Towards the end of her career, Natalie Wood was becoming the Madonna of her time, not singer, but actress and not naked but provocative. Her movies at the time were considered risqué, with such subjects as “swinging”, like in the movie Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice (1969), which for that time and for most people was controversial. Natalie was so hot though, that if anyone was going to bring down the barriers to movies such as that, it would be her. Of course by 1969 Wood had been a child-star in Miracle on 34th Street and had starred in numerous movies before the age of adulthood, including opposite James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause.<?xml:namespace prefix = o />
Around Thanksgiving in 1981, her body was found floating off the coast of Los Angeles, after a night of partying with second-time husband Robert Wagner and fellow actor Christopher Walken. Captain Davern, of the boat they were partying on, the Splendour, wrote a book a couple of years ago, in which he broke with what he said they had all, Wagner, Walken and himself, agreed at the time would be the story to police. The main difference being that Wood was not alone at the time she “disappeared”, but instead was having a blow-out fight with Wagner on the deck and apparently over Wagner’s perceived drunken flirting between Wood and Walken. The police are now looking at the case again.
Chicano Channel Magazine
