November 29, 1981: Natalie Wood dies of a drowning at age 43, on Santa Catalina Island, California.
She was born on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, as Natalie Zacharenko. Not yet 8 years old, she starred as Susan Walker in the original 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street. She played troubled teenagers in Rebel Without a Cause and The Searchers. She moved into musicals, starring in West Side Story in 1961 and Gypsy the next year. Being Russian, she didn't make a convincing Puerto Rican in West Side Story, and Marnie Nixon did her singing for the film. So, for Gypsy, she insisted on doing her own singing, and she was fine.
I'd still like to know how Gypsy, a film about strippers, got past the Hays Code. Not to mention her 1964 film Sex and the Single Girl, based on the memoir of Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown. By 1969, the Code was gone, and she was able to star as Carol alongside Robert Culp as Bob, Elliott Gould as Ted, and Dyan Cannon as Alice in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
In 1957, only 19 years old, she married 27-year-old actor Robert Wagner. They divorced 5 years later. In 1969, she married British film producer Richard Gregson. Natalie then went into semi-retirement to raise their daughter, Natasha Gregson. Natalie and Richard split up in 1972, and she then remarried Robert Wagner. They had a daughter, Courtney Wagner, and Natalie's first daughter was renamed Natasha Gregson Wagner.
Natalie returned to acting in 1979, taking the Deborah Kerr role in an NBC remake of From Here to Eternity. Although she had been nominated for an Academy Award 3 times without winning, for this role, she won a Golden Globe Award. She became the first actress to be taken seriously as a child, a teenager, a young adult, and a middle-aged woman (she was 41). That same year, she appeared in the science fiction disaster film Meteor, playing a diplomat -- and, for the 1st time, playing a Russian, and speaking the Russian language, which she did in real life, fluently.
In 1981, she was making the science fiction film Brainstorm, which also starred Christopher Walken. For her next role, she had signed to star in a musical stage version of Anastasia, the story of the woman who claimed to be a princess who survived the massacre of the Russian imperial family in 1918. So she would have played a Russian again, and had the hope of adapting it into a film. (Ingrid Bergman had won an Oscar for the 1956 film Anastasia.)
On November 29, Natalie, Robert and Walken were aboard the yacht Splendour while it was moored near the isthmus of Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of Southern California. Walken's wife Georgianne was not there.
According to Robert, Natalie was not there when he went to bed, and, according to his spokesman, he thought she had taken off on a small inflatable boat by herself, as she had done before. Her body was found about a mile away from the yacht, while the inflatable boat was found beached nearby. The autopsy report revealed that Wood had 39 fresh bruises on her body, including an abrasion on her left cheek.
Later, in his memoir Pieces of My Heart, Robert acknowledged that he had an argument with Natalie before she disappeared, but had calmed down and gone to bed. The autopsy found that her blood alcohol content was 0.14 percent -- .04 above the legal prohibition for operating a motorized vehicle, including a boat -- and there were traces of two types of medication in her bloodstream: A motion-sickness pill and a painkiller, both of which increase the effects of alcohol. Two witnesses, who had been on another boat nearby, stated they had heard a woman scream for help during the night.
Following his investigation, Los Angeles County medical examiner Thomas Noguchi, the famed "coroner to the stars," ruled her death an accident by drowning and hypothermia.
She was 43 years old. She left her husband, 2 children, a sister, actress Lana Wood, and several great films. Lana has claimed that Robert murdered Natalie. Others have made that claim as well. The evidence, as thus far released to the public, is flimsy. Both Natasha and Courtney have publicly defended Robert.
Life works out strangely sometimes: Aside from being Natalie's sister, Lana Wood is best known for appearing in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, as Plenty O'Toole. Also in that film, as the female lead, Tiffany Case, was Jill St. John. Briefly, before Britain's Eon Productions decided to go ahead with making Bond films, they had considered selling the film rights to the Bond novels to an American company, which was considering Wagner to play Bond. In 1990, Robert Wagner married Jill St. John.
In 2004, Peter Bodganovich directed the feature film The Mystery of Natalie Wood. Natalie was played by Justine Waddell. Robert was played by Michael Weatherly. Shortly thereafter, Robert began playing Anthony DiNozzo Sr., father of Weatherly's character, on NCIS. When my mother began watching NCIS, not yet knowing of Robert's connection, she noticed the resemblance immediately. I didn't.
As of November 29, 2022, Robert, Jill and Lana are still alive, and Robert and Jill are still married. Natasha Gregson Wagner became an actress, and married 7th Heaven star Barry Watson. They have a daughter, Clover Watson. In 2020, Natasha released a documentary, Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind. It did not shed any new light on her mother's death, focusing instead on her life. Courtney Wagner is a jewelry designer, with no children. Katie Wagner, Robert's daughter with actress Marion Marshall, and therefore Natalie's (and Jill's) stepdaughter, is an entertainment reporter. She has a daughter, Riley John Wagner-Lewis.
In 1997, Disney made a cartoon version of Anastasia. In 2017, a stage version of that film premiered on Broadway. It wasn't quite Natalie Wood's vision for the story, but she might have wanted to see it. She would have been 78 years old. She did not get the chance to be taken seriously as an old actress.
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November 29, 1981 was a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. These games were played in the NFL:
* The New York Giants lost to the San Francisco 49ers, 17-10 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
* The New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts, 25-0 at Shea Stadium.
* The football version of the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New England Patriots, 27-20 at Schaefer Stadium (later Sullivan Stadium and Foxboro Stadium) in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts.
* The Buffalo Bills beat the Washington Redskins, 21-14 at Rich Stadium (later Ralph Wilson Stadium) in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, New York.
* The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Los Angeles Rams, 24-0 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.
* The Cincinnati Bengals beat their arch-rivals, the Cleveland Browns, 41-21 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
* The Green Bay Packers beat the Minnesota Vikings, 35-23 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the New Orleans Saints, 31-14 at the Superdome in New Orleans.
* The Atlanta Falcons beat the Houston Oilers, 31-27 at the Astrodome in Houston.
* The San Diego Chargers beat the Denver Broncos, 34-17 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego.
* The Oakland Raiders beat the Seattle Seahawks, 32-31 at the Kingdome in Seattle.
* The next night, on ABC Monday Night Football, the Miami Dolphins beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 13-10 at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
* And 3 days before this day, it was Thanksgiving. The Detroit Lions beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 27-10 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan.
And the Dallas Cowboys beat the Chicago Bears, 10-3 at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas.
There were 4 games played in the NBA:
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the San Antonio Spurs, 105-89 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.
* The Kansas City Kings beat the Golden State Warriors, 104-100 at the Kemper Arena (now the Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City.
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Houston Rockets, 122-104 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Chicago Bulls, 114-109 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.
And there were 5 games played in the NHL:
* The New York Rangers and the Quebec Nordiques played to a tie, 4-4 at Madison Square Garden.
* The New York Islanders lost to the Buffalo Sabres, 5-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Hartford Whalers, 6-3 at the Montreal Forum.
* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 6-3 at the Joe Louis Arena.
* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 10-3 at the Winnipeg Arena. Paul Coffey -- a defenseman -- had 2 goals and 3 assists. Wayne Gretzky had a goal and 3 assists.
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