By Bill Dobbins www.billdobbinsphotography.com
There is no doubt that things that are memorable to us when we are young tend to remain with us for the rest of your life. In my youth, one of those things was the lovely, talented and beautiful actress Natalie Wood. Nowadays, there are a huge number of really striking young female celebrities for teenage boys to fall in love with. Everyone from Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande to Demi Lavato and Katy Pery – plus Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and at least a dozen more.
But back in the 1950s, as far as I can remember, there was Natalie Wood – a child actresss who matured into a heartbreakingly and sexy young actress who has an affect on me I never outgrew. To the point where her untimely death affected me as if she were a member of my family – and it still does.
I bring this up because I happened to see Natalie Wood in a movie on TV recently and seeing her on-screen brought home to me how much I sill grieve over her loss, but also the tremendous power of images.
Natalie Wood (born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko; July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American actress who began her career in film as a child and became a Hollywood star as a young adult. Wood received three Oscar nominations before she was 25. She began acting in films at age 4 and was given a co-starring role at age 8 in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).[2] As a teenager, she earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), followed by a role in John Ford‘s The Searchers (1956). She starred in the musical films West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962), and she received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Her career continued with films such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Inside Daisy Clover (1964), and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). – Wikipedia
On December 28, 1957, the 27-year-old Robert Wagner married Natalie Wood, who was 19 at the time. They separated in June 1961 and divorced on April 27, 1962.[37]In In early 1972, Wagner reconnected with Wood and remarried her on July 16, 1972[39] after a six-month courtship. Their only child together, Courtney Wagner, was born on March 9, 1974. Wood died in November 1981.
Filmography
Few child stars continue to have successful careers as they mature, much less go on to earn multiple Oscar nominations. But Natalie Wood was extremely talented as well as beautiful and continued to create significant performances throughout her career. She was only 43 at the time of her accidental death by drowning, which in this age of stars knowing how to take care of themselves and stay fit and youthful, means she still had a long career ahead of her.
After making The Last Married Couple in America (1980), Natalie began work on Brainstorm (1983) in the fall of 1981 with Christopher Walken. She did not live to see it released. On November 29, 1981, she was sailing on the yacht she shared with her husband, Robert Wagner, their friend Walken, and the yacht’s skipper Dennis Davern, when Natalie fell in the ocean while trying to board the dinghy tied up alongside the yacht and drowned. She was 43 years old. Natalie had made 56 films for TV and the silver screen and it’s hard to say what she could have done while making her comeback. “Brainstorm” was finally released in 1983. –IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson
