Everett Sloane, the brilliant Mercury Theater actor brought to Hollywood by Orson Welles for Citizen Kane, had sounded authentically Hebrew in the small part of a rabbi in Morningstar; on the strength of this, and his reputation as an expert in foreign accents, he was engaged to coach Natalie to sound authentically French. The result was sometimes successful, sometimes not. And it’s never clear why she has to sound French in the first place: her late father came from Georgia, and her mother (Leora Dana), who’s spent most of her life in France, speaks unaccented American.
Although liberal Sinatra announced that Kings Go Forth “states the case for tolerance in terms of drama and humanity,” it’s basically a standard romantic triangle with a racial twist and a World War II background. For most of the movie, Natalie does what she can with an insipid character, and for most of the movie it’s not very much. But the director, Delmer Daves, was a former actor with the “extra understanding of an actor’s problems” that she always responded to, and he helped her in the only scenes that made contact with emotional reality: when she admits to Curtis that she’s half-black and is stunned by his harsh, bigoted reaction, and when she recovers from the suicide attempt that follows. She’s moving in both scenes, but especially the second, when an indelible moment reveals the true screen actress. Her eyes flutter open, and as she realizes she’s still alive, the look on her face changes from confusion to intense desperation.
Yet another ethnic role: as the mulatto girl in Kings Go Forth with Frank Sinatra (illustration credit 3.14)
ON THE AFTERNOON of December 6, when she was not on call for Kings Go Forth, Natalie went to a jewelry store to collect a present she’d ordered for RJ. It was an engraved identification bracelet to commemorate their first “serious date” the previous year. RJ had called earlier to say he’d made reservations for dinner at Romanoff’s, and suggested they meet beforehand at his apartment on Durant Drive in Beverly Hills; but on the way there, she had a typical moment of insecurity. He’d never mentioned their “anniversary,” and she wondered if he’d forgotten it.
“I should have known better,” she realized later. As soon as she arrived, RJ opened a bottle of champagne, poured two glasses and handed her one. A diamond-and-pearl ring glittered among the bubbles. “Read what’s engraved inside, Charlie,” he said, and Natalie fished out the ring. Its inscription read: “Marry me.”
At Romanoff’s that evening, RJ ordered more champagne, and when Natalie found a pair of pearl earrings at the bottom of her glass, she laughed. The waiter brought two more glasses, and in hers she found another charm for the “Wow Charlie” bracelet, also with an inscription on the back: “Today we’re one year old.”
This time she cried. Next day she noted in her journal: “ ‘Two lonely stars with no place in the sun found their orbit—each other—and they were one.’ I sent this to R on the anniversary of our first love. It also turned out to be the day that we were engaged to be married, and the start of our real life.”
4
Love and Marriage
The feeling about being in love, I learned from my mother.
—NATASHA GREGSON WAGNER
A single white rose because we were separated 10 hours. I met R at the airport when he came in from SF. I had come in in the morning—we missed each other. So much. I love him so much.
—NATALIE WOOD (JOURNAL, 1958)
If I’d been more secure, I could have handled the problems in our marriage better. I opposed Natalie’s idea of going to an analyst because I felt she could work through her fears and anxieties on her own, and with my help. Ironically, after the split, I started going to an analyst.
—ROBERT WAGNER
A FEW DAYS before the diamond-and-pearl ring and the earrings, and the charm steeped in champagne, Natalie and RJ had a serious discussion of the pros and cons of marriage. The only major con, they agreed, was the prospect of conflicting careers; the solution, they believed, was to agree never to be separated (by one having to go on location or a publicity tour without the other) for more than two weeks at a time; and after RJ proposed, they scheduled wedding, honeymoon and future career obligations and plans as precisely as a movie.
The marriage ceremony was projected for Saturday, December 28, 1957, four days after work on Kings Go Forth was suspended for the holidays; and Natalie would not be required to complete her remaining scenes until the last week of January 1958, when RJ was due to begin The Hunters at Fox. So the schedule permitted three weeks for a honeymoon, and just enough time for their mutual friends Mary and Richard Sale to give the couple a shower at their house in Beverly Hills on the afternoon of December 26.
“Two lonely stars found their orbit”: Natalie and RJ (illustration credit 4.1)
The press was invited, and the guest list made it clear that the shower was designed as an “event” for the Hollywood establishment to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of two young movie stars. Except for the families of bride and groom, it was a mainly show-biz affair, with a cast that included Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Jane Russell, Delmer Daves, Louella Parsons, various 20th Century–Fox colleagues of RJ’s and/or the Sales’, director Walter Lang, Clifton Webb, Cesar Romero and Virginia Zanuck, wife of the studio’s former head of production.
For Natalie, the only show-biz guest who qualified as more than an acquaintance or professional associate was Sinatra. At this point in her life she had many acquaintances among her contemporaries, and five actual or prospective friends, all first met at Warners. The first of the actual friends (but not for much longer) was Nick Adams, and the next a young actress from New York who played a bit part in Marjorie Morningstar. Barbara Gould attached herself to Natalie, who always responded to a beginner’s loneliness and insecurity; but although they became close for a while, it was another friendship that wouldn’t last much longer. The first of the prospective friends was Norma Crane, who came out from New York (and the Actors Studio) to test for the role in Morningstar eventually played by Carolyn Jones. “They began schmoozing over coffee,” according to Mart Crowley, and Natalie was instantly attracted to Norma’s wit and earthy directness. The other two were Edd Byrnes, who played a small role in Morningstar and later starred in the TV series 77 Sunset Strip, and his actress wife, Asa Maynor. The couple divorced several years later, but by then Asa had become part of what Natalie called her “nucleus.”
All except Barbara Gould were either filming or out of town, and Jack Warner also sent his regrets, accompanied by an impressive gift. Steve Trilling had informed him by memo that the lovers “would very much like a rawhide Hartman trunk to match their luggage. There is only one on the coast and it retails for $650, which we can get for 20% off. This makes it $520 plus $73 for taxes for a total of $593.” A bargain always made Warner’s day, and he approved the deal with an “OK” and an enthusiastic circle around the sum total.
AFTER THE SHOWER, the lovers took the night train to Phoenix. They were accompanied by the Sales and Nick Adams, and Mary Sale was “very insistent that Natalie and RJ mustn’t sleep together,” as she believed it would bring bad luck. They had decided to get married at the First Methodist Church in the nearby resort town of Scottsdale, where RJ’s parents owned a house. Robert Wagner Sr. was best man; Natalie had chosen Barbara Gould for her maid of honor and Lana as a bridesmaid. RJ’s business manager, Andrew Maree, and his wife were the other guests, and Mary Sale remembered that Nick Gurdin unwrapped an icon he’d brought from Russia: “ ‘This has to be with them when they get married,’ he said. Both Natalie and RJ were very touched.”
Next day the couple left by train for Florida, where RJ had chartered a boat for what they hoped would be a honeymoon cruise. But bad weather caused them to reschedule, and they took a train to New York, where they saw two plays: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs by William Inge and West Side Story, “conceived, directed, and choreographed” by Jerome Robbins. Then they drove cross-country to Palm Springs, where Natalie’s lawyer, Greg Bautzer, lent them
his house for a few days. They continued to Long Beach harbor, planning to end their honeymoon on My Other Lady, the boat RJ had recently bought and anchored there.
Soon after they got under way with RJ at the helm, dense fog smothered the coast and canceled their last chance for a honeymoon cruise. But four blurred and becalmed days off Catalina seemed even more romantic for being unscheduled, and Natalie remembered them as “the best part” of the trip.
FOR THE NEXT few months, Natalie and RJ lived at his bachelor apartment on Durant Drive, too busy to do more than talk about finding a house. As well as completing Kings Go Forth, Natalie was loaned out for a guest appearance on Sinatra’s TV series, The Frank Sinatra Show ($10,000 for Producer plus a thirty-second plug for Morningstar), and tested for a leading role she didn’t want to play. The script for The Miracle, “based” on the Karl Vollmoeller/Max Reinhardt play that became one of Reinhardt’s most famous productions, had reduced it to the story of a girl in eighteenth-century Spain torn between desire to become a nun and desire for a soldier. Irving Rapper, assigned to direct the tests and the picture, also tested Carroll Baker. To Natalie’s relief, he preferred Baker, and her only fear was that Producer might not agree. Fortunately he did. (Although the movie was a dud, the studio had better luck with nuns later that year with The Nun’s Story.)
“See if you can find something modern for Natalie Wood,” Warner instructed Steve Trilling in a memo dated March 20. In the meantime, he instructed the publicity department on March 28 that he was sending her on a six-city promotional tour for Morningstar: “She is going by train and may have a chaperone and hairdresser accompany her. Also, her husband, Robert Wagner, may join her before the tour is over.”
Scottsdale, December 28, 1957: Just married. Left to right: bridesmaid Lana Wood, maid of honor Barbara Gould, Nick Gurdin, Natalie, RJ, Robert Wagner Sr. (illustration credit 4.2)
Although Natalie wanted to travel by train on her honeymoon because it was more romantic, she’d already begun to develop a subconscious fear of flying. Another example of fear as a reproductive organism, it came to the surface when RJ realized he would be able to join Natalie only for the last few days of the four-week tour, when he completed filming In Love and War. He encouraged her to stand by their prenuptial vow, and although she hated the idea of a month’s separation, she was deeply afraid of angering Warner and Maria by going on suspension when she owed the studio $12,500. “I was finally able to reassure her,” RJ remembered, “because at that time I was the big earner, $3,000 a week compared to Natalie’s $750, so between us there was no money problem. And she decided to go through with it.”
In fact the Morris Agency broke the news to Warner and spared Natalie a personal confrontation. But as Producer was about to go on vacation in Europe, he told Steve Trilling to “straighten out Natalie” in his absence. Trilling decided against suspension, sparing Natalie (for the moment) a confrontation with Maria, and began looking for “something modern” for her instead.
He was still looking when Jack Warner sustained serious injuries in an automobile accident in France two months later. A long hospitalization and convalescence in Los Angeles kept Producer away from the studio until November; and as his deputy, Trilling hoped to “straighten out Natalie” when the Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Company requested her services on loan for The Devil’s Disciple. Although not modern, it was “prestige”: Alexander Mackendrick had been signed to direct the adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s play, and Natalie would be compensated for a relatively slight role by appearing in the company of Laurence Olivier, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Eva Le Gallienne. But Hecht-Hill-Lancaster had decided to shoot the film entirely in England, which would separate the Wagners for several months, and Natalie asked for time to “talk it over” with her husband.
By then the William Morris Agency’s senior triumvirate, Bert Allenberg, Abe Lastfogel and Joe Schoenfeld, had taken charge of Natalie’s career; and on June 3, Allenberg informed Trilling that the couple had again decided to stand by their prenuptial agreement. This time Trilling reacted with a threat to invoke a “demand on services” clause in Natalie’s contract, which entitled the studio to sue her if she refused to accept her next assignment. And he ordered her to report to director Vincent Sherman on July 15 to discuss her role in The Philadelphian.
On the day before her scheduled appointment, an article in the Los Angeles Examiner claimed that “not since the heyday of Shirley Temple has a youngster dominated a studio as Natalie Wood does.” And it quoted an unnamed Warners executive who described Natalie as “our top box-office draw and, I personally believe, our greatest acting talent.” Obviously concocted as advance publicity for Natalie in The Philadelphian, the article misfired. She failed to keep her appointment with Sherman, and the studio dominated its top box-office draw by placing her on suspension and informing her that “we hereby refuse to pay you any compensation as of the date thereof [July 15].”
When Natalie turned down The Devil’s Disciple for personal reasons, she couldn’t foresee that it was a wise professional move. After a series of disagreements with Burt Lancaster during the first two weeks of shooting, Mackendrick was fired. His unsuitable replacement was a specialist in action movies, and star power couldn’t save the project from critical or commercial failure. The Philadelphian (later The Young Philadelphians, with Barbara Rush replacing Natalie opposite Paul Newman) was a “superior” commercial picture with two effective leading roles; but in fact the Morris triumvirate had encouraged Natalie to turn it down so they could renegotiate her contract with Warners. More money was their object, not her right to be consulted about the roles she played, and the negotiations dragged on for seven months.
Meanwhile, Natalie couldn’t escape a confrontation with Maria. Although a less formidable authority figure than Producer or his deputy, she could still apply strong emotional pressure. Maria’s control over her daughter had suffered a serious blow when Natalie married RJ, but she managed to convey the impression that she was still in charge by telling Louella Parsons, “I thoroughly approve of Bob Wagner.” When the remark duly appeared in Louella’s column (as Maria intended), it carried the implication (as Maria intended) that the marriage would never have taken place without her approval.
But in private the gloves came off when Natalie went on suspension: bitter accusations of throwing her career and good money away and of ingratitude to the mother who made her a star: for Maria, the inevitable last resort of a convulsion, and for Natalie, the inevitable aftermath of guilt.
Robert Wagner: “You will simply not believe what you’re going to see,” Natalie said the first time she took me to meet her parents. I could tell they’d just had a row, could smell something going on, all that tension in the air. And if her mother was angry with Natalie about something, Nick backed her up. Later Natalie told me they’d “woven a web” around her since she was a child. One day someone was a friend, the next a no-good enemy, and she grew up never knowing who to believe or who to trust.
On July 18 the Wagners attended the Hollywood premiere of Kings Go Forth. This time star power laced with doomed interracial romance ensured a moderate box-office success, although most reviewers dismissed the story as high-minded soap opera and found Natalie more expressive visually than vocally—fair comment when she was obliged to deliver so many drab lines with a French accent. Coincidentally, on the Fox lot, World War II proved even less beneficial to RJ (and the studio) that year. The Hunters failed to advance his career or make a profit, and he suspected that In Love and War was unlikely to reverse the trend.
BUT RJ’S CONTRACT with Fox proved useful that summer when Nick Gurdin was arrested for drunken driving on his way home to 3331 Laurel Canyon Boulevard after a night at the bars. He ignored a red light and hit a pedestrian who was crossing the street at the intersection. When the man died in hospital, Nick was additionally charged with manslaughter, and RJ enlisted the help of the studio’s troubleshooter, who specialized in getting stars and/or their families
out of trouble. He managed to get the manslaughter charge voided, although Nick’s driving license was canceled for six months.
Shortly afterward, when Maria finally had to acknowledge that Natalie considered her husband’s feelings more important than her mother’s, RJ witnessed an alarming scene. “We hadn’t yet found a house that we wanted to buy, and were starting to feel really cramped in my apartment, so Natalie suggested we move to 3331 Laurel Canyon. Her family was still living there, but we could give them the $12,500 Warners had loaned Natalie to move out and buy another house. They were both furious when we told them what we’d decided, and Mud began shouting at Natalie, until Natalie finally shouted her down—’You have to get the hell out!’ Then they had to accept, but Mud felt her control slipping even further away and this time went totally berserk.” Maria had now become “Mud,” a nickname she owed to RJ, who couldn’t remember why he invented it. (Maybe it came from “Musia,” Nick Gurdin’s nickname for his wife.) “But the name stuck, like mud. And when someone else started referring to Nick as Fahd, the couple became known as Mud and Fahd.”
THE ROMANTIC ENTRY in Natalie’s occasional journal, after RJ sent her a white rose because they’d been separated for ten hours, is undated. But it was obviously made some time in the fall of 1958, as it precedes the next entry on November 6, and follows a previous note on July 20, “My twentieth birthday.” And on that day, as her lawyer Greg Bautzer pointed out, marriage made Natalie legally twenty-one. She was now entitled to pick up $27,050 in government bonds from the trust fund established after Tomorrow Is Forever, a gratifying windfall at the start of her unpaid suspension, although a disappointment followed.
Natalie Wood Page 16