Natalie Wood

by Gavin Lambert

  ALTHOUGH LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER earned Natalie a third Academy Award nomination, Producer was slow to decide on her next contract movie; and as she wasn’t allowed to make an “outside” picture of her own choice for another year, her career marked time.

  After a divorce and a failed love affair, her personal life was also on hold, and she lost an important member of her nucleus when Mart Crowley decided to remain in Europe for a while. Another secretary succeeded him, then another, but “they didn’t work out,” Mart explained, “because Natalie needed someone she really liked to work for her, someone to have a drink with at the end of the day, and so on.” Then, as Howard Jeffrey had been out of work for several months, she offered him the job. As Robert Mulligan noted, the affection between Natalie and her “staff” (which by now included Bob Jiras, her makeup man since Splendor in the Grass) was mutual: “You could feel the people who worked for Natalie genuinely liked her. It was never a star entourage, the kind that bowed to her every wish and secretly disliked her. These were real friends.”

  Whenever Natalie felt low, humor became an essential tonic, and in the case of Arthur Loew Jr., an essential bond in the affair that began shortly before they attended the June 15 premiere of Cleopatra. A droll and charming dilettante, Arthur was born to the Hollywood purple. His maternal grandfather, Adolph Zukor, founded Paramount. His paternal grandfather, Marcus Loew, founded Loews Theaters and MGM, and his father established MGM as the leading international movie studio by creating a network of overseas offices during the 1920s.

  Arthur Jr. had worked as a sports reporter before producing two movies: The Rack, with Paul Newman as an American soldier taken prisoner and brainwashed during the Korean War, and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, whose star, Debbie Reynolds, he consoled after the breakup of her marriage with Eddie Fisher. Although Arthur loved pretty women, and especially unhappy pretty women, he was not sexually demanding. His greatest pleasure was to become the Great Consoler, listening very attentively to their problems, being very generous with gifts and keeping them amused.

  But Arthur’s drollery was also a very effective way of disguising his feelings, and Natalie never realized how deeply he’d fallen in love with her. Neither did most of her friends (including this biographer), because he only let down his guard to his cousin and close friend Stewart Stern. “He was insane about Natalie,” Stewart recalled. “I’d never seen him like that before, very serious, very concerned.” He soon gave Natalie a diamond “engagement” ring, and although she agreed to wear it, she warned him that she wasn’t ready to marry again. But this was enough for Arthur to send a photograph of himself and Natalie to various friends and describe it as their “engagement picture,” in spite of the fact that the engagement was never officially announced.

  BY THE END OF JUNE, Producer had still not chosen Natalie’s next contract picture. He’d bought the rights to The Sparrow, J. P. Miller’s screenplay about Edith Piaf, and planned to assign her to the project after Leslie Caron proved unavailable; fortunately, Trilling (or somebody) dissuaded him. And by that time Natalie had been sent—not by Warners or her agents—a script that she liked.

  Before Mart Crowley left for Rome, she’d asked him to read a novel by Dorothy Baker sent to her by Martin Manulis, a contract producer at Fox. Cassandra at the Wedding was the story of twin sisters, with a subtle but unmistakable slant on the repressed lesbianism of one twin, and Mart thought it contained two strong roles for Natalie. He took the novel with him to Rome, and when RJ invited him “to stay on and write,” he decided to adapt it on speculation, and sent a copy of the script to Manulis. “I wrote this for Natalie Wood,” he explained in an accompanying note, and as Manulis had never heard of Mart Crowley, he called Natalie to ask if she knew him. Natalie laughed, said she knew Mart very well and asked to see the script. When she told Manulis how much she liked it, wheels began to turn very quickly because, as Crowley discovered, “Everybody wanted Natalie for something then.”

  Darryl Zanuck, back in charge of production at Fox, approved the project after asking Manulis “to cut the dykisms to a minimum.” Joe Schoenfeld found Warner amenable to negotiating a loan-out deal, and Fox sent Crowley to Paris to meet Zanuck’s director of choice, Serge Bourguignon, whose Sundays and Cybèle had won the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film that year.

  “Not my choice,” Crowley decided after the meeting. “Too dapper, and self-assured to the point of almost incredible egotism.” But he kept this to himself when he returned to Los Angeles for further meetings on the script and a more crucial meeting on the costumes. Love with the Proper Stranger was the first picture for which Edith Head had designed Natalie’s costumes, and she liked them so much that she insisted on Head as her designer on Cassandra. After Head completed her first sketches, Manulis arranged a lunch for her to display them to Natalie, Bourguignon and Crowley. Bourguignon rejected them all, and proceeded to sketch his own ideas in pencil on the tablecloth, while Manulis, Crowley and Natalie (who’d quickly decided that she disliked him) watched in silence. “To show their different characters, I make sketches in very different styles for each twin,” Bourguignon announced, and turned to his star for approval. After a moment, she smiled very sweetly. “And then,” she asked, “will you wear them?”

  Apparently humor was not a language that Bourguignon spoke or understood, and he wasn’t shrewd enough to perceive a danger signal. He changed the subject by telling Natalie, “You were good in West Side Story, but you’ll be great in my picture.” No smile this time, and no answer. She left the table abruptly and called Schoenfeld to say she would not make Cassandra with Serge Bourguignon. Zanuck reacted by canceling the project, and Arthur Loew, who had never liked the idea of Natalie playing a closet lesbian, advised her not to pursue it any further.

  SHORTLY BEFORE the end of the year, Natalie learned that RJ and Marion planned to get married when they returned to Los Angeles; and in early February 1964, the couple arrived with Josh and Peter Donen, now free to travel with their mother. By this time RJ had heard about Natalie’s involvement with Arthur, whom he’d known for several years, and he decided to drop by Arthur’s house on the chance of finding her there. Both of them were home, and RJ recalled that while Arthur did most of the talking in an effort to keep the occasion light and easy, he exchanged only “a few conventional remarks” with Natalie. But the vibes of Rome resonated strongly for both of them.

  ON THE LAST DAY of February the lease expired on Natalie’s rented house, only a few blocks away from Arthur’s on Coldwater Canyon. She rented a hillside house only a couple of miles away, on San Ysidro Drive, and Arthur moved in with her. But he wasn’t there the day Mud phoned to tell Natalie that Natasha Zepaloff had come to stay for a long weekend.

  Natalie responded with an invitation to bring Natasha to the house that same afternoon. And almost as soon as they arrived, Maria continued to play the games she’d started on the first day of Natasha’s visit. Another broad wink when she drew Natasha’s attention to the photograph of Natalie and “her father.” On the Warner lot, where Maria proudly displayed her studio pass, a visit to the set of Mary, Mary and an introduction to Debbie Reynolds: “This is my niece, Natasha.” Later, in response to Natasha’s question “Why did you say I’m your niece?,” Maria informed her: “But you are. On your father’s side.” And then, as Natasha remembered, “She just wouldn’t say any more.”

  When Natalie began questioning Natasha about her family, Maria moved closer to the edge. She reminded her that Natasha was “the Captain’s daughter” and gave her niece what she intended as a surreptitious wink. But Natalie (who knew all about her mother and Zepaloff) noticed it, and as Natasha recalled: “She looked at me sort of quizzically. After that the conversation became general. I took some photographs of her, and when it was time to leave, she gave me a warm goodbye hug that made me feel very special inside.” A few years earlier, Natasha had the same “special” feeling when Natalie sent her a silver bracelet with a medallion engraved �
��Natalie” on the back. Natasha assumed it had belonged to her, but wondered about the reason for the gift, because “it wasn’t my birthday or any other kind of occasion like Christmas.”

  This biographer also wonders. Obviously the gift was a sudden impulse on Natalie’s part, but also a surprisingly personal gesture to someone she’d met only three times in the past. And obviously something has been going on here.

  For several years, as we know, Natasha had felt a “connection” with Natalie that she couldn’t account for; and it’s impossible not to suspect that Natalie also felt it. If physical resemblance was the starting point on both sides, what followed was the “extreme sensibility of reacting, caring, feeling” that Stella Adler defined as an essential part of the Russian character. Although Natalie never asked Natasha “any specific questions” about her father (unaware of Maria’s belief that they had the same father), she knew that Nina’s marriage to the Captain had been almost as disastrous as Maria’s to Nick. Her own childhood had made Natalie acutely sensitive to signs of loneliness or abandonment in anyone her own age, or younger; and here again the “connection” ran deeper than she knew. Nick Gurdin had been too weak and troubled to give Natalie the attention she so often longed for, and Natasha had seen the Captain so seldom that she used to call the Matson Line to find out when his ship was due in port, then wait at the dock to watch him bring it in, and be granted a few minutes of recognition: “The only long time we ever had together was when I was eleven and a half. He took me to Hawaii for two weeks. But he was in Hawaii when I graduated from High School 9 in Berkeley. Later, when he was in Los Angeles, he saw Maria frequently and she told me he always asked about me. But because I was growing up, he wouldn’t see me. Vanity! He didn’t want people to know he had a grown-up daughter.”

  Did Mud occasionally drop a sly, teasing hint about Zepaloff to Natalie as well as to Natasha? The risk was probably too dangerous even for Mud; but if she proved unable to resist it, Natalie’s gradually increasing affection for Nick Gurdin makes it clear that the hint miscarried.

  SOON AFTER NATALIE’S affair with Arthur began, he advised her to place her legal and financial affairs in the hands of Paul Ziffren, lawyer and business manager to many leading Hollywood figures. Ziffren replaced both her attorney, Greg Bautzer, and Andrew Maree, RJ’s business manager, who had worked for Natalie as well after they married and whom she’d retained since the divorce.

  “Natalie told Paul that she’d supported the entire Gurdin family from Tomorrow Is Forever on,” his widow, Micky Ziffren, recalled, “and after twenty years of work had almost no money at all. Paul was shocked when he realized how she’d been used, and began by advising her to buy a house, and arranged for a bank loan.”

  In the first week of March, Natalie bought a house at 191 North Bentley Avenue in Brentwood. Unlike 714 North Beverly, it was neither large nor pretentious: the exterior was standard French provincial, the interior accent was on comfort. The house stood on a secluded, fairly steep hillside; a lawn sloped down to the pool, and a short driveway led to the street. For a while, after Natalie moved in, the Gurdin family car was sometimes parked further down the dimly lighted street at night. Since Dr. Lindon had advised Natalie to keep a distance from her family, partial exile had turned Mud into a spy. From the driver’s seat, with Nick at her side, she would keep watch on the house for several hours and note the arrival and departure of visitors.

  In the third week of March, Natalie began work on Producer’s choice for her next “obligation” picture. Sex and the Single Girl was based on Helen Gurley Brown’s best-seller, and Norman Brokaw originated the project. He had known Gurley Brown since they both landed their first jobs at the William Morris Agency, as mail clerk and secretary, and handled the movie rights to her book. He sold them to Warners for $200,000, entirely on account of its title and its sales, as it was not a novel and had no story line.

  The first credited writer to work on the script created its unappetizing central situation: handsome young journalist sets out to seduce pretty young sex expert to prove she’s a virgin and expose her false credentials. Joseph Heller was brought in for an injection of comedy, a tall order even for the author of Catch-22. His most notable contribution was a comic car chase, extraneous to the story and all the more welcome for it.

  Sex and the Single Girl was not an agreeable experience for Natalie, partly because she despised the script, and partly because Tony Curtis played the journalist. She’d found him aggressively self-important on Kings Go Forth, and the second time around did nothing to change her mind. The result was a total absence of romantic feeling in scenes intended as romantic comedy; and in the post–Sex and the City era, most of the movie seems pathetically coy.

  Stewart Stern recalled an incident from that time that shows how far Natalie had begun to distance herself from the Gurdins. When Maria insisted that she join the family for a Russian Easter lunch, Natalie dreaded the prospect, but knew how guilty she’d feel if she refused, and asked both him and Arthur to keep her company. They picked her up at 191 North Bentley and headed for the San Fernando Valley. Arthur was driving, and when they reached Ventura Boulevard, he asked for directions to the Gurdin house. But Natalie had forgotten to bring the address with her, and because it had been so long since she last visited her parents, she’d forgotten the name of the street where they lived. Finally she recognized a tree at the Ventura Canyon turnoff, and they arrived just in time for lunch.

  ON APRIL 13, Natalie and Arthur and Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron were among the couples attending the Academy Awards ceremony. Natalie was nominated for Love with the Proper Stranger, Leslie for The L-Shaped Room (“Warren always had this weakness for Oscar nominees,” Caron recalled), and they both lost to Patricia Neal for Hud.

  On May 8, shortly after Sex and the Single Girl finished shooting, the ever-unreliable Louella Parsons reported that Natalie had broken off her engagement to Arthur Loew. In fact, she had decided to end the relationship, and although Stewart Stern remembered that for a while his cousin “was just wrecked,” Arthur managed to conceal his pain from Natalie, and kept up his usual jokester façade on the social circuit. Like Warren, he was a lover testing for the role of husband; and although genuinely in love with Natalie, he lacked the ardor that might have won him the part. But they remained friends, and Natalie never forgot to be grateful for the way “he made me laugh at even the saddest things.”

  Micky Ziffren: It was humor that helped Natalie survive the terrible years. She was always able to see the joke.

  Not quite always. Over the next nine years her life was full of very “Russian” highs and lows, and to recover from some of the lowest, she needed strength as well as humor. The end of a love affair, being alone at night with her unresolved fears after the party ended or the endurance test of a particularly disagreeable “obligation” picture always created a low. And a week after the low of parting from Arthur, another followed. She’d made a dinner date with Mart Crowley, and as they walked into La Scala, they saw RJ with a group of friends. A few days earlier Marion had given birth to a daughter, Katharine, and RJ was celebrating fatherhood. “Natalie went over to his table and pretended to be very happy for him,” Crowley remembered, “but she felt deeply sad.” For some time she’d longed to have a child, and RJ’s happiness only intensified the longing, as well as the stab of regret that she always felt after a chance encounter with “my strength, my weakness, my lover, my life.”

  AT THE MOST civilized Hollywood parties of the 1960s, the hosts had no agenda beyond liking to entertain the people they liked; and the party givers in question were Dominick Dunne and his wife, Lenny, at their house on Walden Drive in Beverly Hills, Roddy McDowall at his rented beach house in Malibu, and Natalie herself at 191 North Bentley. At Natalie’s and Roddy’s parties, many of the guests overlapped: George Cukor, Mart Crowley, Mia Farrow, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Rock Hudson, Howard Jeffrey, Hope Lange and Alan Pakula, Tom Mankiewicz, Juliet Mills, Stewart Stern, Tuesday
Weld. At Walden Drive the guests included some but not all of these, and some only encountered there: Irene Dunne, Vincente and Denise Minnelli, Merle Oberon, Rosalind Russell and Freddie Brisson, Billy and Audrey Wilder.

  “Natalie loved getting dressed up to go out,” Dunne recalled. “She wasn’t the kind of star who would sit down and expect hommage to come to her.” She also loved games and party turns, and her parody of Louise’s first appearance as a stripper in Gypsy became famous. “You’re going out there a lady, but you’re coming back a star,” Mama Rose tells her in the movie, but Natalie inverts the line. “You’re going out there a star, but you’re coming back a lady,” she announces, and the lady opens her strip routine with a series of outrageously unladylike bumps and grinds.

  Natalie also devised a spectacular game for deflating the inescapable bore across the table at a sit-down dinner. During his relentless monologue, she takes a cigarette from her case, fits it into a long holder, and every male within reach snaps out a lighter. Cigarette lighted, holder extended like the handle of a lorgnette, she appears to give the bore her full attention, but from time to time uses her free hand to flick imaginary ash from her decolletage. Then, with her center and index finger, Natalie gently squeezes one nipple, tossing back her head and rolling her eye as if on the verge of orgasm. It reduces the bore to astonished silence, transfixes the other guests, and she wonders innocently why everyone is staring at her.

  Another game was to rate the performance of sexual partners on a scale of one to ten, and Asa Maynor witnessed a telling round during a girls’ luncheon at the Bistro, the fashionable Beverly Hills restaurant co-owned by Billy Wilder. Apart from talent agent Sue Mengers, all the girls were actresses, among them Joan Collins, Samantha Eggar, Hope Lange and Asa Maynor. Natalie and Joan Collins had two previous partners in common and awarded them diametrically opposite scores: for Collins, Warren Beatty rated a ten to RJ’s five; for Natalie, RJ rates a ten to Warren’s five.