Natasha

by Suzanne Finstad

  Maria hung up the phone, possessed with getting Natasha to cry on cue. The task of preparing her for her screen test fell to Olga, a cruel irony lost on Mud. Maria’s older daughter did as she was told though “it just seemed funny to me, because I was only what, sixteen?” While coaching Natasha, Olga remembered her drama teacher in Santa Rosa instructing the class to think of something sad when they needed to cry. She told Natasha to think about the day their dog was killed in Santa Rosa. Natasha looked stricken, reliving the nightmare of her puppy darting in front of a truck. “I got her to cry,” recalls Olga. Maria, hovering nearby, made mental notes of the technique.

  Outwardly Natasha “seemed to get through the scene pretty well,” her sister thought, unaware Natasha had been emotionally scarred. “From that time on, whenever I did a movie, I always counted the crying scenes,” Natalie said later. “That was a barometer of how difficult the part was going to be for me.” The true horror of that stigma was yet to come.

  Maria took Olga out of Hollywood High for Natasha’s screen test. Pichel would recall Natasha stepping aside before her scene. In those moments, Olga whispered to her to think about their little dog, coaxing Natasha into tears. Then something else occurred, Natalie would later confide to actor Robert Redford. Her mother pulled her to the side, where no one could see, “took a live butterfly out of a jar and tore the wings off it.” Tenderhearted Natasha went into hysterics as her mother called out, “She’s ready!” grabbing her by the hand and pushing her in front of the camera. Natasha cried so profoundly Pichel was moved to write about it later, describing her tears as “seeming to come from the depth of some divine despair.” Her audition broke Pichel’s heart, and with it his resolve to keep her from becoming a child actress.

  Twenty years later, when Natalie told Redford the story, he wondered, “How can anyone survive this? But she did.” She survived, but Natasha was never the same, in ways that would gradually reveal themselves.

  Maria’s ruthlessness with the butterfly and the dead puppy was a warning how far she would go to advance Natasha’s career to the detriment of her daughter. Though she was still only a child, Natasha was beginning to understand that her mother was living through her. The narcissism and drive that put Marusia on street corners collecting coins to become Queen of the Ball had been redirected toward her daughter, where it would be commingled for the rest of their lives. Fahd was relegated to the sidelines, too ineffectual to be her advocate.

  Pichel cast Natasha Gurdin in Tomorrow Is Forever that March, saying, “After that second test, there was never any question—Natasha was ‘in the movies.’ ” It was a dream come true, Maria would later reminisce to a friend. “But it was Marie’s dream, it wasn’t Natasha’s,” as the friend would perceptively observe.

  International Pictures, the studio producing the film, agreed to pay Natasha one hundred dollars a week, minimum Screen Actors Guild wages, to play the part of Margaret Ludwig. When the picture was completed, the studio had the option to extend her contract for up to seven years. Maria functioned as Natasha’s de facto agent, using the bookkeeping skills her father suggested she learn in China and her own shrewd intelligence to evaluate the contract. “When there’s a small print, I have to read it,” she said once, “I always looking out for everything.” Because Natasha was a minor, the contract with International had to be executed by a parent. Maria assumed the task, signing as “Mary” Gurdin, for reasons unknown. By using so many names—Maria, Marie, Musia, Marusia, now Mary—contriving the mystery that her real Russian name was a secret, in a strange way, Maria had no identity. She was merging with Natasha.

  Natasha had her own identity crisis when the movie contract was executed. William Goetz and Leo Spitz, the producers who founded International Pictures, decided “Natasha Gurdin” was too ethnic for their child star. After discussing it, possibly with Pichel, they Americanized “Natasha” to “Natalie,” and came up with “Wood” after a director they both knew named Sam Wood, who directed A Night at the Opera and Pride of the Yankees. The choice was either an homage to Wood, as Natalie generally told the story, or he happened to walk by at that moment, in a different version. In either case, Natasha had no say. Goetz simply walked up to her and declared, “From now on your name will be Natalie Wood.” “I hated it,” she said later. “It didn’t conjure up a pretty image.” “Couldn’t we make it Woods instead of Wood?” she suggested. “Then I could think of trees and forests.” “Don’t fret,” she would recall Goetz replying. “When you see ‘Natalie Wood’ up in lights, you’ll love it.” Maria (“Mary”) promptly signed an amendment authorizing “Natalie Wood” as her daughter’s professional name and screen credit, taking away Natasha’s identity at six. The Gurdins did not legally change their daughter’s name, probably because she was a minor. As she became famous as Natalie Wood, she would preserve her real name for legal purposes, remaining Natasha Gurdin all her life, the one vestige of the little girl she once was.

  Natasha’s hint of spirit concerning her name was the last time she would question an adult for seven years. Mud spent countless hours before Tomorrow Is Forever admonishing her to do anything Pichel or the producers asked, to be polite to the adults, be on time, never forget her lines, and curtsy when introduced to a grown-up. Small wonder that as an adult actress, Natalie was once compared to a wind-up doll. Mud’s plan was to turn Natasha into the most cooperative child actress in town, so that her contract would be extended and studio heads, directors, and casting agents would want to hire her. “Be nice to the director,” Natalie recalled Mud saying, over and over. “Even when I’d disagree, I’d have to smile and be sweet, and listen.”

  Since Natasha did not know how to read, Olga and Mud read the script of Tomorrow Is Forever aloud to her, telling her which lines were hers. She memorized her part as the Austrian orphan by hearing her mother and sister read it, a process Natalie would recall as extremely difficult, since “I had to do it with a German accent and I had to learn a bit of German.” According to Olga, Natasha had no voice coach and learned the German phonetically, extraordinary for a six-year-old. Robert Blake, who befriended Natalie when they were child actors, estimated her IQ at 150 or 160, “Phi Beta Kappa smart.” Natasha quite possibly had a photographic memory, something Musia discovered reading the script to her. “She had unusual memory. She will memorize not only her part, but all who’s with her.” An early boyfriend, while acknowledging Natalie’s intellect, ascribed her childhood memorization of complete scripts to sheer terror. “That mother did something to her at night—she must have—in bed… getting her to remember all those lines as a kid.”

  Natasha approached playing a war orphan opposite Orson Welles much as she had appearing in the kindergarten play, as an exercise in make-believe. Just as she put white powder in her hair to transform into an old woman, the studio hairdresser bleached her Russian brown hair Austrian blond so she could become Margaret Ludwig—braiding it, ironically, into pigtails. “Acting to me was just like playing house or playing with dolls.” Olga or Mud explained to Natasha who the characters in the film were “in language I could understand,” and she “played pretend.” How Natasha felt about acting is less clear; sadly, even to her. “My feelings were largely submerged. I’d been told to act, and I simply acted without questioning,” she reflected in middle age, speculating, “something in me obviously wanted to act. When I was told to do so, I cooperated and enjoyed it.” Natalie’s analysis was probably correct, for as Pichel observed from his experience as a director, “If a child doesn’t want to act, you can’t make him.”

  Natasha’s first day on a movie set as “Natalie Wood” was March 30, 1945. Her first scene was with Orson Welles. She walked onto the International Pictures lot with her mother, wide-eyed, expecting “velvet curtains and tinsel,” the way she imagined, from Mud’s fantastical descriptions, when she played “going to the studio.” “I couldn’t understand these rundown buildings. I thought they would be divine, all glitter and gold, and here were these
old barns.” She was “terribly disillusioned.”

  The towering Welles—her first leading man, as he was to call himself—made a lasting impression on tiny Natasha. She was struck by the huge star’s “booming voice” and found him instantly kind, “always very helpful. I remember he was quite temperamental also—but never towards me.” Something about the Russian child with the quaint curtsy melted Welles’ heart, as it had Pichel’s. “I was just a little in love with Natalie, since the first time we met. I never stopped loving her. I never will,” he said later. Their first scene together captured that chemistry, despite Welles’ dismissive comments about the film years later. When Pichel called action, Natasha, by some supernatural process, became Margaret, haunted by her parents’ murders, clinging to her guardian. Her accent and her German were eerily authentic; in her ice-blond braids she seemed reborn an Austrian. Welles, who had been a child prodigy, found her talent “terrifying,” as he told Life magazine that fall in a quote that often would be repeated. “I’ve had a lot of experience with child actors,” he later observed, “but Natalie was far and away the most memorable—even more so than Liz Taylor. She was a professional when I first saw her. I guess she was born a professional.” Welles was more correct than he imagined, for Natasha had been prepared for this moment since conception. She responded with genius to match Welles (who would claim to a friend, years later, that he “discovered” Natalie Wood).

  Maria shrewdly and uncharacteristically withdrew into the background when Natasha was performing, correctly intuiting that her lack of interference would please the director and everyone on the set, increasing her daughter’s likelihood of being hired again. She stood off to the side, her sharp eyes darting everywhere, noticing the tiniest detail, reminding Natasha, by her dark presence, to be letter-perfect. Welles would recall shooting six or seven takes of a scene where he held Natalie in his lap. “Should have been just one take,” remembered Welles, “but I kept blowing my lines. Not Natalie. She was six years old at the time, but she was already a perfect little pro.” Mud’s fanaticism to create the model child actor left Natasha no room to be a child, or to be anything less than perfect, fostering a perfectionism Natalie would struggle with all her life: “I always felt I had to know my lines perfectly and not keep anybody waiting.”

  Natasha’s raw performance in Tomorrow Is Forever was nearly perfect. The role of a shattered war orphan suited the sadly beguiling quality she herself possessed. Pichel even incorporated Natasha’s curtsy into her character. Years later Natalie would remark that she was best playing sad characters because she could use the dark experiences in her life. Natasha’s demons bled through her portrayal of Margaret. Welles noticed it during filming, commenting later on “those two great dark, deep-looking eyes,” remarking how “they could dance with fun… [yet] they were shadowed too by something else, some deep reflection of… tragedy.”

  The tenderness of Orson Welles’ relationship with Natasha carried over to their scenes. When the hulking Welles, as the ailing guardian, starts to remove his heavy overcoat, tiny, wistful Margaret—Natasha—races to his side, helping him out of the sleeves, a poignant gesture that reveals her love for him but also her fear that if he died she would be lost. The gesture, and Natasha’s sensitive performance, were instinctual. As Welles put it, “Natalie acts from her heart, not from the script,” proving that the pathos in her extraordinary screen test was more than Maria’s gimmickry with a butterfly.

  Natasha missed the last half of first grade shooting Tomorrow Is Forever. According to child labor laws, child actors had to have three hours of schooling every day. Natalie studied on the set between scenes with a studio tutor. “The way it works,” recalls a kid actor who later worked with her, “[is] when the kids show up in the morning they go straight into wardrobe and makeup so they’re prepared. Then they go to the teacher. The teacher would have a time clock and you start doing your schooling. The assistant director’s job is to get that schooling out of the way—so they do it in increments. In about twenty minutes they would say, ‘Okay, we need Natalie.’ So she would go out and rehearse. Then they would say, ‘Okay, go back to school.’ While the lighting and everything is being done, the kid would be in school. It was very rare to get the whole three hours in.” “I had to take my lessons on the set during the times they were lighting the scene,” Natalie recalled, “so I learned to concentrate. If a lamp fell down I probably wouldn’t hear it.” Because she was underage, Natasha was also required to have a welfare worker and one of her parents with her on the set at all times. She was surrounded by an entourage of adults—her tutor, Maria, the welfare worker—in the middle of a sea of activity all day, every day, on the movie set. At night, Mud hovered about her like a hummingbird. The only time Natasha was alone was when she went to bed at night. Solitude began to frighten her.

  The emotional scene Natasha performed at her screen test was scheduled a month into filming. She anticipated it with “absolute terror,” traumatized by Mud’s pressure on her to cry on cue. Maria borrowed Olga’s tactic while Pichel was setting up the scene, reminding Natasha of her dead dog. Then she took it a step further. “Her mother would drag her behind a flat and tell her some horrendous story about tearing the wings off birds to get her hysterical, and then drag her back.” This would be the technique Maria used with Natasha from then on. “She would get me all worked up and say to the director, ‘Start shooting.’ ” Mud’s brutality was effective; Natasha sobbed on Welles’ shoulder in perfect German. Crying would remain her bête noire forever after.

  Natasha also had fun on Tomorrow Is Forever. Welles taught her magic tricks, “always pulling cards out of my pigtails.” She discovered she “loved grown-ups,” which was not surprising, for Mud had turned her into a miniature adult. Her best friend on the set was a dwarf named Shorty, Welles’ valet. “We became great pals, Shorty and I, and we kind of hung out together between takes,” she later recalled. “And I remember Claudette Colbert. She was always dieting. My mother used to be amazed that ‘Miss Colbert doesn’t seem to eat any food, she just drinks fruit juice and vegetable juice.’ She was thin as a reed. She had a little atomizer that she used to spray something—air, I think—into her eyes. She wanted them to sparkle. She was very sweet to me.” Natasha observed it all, noticing how Welles changed the lighting to suit him, studying Colbert, “learning how to be a better actress.” Welles taught her, by example, to keep a sense of humor about being a star. Colbert, her first female Hollywood role model, impressed Natasha as “kind and maternal… you felt that about her, not just in her performances but in life.” The same would be said, in the future, of Natalie Wood.

  Colbert became a mother figure to Natasha, in the movie and on set. “I always felt it sad somehow that in real life, Claudette never became a mother, for she had so much to give that way.” Natasha found her “exceptionally sensitive and understanding and empathetic,” qualities noticeably absent in Mud. Colbert returned the compliment, describing Natasha as “smart” and “sensitive,” an opinion shared by Pichel, who concluded with some regret after directing her that Natasha had “the sensitivity, the temperament, the understanding of that cross between child and adult—the actress.” Natalie Wood was a child-woman at six.

  Her mature behavior on the set earned her a reputation in Hollywood as “very easy to handle.” “Like I taught her,” said Maria, “to be courteous to the grown-ups.” Natasha was akin to a marionette; Maria pulled the strings and Natalie Wood performed.

  Mud’s strategy, and Natasha’s talent, achieved Maria’s desired end. Goetz and Spitz exercised the option to extend “Natalie Wood’s” contract with International Pictures before she had even completed looping her scenes. By the terms of the option, her weekly salary would increase in increments each year she was under contract, beginning at $125 per week and graduating to $750 a week by the final year. Within twelve months of arriving in Hollywood, Maria had secured a seven-year contract with a major movie studio for Natasha. She was not q
uite seven years old.

  On May 22, a package arrived at the Canevaris’ in Santa Rosa, addressed to Edwin. Inside was an 8½-by-11 glossy of Natasha, as Margaret, in Tomorrow Is Forever, dressed in a gingham pinafore with puffed sleeves, her peroxide hair in braids, tiny hands folded primly on her lap, smiling sweetly for the camera. On the back of the photo Musia had written a letter, purporting to be from Natasha:

  Dear Edwin!

  Sending you my picture, Studio changed my name, my screen name is Natalie Wood. Thank you for a lovely hankies. I am wearing them to studio. If you will see something about me in Santa Rosa paper (newspaper) please send it to me. I am collecting all my publicity, I have a scrap book. My best regards to your mama and papa,

  Love Natasha.

  -1945-HOLLYWOOD

  Natasha, who was learning to read, signed the picture herself, copying her sister Olga’s perfect penmanship. “To dear Edwin, My best friend,” she wrote neatly, “love Natalie Wood,” adding, in parentheses, “(Natasha).”

  It was a psychologically complex correspondence, foreshadowing, among other things, the interweaving of Maria’s persona with Natasha’s; Natasha’s identity complex; and Mud’s total domination of her movie star daughter. “God made her,” she would say years later, “but I invented her.”

  BEFORE FILMING WAS COMPLETED ON HER first movie, a fan magazine called Motion Picture had already interviewed “Natalie Wood” for a profile called “Six-Year-Old Siren.” Pichel made immediate arrangements to borrow her from International for his new movie at Paramount, The Bride Wore Boots, to start in July, putting Natasha back to work within three weeks, over what would have been her summer holiday.

  Mud’s paranoid behavior blossomed into hysteria now that “Natalie” was on the cusp of fame. She never let Natasha out of her sight and would not allow her to play at other children’s homes because she was afraid Natasha might be kidnapped, instilling a disturbing new element to her growing fear of being alone, “this feeling that it was somehow dangerous.” Natasha put off bedtime until as late as possible, “babbling” for hours, populating her bedroom with storybook dolls—believing that Bo-Peep, Cinderella, and twenty-eight other doll characters kept her from being alone. “I talked to my dolls and toys and I thought they came alive at night,” she told a writer when she was an adult. “Sometimes I stayed up all night to see what they would do.”