and she was the one
that stuck up for me and said, "I want him."
And there were a lot of people that tried to resist that,
said, "Well, he's just not known,
and you're a big star and he's not," and so forth.
She--"I don't care. I want to do it with him."
There was a young lady named Cherry
who used to get swacked on sweet sherry.
And when they said--
uh, when they said.
What--what... what--what--help me!
- Um... - When they said what?
- Um... - Do you think
it's a sensible drink?
- That's good.
She replied...
Not very.
So once that happened and we made that film,
then we went into "This Property Is Condemned,"
which she was desperate to make.
She's, "Well, I'd like to stay connected to Bob,"
so she just sort of carried me along.
- Just because some people might think I'm beautiful,
that doesn't mean I'm everybody's property.
- If you really thought you were beautiful,
you wouldn't be anybody's property.
You'd be your own girl.
- I am my own girl, Mr. Legate,
and I certainly don't need some smart aleck like you
to come along and point out the error of my ways.
- When I watch her films, I straddle a fine line
between being caught in her performance
and then searching for clues about who she was.
I think many of the movies that my mom chose
had a cathartic aspect, "Daisy Clover" especially.
The scene in the recording booth
where she's supposed to dub herself
and we can't hear her 'cause we're outside
of the recording booth but she's screaming...
- [screams]
- That's how she felt on the inside.
She was screaming on the inside,
but nobody can hear her because she was
owned by the studio.
- You have, in "Daisy Clover,"
the really brilliant crack-up scene.
You have another one in "Splendor in the Grass"
in the bathtub.
Those scenes must have been difficult to do.
- I think they're the kind of scenes
that one does just have to, you know,
get into a certain mood,
and it's the kind of thing that you can't do
very many times over and over again.
No, Mom! I'm not spoiled!
I'm not spoiled, Mom! - Deanie...
- I'm just as fresh and I'm virginal
like the day I was born, Mom!
- Stop it! Stop it!
- In the time that my mom came of age,
nervous breakdowns and mental institutions
and suicide,
that was more of a taboo thing.
There was a stigma about all that stuff.
- Deanie, come back here!
- And in "Splendor in the Grass,"
she tries to commit suicide in the water,
and then she goes to a mental institution
for two years.
- She hasn't spoken a word of sense
since they brought her in here.
- But in 1964,
three years after "Splendor" was released,
these themes were actually reflected
in her real life.
While she was filming "The Great Race,"
she felt lonely and unhappy
and afraid of never being able to maintain
a stable and healthy relationship,
so she took enough sleeping pills
to kill herself.
When I found out about all this,
my Daddy Wagner told me to talk to Mart
because he was spending the night at her house
when it happened.
- It was an overdose and a half.
I mean, God almighty, she was out.
And I was told that,
you know, after they pumped her stomach, they didn't know
whether she was gonna pull through or not,
but she did.
- She spent the weekend in the hospital,
and on Monday morning,
she was back at work on "The Great Race."
But I don't necessarily look at that night
as a suicide attempt.
It was really a cry for help.
After she swallowed the pills,
she banged on Mart's door,
so obviously, she wanted to live.
- I read that you were in analysis--
I don't know if this is correct or not--
eight year--for eight years, five days a week,
in Freudian analysis. - Mm-hmm.
- You must have dry-cleaned your mother and father,
I mean, during that period of time.
- Well, I sorted out a few problems.
Dr. Judd, don't they realize I'm me?
I don't think I could ever go back home again.
I don't think I could ever feel the same way
I used to feel about them.
- We didn't talk a lot about her childhood,
but I knew some things,
and she needed some help,
and she wasn't gonna get that from her mom,
and it probably went way back, undoubtedly,
all of it.
So with her own significant intelligence
and a good therapist,
she was able to make sense of some pretty severe nonsense
that had come and gone her way.
- How do you know?
- Because I've been your analyst for three years.
I know what you're capable of,
and I know what you're not capable of.
- Would you like to bet?
- My reputation in psychiatry
against anything you care to put up.
- Will this be enough?
I feel I got a great deal out of analysis,
and I think a lot of people think that analysis
makes one become introspective,
and I think it does the opposite.
I think it opens you.
I think it frees you from being
locked into your own-- worrying about yourself.
- One of the most wonderful things
that she ever did for me was, she convinced me
to get into analysis,
and it saved my life, without question.
- I remember the day that I saw Barbra Streisand
come to the set to talk to Natalie
about how to block off time to see your psychiatrist
during a movie, 'cause stars didn't have that
in their contracts at that time,
but she did.
There was nothing out-of-bounds with Natalie.
I felt so comfortable with her.
- Here's a toast to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
- That's a good-- I'll drink to us.
- Hats and horns. - [laughing] Four...
of the grooviest people I've ever known.
- This movie was about infidelity
and these encounter groups
where people were looking into their real me
and all the things that were spanking new at the time
and very controversial.
- It just seems wrong.
- Oh, it's not.
Look, it's just nice feelings.
It's something that we've never done before.
It's physical fun. It's just sex.
- I was not sure of it.
I thought it might be exploitative
in terms of the sexual aspect of it,
but Natalie brought what the film needed:
not only a star
but a quality of intelligence
that an audience could identify with.
And even the scene
when we're all in bed together,
I wore two pairs of jockey shorts,
but Natalie made it so easy
and so natural.
So that was a great gift for all of us.
- In 1970, she had just come off a big success
with "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice."
My Daddy Gregson called her "rich and happy"
because she owned points in that film,
and so I think she was in a really good place
at that time.
[peaceful music]
- At one point, you had unbelievable power
for a female
when you were one of the few females
who could get a picture made,
and then you seemed to opt out of stardom.
Why?
- Oh, gosh, Rona, I don't know.
I've been acting since I was five, really,
and I think that I came to a point in my life
where I felt that I wanted to live some of my life
without work,
because I'd always been so absorbed in work.
And I also got married and wanted to have children,
and I really just enjoyed being with them.
[gentle piano music]
♪ ♪
- After I was born in 1970,
my mom took a break from acting
for maybe four or five years
because she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.
And then slowly, you know,
the acting bug came back around,
and so she did start to feel the need to go back to work.
- May I come in?
- Why the hell not?
Better late than never.
- And then when Courtney and I were getting older,
she wanted to act
with the knowledge of being a mother.
- All right.
That's little Cassie, always obedient.
Kiss your mother. Go to confession.
Change the baby. Shut your mouth.
- "The Cracker Factory" was a big television event
of that time,
and it was very unusual that a big movie star
was going to portray a character on television
that had so many flaws.
And I played her daughter,
and I remember her being excited
about playing real struggles of people's families
and about being real.
- It was a book that I just thought was wonderful,
and I thought what made it unusual
is the woman's real wit
and her way of dealing
with the problems that she had.
And I think it wasn't only about alcoholism.
I think it was also about the many pressures
that face a woman, wife, mother today.
- I would hear discussions with Natalie and RJ
'cause here they are in the bed,
and I'm over here at the desk.
RJ was doing "Hart to Hart,"
and Natalie would say, "Well, I've got the script,
'Meteor' with Sean Connery."
And he'd say, "Well, okay, I have a break
during this time," because their main rule was,
they wouldn't both be working at the same time,
that somebody would be home for the children.
- It doesn't look like you're ready to jump rope.
- Well, I think I'm gonna watch,
and I'll let the Harts jump rope today.
But we do jump rope at home,
and the kids are gonna jump rope,
Courtney, Natasha, Katie.
- I love jump rope.
- Why? - Because.
- Does it make you feel good? - Yes.
- Do you recommend it?
- I don't know.
- I think women today are trying to have it all
in the sense that we don't just choose
to be one thing or the other.
We don't just say, "Well, now we're gonna give up career,
"sacrifice our life, and be a wife and a mother,
or we're gonna be a career woman, pursue that."
I mean, I think a lot of us are trying to do
all of it, you know,
without having, you know, one suffer.
- I think it was difficult for her.
She was torn by wanting
to be there with her children
in a family unit with RJ
and to fulfill this other side of her
that was her core,
and I think that was a real growing pressure.
- Marker.
- With your children growing up,
with your going back into doing more movies,
how would you like to see your 40th birthday approached?
- Oh, gosh.
Well, I would like to...work.
I would like to keep working,
not necessarily at a faster speed,
but I'd like to be able to do good parts.
I loved working in "West Side Story,"
but I wouldn't go back.
Today's what counts,
and RainTree helps you make the most of it.
- She was going through a transition in age,
which Hollywood was not very accepting of,
and even now, it's a problem once you get those crow's-feet,
you know?
Maybe you don't get the great roles.
- If you're like me, you don't want to go back in time.
You want to stay ahead of it.
- But she was unsinkable.
She would accept that, "Yes, I'm now 40,"
which seems like nothing now,
"and I'm gonna work, and I'm gonna be
a woman my age, and it's gonna be great."
- Come on, now. Stop holding things back.
- All right, God damn it.
I'm not sorry they're getting divorced.
I mean, I am sorry they're getting divorced.
[both laugh]
- She had, like, two personalities,
both of which she controlled,
but when she chose to be a movie star,
she was all made up.
- And, honey... - Yeah.
- While you're finishing your hot dog,
think of this.
I'm not wearing anything underneath my coat.
- You're kidding.
So she was very wise
about how she dispensed herself,
the commercial side of her.
- My mom had a great publicist
named George Kirvey, and he felt,
when she was hitting her 40s,
that it was time to revamp her image.
- I was working for "Look" magazine
and "People" magazine,
and George Kirvey said,
"Maybe, you know, we want to change Natalie's image
"to some more sensual, maybe a little sexier,
and more of the '70s time," and we did that,
and we really accomplished that.
It's been written about: I changed
the whole professional look of Natalie Wood.
This is my favorite photo of Natalie Wood.
This is published all around the world.
And this is the "Anastasia" poster portrait
that we did for-- you hold it up--
for the Ahmanson Theatre.
- It was an exciting time for her professionally.
I remember having conversations
with her and George
about her first stage appearance
in "Anastasia."
She was petrified of the stage
but wanted to overcome it.
- During that time that Mommy
was thinking about "Anastasia,"
you were working really hard.
- Well, we were still doing "Hart to Hart."
- You were doing "Hart to Hart."
- I was in Hawaii, you know, on location
when she was doing "Brainstorm"
in North Carolina.
- In 1981, when my mom passed away,
she was in the middle of filming "Brainstorm,"
starring Christopher Walken and Louise Fletcher.
She was shooting on location in North Carolina,
and it was kind of a big deal
because that was the first time that my mom
and my Daddy Wagner
would be working at the same time.
- I think I can get it down to size
and make it look attractive,
maybe something like stereo headphones.
- I'm not worried about that. I know you can.
It's Michael.
You're gonna have to work very closely with him.
Is that a problem?
- No.
That won't be any problem.
- Okay. - Not for me.
- At first, I was very intimidated
with the idea of working with Natalie Wood.
This is an extremely experienced
and competent actress,
and Chris Walken is kind of an experimental performer,
and he's so extraordinary.
So I never felt any problem
with trying to make them fit together as a couple.
From a director's standpoint,
I thought it was gonna work fine.
But one of the things that I wanted to comment on
in the context of this interview
is that there was a love scene between the two,
a sex scene, actually,
and I found out in the shooting of that scene
that there was almost no physical charisma
between them at all,
and so that made me believe, in retrospect now,
that the suggestion that there was some love triangle
between Natalie and Christopher and RJ or something like that,
whatever anybody would make of it,
is not true.
I just think it's impossible.
- Based on conversations I had with Natalie,
she was not having an affair.
That's based on what she was saying to me.
That's what I believe.
- How do you and your wife manage to combine
two successful careers and a good family life?
- She's a really wonderful lady,
and she rather makes it all work out.
You know, she really-- it's a very difficult thing
to be a mother and an actress
and have a career and have a husband
and all of that.
It's difficult because we haven't really
ever been apart this long.
This is the longest we've been apart,
and it has been--I find it very difficult, really,
because, you know, we've been together so much,
and I think it's difficult for anybody who's in love
to be...away from the one--
the person that they're in love with.
- I think it really is a question
of trying to figure out how to use your time
the best way... - Mm-hmm.
- And to be flexible.
Because I think the main thing
is to try to be together as much as possible
so that everybody--you know,
so that you're with your kids enough
and with your husband enough and with yourself enough
and doing your own thing enough.
- When she went to North Carolina,
I remember that I would write her these letters,
and I would cry as I was writing the letter
'cause I missed her so much,
and then I would draw around the tear,
and then I would write "tear" with an arrow...
[laughs] Because obviously,
she couldn't see the tear 'cause it had dried up.
- Yeah, you did miss her a lot. - Yeah.
I really missed her, and I wasn't used
to her being gone,
so when she came back,
we were all really happy to see her.
- We had wrapped in North Carolina.
We were done with the location shooting,
and we were going back to LA
to shoot the interiors and set stuff back at MGMs
after the Thanksgiving holiday.
- In 1981, we had Thanksgiving together as a family
at the house on Cañon Drive.
A house full of people, as always.
Natalie had returned from North Carolina
to finish shooting "Brainstorm" in Los Angeles,
and Daddy had come back from Hawaii,
where he had been shooting "Hart to Hart,"
and it was very rainy and stormy that weekend.
Natalie and Daddy would go out on the boat
a lot for weekends.
A lot of times, the kids would go,
but in this case, they were gonna have an adult weekend,
and I know that Natalie had asked several people
to join them.
Christopher Walken was in Los Angeles
to finish "Brainstorm."
He did not live in Los Angeles.
And so naturally, she asked him
to go on the boat.
And they asked several other friends
that just didn't feel comfortable
and didn't want to go.
- It's pouring with rain the entire Thanksgiving.
We all were at dinner.
And I thought, "Well, this is absurd."
I mean, besides trying to get out of it
because, you know, it was clear
that RJ and Chris were arguing all the time,
I didn't want any part of it.
- I remember feeling that it was a little bit tense,
and I remember staying later with her
to see if she was okay
after we'd all had dinner,
and she told me that she was
and that she'd been under a lot of pressure
in the movie
and would I please come on the boat,
but it was my son's birthday,
so I said to Natalie,
"I'm not gonna come on the boat,
so we'll all have dinner on the Sunday night,"
and that was the last time I saw her.
- We sat up until all hours of the night
on the last night, talking,
and she was anxious about going on the boat
because she felt compromised.
She loved the life she had,
and she loved the work,
and she knew she couldn't do both fully,
and these two men actually represented
both sides of that argument.
You know, Chris was-- in her mind,
he was a free spirit, an artist,
and RJ was a responsible husband and father.
And I said to her that I thought it was
important that she go on the boat,
that it would give her an opportunity
to work through all of this,
and...silly me.
- I've never forgiven myself for not going,
because I'm sure there would've been
a different dynamic somewhere.
- The last time I saw my mom
was the day after Thanksgiving
at our house on Cañon Drive.
It was raining outside,
and I didn't want them to go on the boat,
so I was hugging her, and I was telling her,
"I love you, and I don't want you to go on the boat,"
and she was comforting me and telling me not to worry
and that everything would be okay.
So a few hours later, my parents left on the boat
for Catalina with Christopher Walken,
who I didn't know very well,
and Dennis Davern, who my parents hired
to take care of the "Splendour."
- She'd called me from Catalina,
and she left two messages on my machine
saying, had I heard from RJ?
She and RJ had had an argument
the night before.
The second was, she had called back
to say everything was fine, not to worry.
- On the first night, Mommy had gone
onto Catalina Island and stayed in a hotel,
right? - In Avalon.
- In Avalon, right. - Yeah.
And the reason for that was because
we couldn't pick up a mooring inside the harbor,
so we dropped the anchor outside on the breakwater,
and it was a very rough night,
and the boat was, you know, just going up and down,
up and down,
and it was very uncomfortable.
- So you guys were kind of arguing.
- Yes, that got your mother
very nervous, and so we decided
that she'd go ashore,
and Chris and I stayed on board the boat
and just took watches to see
that it was all right and everything,
and then she came back on board the next morning,
and we decided to go from Avalon
down to the Isthmus,
and we were gonna show Chris that anyway,
'cause that's where we spent our honeymoon
and all of that. - Mm-hmm.
- And when we were at the Isthmus,
we tied up there, and I went to sleep
'cause I was really tired.
- From the night before. - From the night before.
- Uh-huh. - And when I woke up,
Chris and your mother had gone to shore...
- Mm-hmm. - To this bar that was there.
I met them. I got a shore boat.
And, you know, they had these boats
that came up, picked you up, and I went and met them,
and we had dinner, which was pretty nice,
and I remember I had, you know, a few glasses of vino,
and I was feeling pretty good, and...
we came back, you know, to the boat.
I opened up another bottle of wine
and had a couple more glasses of wine,
and I sat there with Chris, and...
we started talking, and...
he started to mention to me about your mother
and how wonderful she was
and what a great actress she was
and how he enjoyed working with her,
and he said, "You know, I think it's important
that she works," and I said,
"I think it's important if you stay out of her life."
You know, I was a little teed off about that.
Suddenly, he's telling me
what she should do and how she should behave.
I got angry at that.
And so your mother went down below,
our stateroom, where we st--
our bedroom was down below,
and she went down below to get ready to go to bed,
and I sat there with Chris, and I said,
"Why don't you just"--
you know, "Don't tell her what to do
and, "Stay out of her life,"
and I picked up the bottle and smashed it on the table,
and, you know, I was really, you know...
angry at him about it,
and as I look back at it, unjustifiably so,
you know, but he ducked out,
went out, went up on the top
of the deck,
and I followed him out there,
and I was still saying to him, you know,
"Just stay out of it, Chris."
You know, "Don't get involved in it.
It's important. She's got three children."
Da-da--you know. - Yeah.
- I mean, I was also a little high at the time, I might say.
But I calmed down.
You know, I guess me being out in the air and...
Anyway, I calmed down,
and we went back down below
and talked for a while.
- You and Chris? - Yeah.
- Uh-huh. - And he went to his cabin,
which was up on the other part of the--forward on the boat,
and Dennis--
I had Dennis--you know, we swept up the glass
off the floor and cleaned up the salon a bit.
And we talked about leaving the next day
to go back to the mainland,
and then I went below, and when I went below,
she wasn't there,
and so I looked around.
I looked in the bathroom, and she wasn't in the bathroom,
and I went on the aft end of the boat,
and the dinghy was gone,
and I came back up, and I said--
I got Dennis and Chris.
I said, you know, "Natalie's not here.
"She's...she's taken off,
"I guess, on the dinghy.
I better--did any of you hear it?"
And we--n--see, nobody heard anything.
- Right. - I didn't hear anything.
I didn't hear anything about--you know.
We would have heard it if-- I believe,
if the dinghy had fired up.
- Yes.
- So... [sighs]
I...called a shore boat
when the guys come out, 'cause I thought
maybe she had gone back to the restaurant
or back to the Isthmus,
where there were these little slips
where you could put your boat in and go in.
- I remember those.
- The dinghy wasn't there, and she wasn't there,
and I yelled up, and the guy says,
"Natalie up there?" "No, she's not here."
I got back, and the shore boat came back.
I said, "She's not-- she didn't go ashore,
at least to the Isthmus." - Right.
- So it was then that we called the shore patrol
and said, "Have you, you know, seen anything?"
"No, we haven't seen anything."
We called the coast guard. The coast guard came in.
And then, you know, we waited for a long--
God, it seemed like forever to me, and...
- 'Cause they were looking for her, right?
- Yeah, they were looking for her,
and this man that I knew
and that your mother knew, Doug Bombard,
he took care of everything in Catalina at that time
and had all the moorings, of which we had one,
and he said, "We found her,"
and I said...
"Is she okay?" and he said, "She's dead."
And...
everything just went out from under me.
You know, just--it just-- everything just
went away from me, and...
we were all stunned, everybody, and...
[somber music]
[sighs]
That night's gone through my mind so many times,
you can imagine, and...
and I...
You know, Chris was there with me.
He, by the way, is a very stand-up guy
and a gentleman, a true gentleman.
- I remember that Mart told me
that he picked you and Chris Walken up
at the helicopter... - Pad, yeah.
- And you drove to see Arthur Malin...
- Mm-hmm. - Your therapist,
because you needed to talk to him
about how you were gonna tell Courtney and I.
- He said to me...
"RJ," he said, "I'll just tell you one thing.
"Don't minimize it.
Just tell them actually how devastating it is."
And I remember, I took you in my arms,
and, you know, you were at the bottom of the stairs.
You remember?
And I said about your mother.
- And then we were all together.
- And we've been all together.
- Yeah.
- Thank God.
- Yeah.
- This afternoon, Natalie Wood was buried
in a private ceremony in Los Angeles,
attended only by family and close friends.
- The funeral was another media storm.
They weren't allowed into the cemetery,
but they got ladders to get up on the wall,
and it was not very pleasant,
considering we were trying to pay our respects
and hold ourselves together.
- There was photographers everywhere,
taking our picture,
and I was thinking, "How can they take my picture
"when I just said good-bye to my mom?
It seems so wrong."
- I remember your grandmother's
parting shot to me,
the last thing that she ever said to me
at the funeral.
She came up to me and said,
"If you," meaning me,
"if you had been on that boat,
my daughter would be alive."
♪ ♪
- The day after the funeral,
there was a big, bizarre, hysterical party at the house.
RJ was in bed upstairs,
and there were all these movie stars there.
It was really odd. I mean, to me, it was odd.
It was like Madame Tussauds brought to life, almost,
and Elizabeth Taylor was there with the crystal ball,
and Shirley MacLaine was gonna heal RJ,
and it was just really completely surreal atmosphere,
I thought.
- I definitely was trying to be strong
because my Daddy Wagner was so very fragile.
I was worried that if I was too upset
that it would be too much for him
and he would just drop dead.
- He was really suffering,
and he didn't leave the bed for days,
and then Willie Mae,
who was really part of the family,
she came up to the bedroom, and she said,
"RJ, you have to get up
"and get out of this bed right now.
Your girls think you're gonna die."
And that was that.
Thank God for Willie Mae, you know?
- Well, I remember Willie Mae,
she helped me get up,
and I pulled myself together, and...
one foot went in front of the other.
- Slowly.
- Very slowly.
- The press didn't go away.
It was really horrible.
The children couldn't go out.
They could go in the back garden,
but they certainly couldn't go out the front,
and every friend that came up to pay their respects,
click, click, click, click, click.
- Most people can't imagine what that's like,
to live in that kind of a fishbowl,
and so RJ
didn't want to be at home at Christmas.
- We then went away for Christmas to Switzerland
to see his friend David Niven
and be there and just get away from the mania
that was going on around the house
on Cañon Drive at the time.
- And RJ brought the kids,
encouraged by my father
to get out of town,
and found a chalet for RJ
not far from my father's chalet.
- Soon after that, my dad wanted us to go
to England to be with Richard Gregson.
- It was New Year's Eve, just after the accident.
There were reporters hanging off the trees,
and RJ was walking around the garden
with Richard in tears,
but at the same time, we had a party.
You know, we had fun, if that sounds odd.
- There was so much activity.
When we were traveling and stuff,
that seemed rather comforting to me.
I think it was finally coming back home
and, like, going back to school,
that didn't feel right.
- My parents had tried so hard to give us
this very stabilized and structured life,
and then when she died, everything went upside down.
So I think it was a lot of just surviving for a while.
- When I went to pay the condolence call
to the Wagner house,
he was broken.
They were all broken.
And I had experienced loss of my own.
I had lost my ex-husband in a plane crash.
I knew what loss felt like.
- When Jill came into my life, I was shattered.
I mean, I was totally empty,
and she had me by my elbow.
She was holding me up,
and I was a lot of weight.
- We did fall in love
but not exactly immediately.
There was such pain
from such a loss,
and it took time.
Fortunately for us,
it evolved into something quite beautiful.
- You know, in the beginning, when Daddy Wagner and Jill
started dating,
I would express to him at times
that it was painful and I didn't like it
and I didn't feel close to Jill,
and she and I talked about it in therapy.
I mean, it was definitely a process.
- After my mom passed away and even now,
I feel like I have this ever-present echo
in my ear that just sounds like it says...
[whispering] "That's Natalie Wood's daughter.
That's Natalie Wood's daughter."
You know, and I just hear that,
and the only thing I can think of
that I have to balance that weird feeling
is my sister Natasha, you know, and my sister Katie.
I just thank God we had each other during that
and just in life anyway,
because I'm so, so close with my sisters.
- Courtney was so young. She was only seven.
To think that she lost her mom at that age
is unimaginable,
and I think she wanted
to numb the pain, she wanted to stop it,
so she struggled with drugs and alcohol
for a really long time,
and there were times when I absolutely thought
that I would lose my sister.
- When we as a family
addressed Courtney's struggles,
we were all able to speak from our hearts
things, perhaps, we hadn't vocalized before
of how we felt,
and I believe it brought us closer as a family.
- The main thing that sobriety has brought me
is that that is where I can have
total control of my life.
I thought that the other night.
I thought, "You know what?
"I'm in control of my life now,
and I don't have to worry about anything."
[gentle music]
- When my mom was alive, she always said
that I wore my heart on my sleeve,
and I did.
But when she died,
I didn't have a safe place anymore to be vulnerable,
so I armored myself to the outside world
with, "I'm fine. I'm okay.
"I don't need your pity.
I'm just fine, thank you very much."
But after my mom died,
I found a lot of strength and clarity
from being in therapy,
and I knew that I wanted to have a child.
That was really important,
and after my daughter was born,
I was flooded with so much happiness
and gratitude,
so I named my daughter Clover,
not necessarily after the character
that my mom played, Daisy Clover,
but mostly because clovers are lucky
and I felt so lucky to have her.
And having my daughter has been
the most healing thing for me.
- There's a development tonight
in one of Hollywood's most enduring mysteries,
the death of Natalie Wood.
- What do we think about, recently,
them reopening this case?
- Wood's death was ruled an accidental drowning,
but in 2011,
Los Angeles sheriff's detectives
reopened the case
after Dennis Davern coauthored a book
in which he gave a very different account
of what happened that night.
- I believe that Robert Wagner was with her
up until the moment she went into the water.
- I mean, I know how I feel.
I feel like people just want
to have some kind of media storm.
- This new information is substantial enough
for us to want to take another look at the case.
- Is Robert Wagner a suspect? - No.
- Oh, the--it's just so transparent to me.
They can print anything that they want to print today,
and, you know, there was the coast guard.
There was the highway patrol,
the police department.
Everybody was on this.
- When it first happened, yes. - When it first happened.
- Shortly after midnight
of the Sunday morning,
she apparently attempted
to get onto the dinghy,
slipped, and fell in the water,
unable to return to the dinghy or the boat.
- Noguchi said there was no evidence of foul play.
He did indicate, however,
that tests revealed Ms. Wood was technically drunk
but continually referred to Wood's condition
as "slightly inebriated."
He nevertheless admitted
that alcohol might have been one reason
why the actress was rendered unconscious.
- When the toxicology report came out after Natalie drowned,
it was clear that there was
a lot of alcohol in her system.
There was also a Dalmane,
the sleeping pill that she took.
- The assumption was, when she went down below,
she could have gone out
to retie the dinghy.
- Well, I remember it used to drive her crazy,
and she would always say, "RJ, can you move the dinghy?
- Yeah, 'cause it-- - 'Cause the way the water hit
up against the boat, it would bang,
and she was so sensitive to noise.
- Yeah, and when she went out there, was--
it was a slight mist that night...
- Mm-hmm. - And the assumption is that
she went out and slipped
and hit her head
and rolled into the water. - Mm-hmm.
- But there's always conjecture
about someone who's very famous,
and your mother was a very famous person.
And there's always conjecture, I think,
you know, that always comes up
but not to this degree.
I mean, this has really been something
that the media has taken over.
- We were approached by a news agency
who wanted to take another look at the case.
We thought it was a good idea
to try and go ahead and do that.
- What's a person of interest?
- Just that. He's a person of interest
like...he was there with her,
last person with her before she ends up dead.
- How does it make you feel
when they call you a person of interest?
- I don't pay very much attention to it, Natasha,
because they're not gonna redefine me.
- That's right.
- You know, they're not gonna redefine me.
I know who I am.
- But it's important to me, Daddy, that people
think of you the way I know that you are,
and it bothers me that anyone would ever think
that you would be involved in what happened to her,
because you would've given your life for my mom.
- And that's true. I would've.
We all would've. I mean, if there was an--
if we'd have heard anything
or known anything that was going on
or any kind of disaster was gonna take place,
we'd have been there.
- Have you ever been back to Catalina?
- No, I never have gone back to the island.
I see it once in a while.
You know how sometimes you can see it,
it's so clear? - Mm-hmm.
- Or if I'm taking off from LAX, you know,
they turn to the south, and you go by the island,
and I look down at the Isthmus,
and I think of all of the great times
that we had there
and all of the wonderful life-giving experiences,
and...you know, it's just so ironic
that this all happened,
you know, that it came to an end like that, so...
No, but I never have been back.
- Do you have any interest in going back?
- Not particularly, no.
- Do you think that the real story
of Natalie Wood's death has actually come out?
- The real story of her death
is that she...
Drowned,
and...nobody knows how she drowned
or what happened
except...her.
[quick piano music]
- Even if you have black and white in the situation,
the tabloid media will create gray,
so every year around the anniversary
of Natalie's death, you'd always start
to see things pop up,
'cause that's when they can sell the most.
And I've had conversations with editors.
"Why do you keep running these awful stories today?"
"Because they still want to read about it,
so they're still making us money."
A lot of people have made money
off of Natalie Wood's death.
- On that level, they're just barracudas.
They're just feeding on something
that means nothing to them,
and because this meant so much to us,
to ever exploit this situation
would be criminal to do that,
and I know there are people who want to talk about it,
but they're doing it for themselves,
and how dare they?
How dare they?
- I think the investigation
was mishandled from the beginning.
Things were oversimplified and ignored.
Conspiracy is a bit far-fetched,
but were things covered up and overlooked purposefully?
I'm certain they were.
- What I read in the press and I see on these TV shows
when Lana appears
really upsets me
'cause it hurts RJ, it hurts the girls,
it hurts the memory of Natalie,
and it makes me sad and angry.
- Are you suggesting
that he knocked her out in some way
and threw her in the water, or--
- It is something like that, absolutely.
- Natalie was very kind to Lana,
very respectful of her situation,
because Natalie was the one who was the big success
with the parents,
and Natalie took great care of her.
- Lana became an actress,
I think, because her sister was a star,
and her name was not Wood,
but her mother changed it to Lana Wood.
- I don't know; the whole thing with Lana,
it's just...
I don't even think she believes what she's saying.
I think she's just angry, and I can understand that.
I can understand being angry.
I can certainly understand having misplaced feelings.
I can understand all of that,
but when I just think about, like, my dad
having to deal with any of this stuff,
it's just so hard to even imagine
when, you know, he experienced, like, a true nightmare.
I mean, a true nightmare.
- One thing that I've heard Lana say
is that my stepdad, RJ,
kept her away from us,
but I don't have a memory of being close to Lana
even before my mom died.
When she would come to our house on Cañon Drive,
it always felt like she was more focused on my mom
than Courtney or me,
so I never had that kind of relationship with her
that my daughter has with my sisters.
And she's literally accused my dad of killing my mom
when that's the farthest thing from the truth.
- Sadly, some of the residue of the tragedy
will always be there,
because people like drama, don't they, and tragedy,
and they'll have theories about it.
And even my friends sometimes say--
you know, they almost, like, take you aside and say,
"Okay, you can tell me what really happened,"
as if you have some great scoop on it.
- Natalie Wood falls into the category
of Marilyn Monroe,
Elvis Presley.
They were such icons,
the things about their passing
will always be brought up.
But Natalie is not a headline.
Natalie was a life well lived.
It was foreshortened,
but she did a lot in that lifetime
for her children, for her friends,
for the industry.
She made a difference.
- It's really sad that she died when she did,
because it'd be really great to see what she was gonna do
as a woman in her 40s and 50s
and the kinds of roles she would take on over time
because she was always grappling
with what it means to be a woman
in different stages of life. - Ah!
- But that's the great thing about being an actor.
You're always alive. Those movies still exist.
- Natalie was unique.
She doesn't have a false moment in her films.
She didn't "act."
She found something in her gut,
in her heart, and in her intellect,
and she applied all of that.
- I love you, Mother.
- And young women seeing that now,
supposing you decide to catch one of these movies,
you'd be struck
by a multidimensional young woman
unafraid to show her vulnerabilities,
her passion, her strength,
and her intelligence.
All of that is there.
- Won't you join me back in the limelight,
little lady of pain?
All she was ever looking for
was the comfort of good friends, good people,
and being able to be a normal human being.
That was her search.
It was so hard against the reputation
of being a movie star.
And I witnessed her desire, her reaching out
to try to be just a regular human being
against the odds of being treated
like a movie star,
and she did it beautifully.
[gentle orchestral waltz]
♪ ♪
[soft music]
♪ ♪
[bright tone]