Natalie Wood

by Gavin Lambert

  He slapped her face and she didn’t react. He sniffed her breath and there was no whiff of alcohol. “Pills!” he thought, and started to panic. He dragged her to the shower, turned on the cold water, and there was still no response. “Same thing when I dragged her to the toilet bowl and put my finger in her mouth to make her throw up. I dragged her back to the room, both of us (me in my jockey shorts) drenched by now, and called Howard Jeffrey. I told him to call Rex Kennamer, Natalie’s doctor, ran to open the front door and switch on lights, then ran back to cover Natalie with a blanket.”

  Before Dr. Kennamer arrived, Mart had time to put on his clothes, check Natalie’s eyes and pulse, realize she must have taken an overdose, and call the emergency department at Cedars of Lebanon to summon an ambulance. Then Kennamer gave Natalie a shot and asked Mart to think of a false name for her at the hospital: “First I thought, Natasha Gurdin, then no, that won’t do, and after a moment, for some reason that eludes me to this day, I thought, Nancy Gordon.”

  The ambulance and Howard Jeffrey arrived almost simultaneously, and Kennamer accompanied Natalie in the ambulance to Cedars of Lebanon. Mart drove with Howard and waited outside the room where an intern pumped out Natalie’s stomach under Kennamer’s supervision. “Seconal,” Kennamer said when he came out. “I don’t know if she’ll make it. It’s close.”

  When Mart explained that Natalie was due back on the set of The Great Race on Monday morning, Kennamer suggested he call Abe Lastfogel. “I’ll be right over,” Lastfogel said. “Don’t let anyone else know.” He arrived with Joe Schoenfeld and Norman Brokaw and immediately asked Kennamer: “If she pulls through, what are the chances she can make it to Warners by six-thirty a.m. Monday?” Kennamer declined to commit himself and suggested that Lastfogel call Dr. Lindon. “But not,” he added, “Natalie’s mother or sister.”

  After Lindon arrived, Howard Jeffrey drove Mart back to Natalie’s house, where they found an empty Seconal bottle in her bedroom. They agreed not to call Beatty, then drove to Jeffrey’s apartment. Mart went to sleep for a few hours, and they returned to the hospital around ten a.m. Lastfogel was still there, and told them that Natalie had just started to come around, but Lindon would be staying with her for several more hours. Back at North Bentley around noon, Mart noticed that the light on the answering machine was flashing. He played back but didn’t answer several messages from Beatty, asking where Natalie was and if she was all right.

  Over the next twenty-four hours, Mart and Howard waited for news from the hospital, and intermittently dropped off to sleep. Around three p.m. on Sunday, Natalie herself called. In a surprisingly matter-of-fact voice, she told Mart that she was due for release, but had only the nightgown she arrived in, and needed clothes. He brought her some and drove her home. She said nothing about what had happened, and he knew better than to ask. He told her about the messages from Warren, and she said that she wouldn’t call him back for a while. Then, again very matter-of-fact, she announced her intention to report to the studio the next morning.

  Mart was stunned. “But you look terrible,” he said. “I’ll get by,” Natalie said. “There aren’t any close-ups scheduled. And I have to go to work because I don’t want any word of this getting around.” For Mart, it was a moment that revealed Natalie’s “extraordinary strength”: “She was humiliated, depressed, but determined to finish a movie she’d been working on for over six months, and hated. ‘It’s a six-thirty call for eight,’ she said. ‘I’ll have time to get some sleep.’ And she did. Was on time at the studio and picked up the scene they’d left off on Friday evening.”

  Meanwhile, the phone rang several more times at North Bentley, and on Monday night Natalie finally took a call from Warren. Later she reported the conversation to Mart. Warren: “What happened? Where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you for two days.” Natalie: “Nothing happened. After you left, Mart and I suddenly decided to drive down to Palm Springs for the weekend.” “He didn’t believe me,” she told Mart, “and asked if I’d been in the hospital. ‘That’s crazy,’ I said, and stuck to my story.”

  Natalie never discussed her suicide attempt with the nucleus, or with RJ after their remarriage, and never, of course, with her family; and as I knew that Dr. Lindon would never discuss it, I hoped that Beatty might provide a clue to Natalie’s state of mind that night. At first he was defensive, because he’d heard Mart Crowley alleged that “Natalie and I had a violent row before I left.” I assured him that Mart never said anything of the sort to me, and the “violent row” was a story that first appeared in Lana Wood’s “memoir,” Natalie, and that Mart always dismissed it as an absurd fabrication.

  When I explained what Mart had told me (omitting the messages left on Natalie’s answering machine, and his phone call later, in case he became defensive again), he challenged two points. “I drove Natalie back to her house, and I never went inside, but said goodnight at the door.” After a moment he added, “That’s all. Everything was very friendly.” After another moment he corrected himself: “I did go inside, but only for a few minutes. We chatted about unimportant things, and I said goodnight. Everything,” Warren repeated, “was very friendly.” Then he changed the subject and evaded any return to it with his usual brilliance.

  Warren’s claim that he and not Mart drove Natalie home, like his initial irresolution to admit that he went inside the house, is unimportant. What’s important is that Natalie remained on friendly terms with him—an unthinkable situation if she’d tried to kill herself on account of anything he said or did that night. But equally important is that Warren would not have left those anxious messages on the phone the next day if he hadn’t realized that Natalie was at a very low point when they said goodnight.

  A week or two later, Mart met Warren by chance. “I know what happened,” Warren told him, and Mart denied that “anything happened.” By then Warren was no doubt aware that rumors had started, although only one appeared in print. (Today, of course, reporters, photographers, and TV trucks would have kept an all-night vigil outside Cedars of Lebanon.) On November 30, a cryptic item appeared in Mike Connolly’s column in the Hollywood Reporter, evidently leaked by a hospital employee who recognized “Nancy Gordon.” “Natalie Wood,” Connolly wrote, “is fine after a slight siege—under her square nom de Natasha Gurdin—of mal-de-motorcycle or something at Cedars.” “Square” was Connolly’s code name for a visiting or business card, although he was misinformed about the “nom.” “Mal-de-motorcycle” was his code name for a drug overdose, though he was also misinformed about the “slight siege.”

  The only person apart from Dr. Lindon whom Natalie talked to about that night was David Lange, and thirty-seven years later he could only remember part of what she said. “I think,” he explained, “I tried to block out the whole painful episode.” Most likely Warren felt the same way, especially after all the rumors that circulated because he was the last person to see Natalie before she overdosed herself. And most likely, as David suggested, Natalie herself tried to block out the episode because she couldn’t really explain it.

  David principally remembered that Natalie talked about the very fine line between truly wanting to kill yourself and “falling into it in a state of confusion.” He believed she was feeling low that night for “a combination of reasons,” and attributed the confusion to her habit of “taking a sleeping pill, then getting up to drink a couple more glasses of wine, and when the wine acted against the pill, taking another pill.” If Natalie truly wanted to die, he wondered, why would she have asked for help by knocking on Mart’s door, and would she have summoned the will to insist on returning to life and work two days later?

  The powerful “combination of reasons” included three failed love affairs over two years; the loss (forever, it seemed at the time) of Donfeld’s friendship; the missed opportunity of working with Wyler because The Great Race was running weeks over schedule; and two residual emotions: the surge of longing and regret after her encounters with RJ, and the guilt and
resentment created over the years by her family.

  Why did Natalie ask Warren to drop by her house that night? The only convincing explanation is a sudden, desperate hope of renewing their affair—desperate, of course, because she knew that Warren was involved with Leslie Caron and due to leave for London very shortly to join her in a movie, Promise Her Anything.

  There’s no cause to doubt Warren’s account of a “very friendly” goodnight when he decided to leave after a few minutes—something Natalie clearly had been afraid of when she asked Mart to sleep over. Not long afterward, I was third party to a similar episode between Natalie and Warren, and there was no ill feeling on either side. It was more of a game that time, and although Warren seemed to enjoy it, he played a very gentlemanly game. And I suspect that gentlemanliness (the reverse side of his evasiveness) partly accounts for his refusal to discuss the night of November 27 in detail.

  AFTER COMPLETING her role in The Great Race, Natalie decided to go to Europe for the holiday season. During the location shoot she had met David Niven’s son, a William Morris agent based in Rome. One of his jobs was to “take care of” the agency’s major American clients when they came to Europe, and while Blake Edwards filmed the palace ballroom scene in Vienna, David Niven Jr. took care of Natalie well enough for her to call him a week before Christmas.

  He offered to take care of her again during the holidays in Gstaad, where his father had a chalet; and when he returned to the Morris office in Rome on January 3, 1965, Natalie decided to go with him for a few days. The few days became two weeks, and the couple said goodbye (“with many kisses,” according to local journalists) at Fiumicino Airport on the eighteenth. The affair was Just One of Those Things; but at a New Year’s Eve party in Gstaad, Natalie had met a guest whom she would later identify, for a few unhappily misguided months, as The Man I Love.

  Ladislow Blatnik, a Hungarian based in Caracas and known as “the Shoe King of Venezuela,” raised his glass of champagne and drank a toast to her. Then, after gulping it down, he performed his party trick, crunching the glass between his teeth and swallowing the pieces, stem as well as bowl.

  NATALIE HAD read my novel Inside Daisy Clover as soon as she heard that Pakula and Mulligan were going to film it, and called me to announce, “I’ll kill for that part.” Don’t bother, I said, you’re the first choice of everyone concerned.

  I didn’t know Natalie well at that time, and we were friendly without becoming real friends. I first met her in the fall of 1956, when I was working as Nick Ray’s personal assistant and living with him in his Chateau Marmont bungalow. She dropped by one day to say hello to Nick, and he introduced us. She looked extraordinarily young, seemed totally unaffected, wore very little makeup, and was casually dressed in a sweater and jeans. We talked briefly about nothing in particular, but I was aware of an occasional gleam of curiosity in those dark eyes. After she left, Nick described in his laconic way how they were quickly attracted to each other when he interviewed her for the part in Rebel Without a Cause; and he seemed offhandedly proud of having taken her virginity.

  Two years later I became friendly with Barbara Gould, and before going out to dinner one evening, we stopped by 714 North Beverly Drive. The place seemed less like a house than an elaborate movie set still under construction. This time Natalie was heavily made up, and jittery. RJ, whom I’d met and liked while working on Nick Ray’s The True Story of Jesse James, was more relaxed. They were both friendly, but seemed not quite real, like the house. Later, I wondered if they seemed that way to themselves.

  Over the next few years Natalie and I met socially from time to time, but our real friendship began early in February 1965, when she called to suggest having dinner to discuss Inside Daisy Clover. This time she was as open and unaffected as I remembered from our first meeting, but with the patina of movie-star glamour, and she made a very acute, very personal comment on the script: “At every important moment of Daisy’s life, she’s alone. No one to turn to, no one she can really trust.”

  The secretly bisexual movie star Daisy fell in love with, and who abandoned her the day after their marriage, obviously didn’t strike a direct chord; but there was an echo in the situation of Natalie’s failed marriage and the transient affairs that followed. The most recent and transient, I knew, had been with British actor Tom Courtenay, in Hollywood to film King Rat. They had met at a party given by the film’s producer, Jimmy Woolf, and I first met Courtenay, who was clearly ill at ease with “Hollywood,” at a party given by Natalie about two weeks before our dinner.

  Thirty-five years later, when I asked this deeply reticent man about the affair, he first of all said: “You’ve really caught me offguard!” Then, after a reflective pause: “I knew Natalie very briefly, and I think that’s all I really want to say.” It’s probably all there is to say. By the time Natalie and I had dinner that night, Courtenay had left for Madrid and Doctor Zhivago, and she never mentioned him. But like several others, he seemed to be on her mind when our discussion of the script led her to ask: “How long has ‘true love’ in your life lasted?”

  To date, I said, I’ve had three “true loves,” and each lasted two years, give or take a few months. Then I recalled our first meeting at the Chateau Marmont, and the gleam of curiosity in her eyes. “I was wondering exactly what was going on with you and Nick Ray,” Natalie said. “What was going on,” I said, “was exactly what you wondered.”

  By this time we’d both drunk a good deal of white wine, and Natalie again switched the subject (but not really, as its subtext had been the same all evening): “Let’s go see Warren!” When she said this, there was another kind of gleam in her eyes, excited rather than curious.

  Warren was then living in a penthouse apartment at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I drove Natalie there, we walked to the lobby, and I waited while she talked to him briefly on the phone. Then she announced with another gleam of excitement: “He wants us both to come up!”

  My presence, I realized, was a kind of security. If Warren gave her a signal to stay, it would be a signal for me to leave; no signal, and we would leave together. Which is what happened. Warren was very cordial, very charming, we talked agreeably and unimportantly for a while, and the situation seemed to amuse him—Natalie too, who became lightly flirtatious. After perhaps twenty minutes, she got up to leave, and they said a friendly goodnight. When I drove Natalie home, she made no reference to Warren, her signal that she preferred not to talk about it.

  She never did, but seemed not at all apprehensive about going home alone, as if to flash another signal—that she would never again entertain the hope, or illusion, of stirring the embers of that affair.

  ON FEBRUARY 16, Inside Daisy Clover began two weeks of rehearsal with Natalie, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Ruth Gordon, Katharine Bard and Roddy McDowall. After disagreements with Columbia, Pakula and Mulligan had made a distribution deal with Warners; but although filmed at the Burbank studio, it remained an outside picture for Natalie, as her contract was with Park Place, the Pakula/Mulligan production company. It specified “seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars against ten percent of the gross,” approval of director, co-star, cameraman, costume designer, makeup man, hairdresser, stills photographer, publicist, “portable and permanent dressing rooms.” The same terms would apply to Natalie’s next two movies; and 1965 was the year that she came as close as she would ever get to realizing the ambition she once confided to Guy McElwaine: “I want to do things on my own.”

  Inside Daisy Clover. Robert Mulligan confers with Natalie as the early Daisy on the Santa Monica Pier location. (illustration credit 5.11)

  At the end of the second week, Natalie gave a party and introduced her guests to a man none of us had met before. Ladislow Blatnik, who was visiting Los Angeles, had called to remind her of their meeting in Gstaad, and invited her to dinner. Their affair had apparently begun that same night, and was viewed as a puzzling aberration by Natalie’s friends, especially the nucleus and myself. We found him
amiable, clownish and (as I remember Howard Jeffrey saying) “an unbelievable comedown” after Warren and Arthur Loew. Although there seemed “nothing seriously wrong” with Ladi that night (it was the best we could say of him), later we were not so sure. Rumors began to circulate that the reputed millionaire and Shoe King of Venezuela had financial problems and hoped to solve them by marrying a wealthy movie star, like his friend Gunther Sachs von Opel, who briefly snagged Brigitte Bardot.

  Meanwhile, he became a frequent visitor on the set of Daisy Clover. Although Mulligan and Pakula had contracted me to be on hand every day in case of script problems, I hardly saw Ladi, as he always disappeared into Natalie’s trailer between takes. But I saw a good deal of Mud, still a fixture in all Natalie’s contracts as Keeper of the Fan Mail, and a guest at the larger North Bentley parties, where Natalie loyally kept up the pretense that she was a wonderful mother.

  In both places Mud reminded me of exiled royalty, fallen from power but still expecting homage (however brief) to be paid. As if in mourning for her lost throne, she usually wore black; but her occasional choice of an embroidered peasant dress, or the royal purple, offered a glimpse of the flamboyance she’d once been famous for. Although the same height as Natalie, she had heavier shoulders and hips, more noticeable as she started to put on weight in middle age. On the rare occasions when Nick accompanied her, he rarely spoke a word. He was still handsome, but worn, and more solidly built than the “slim-waisted” and “perfectly proportioned” Zepaloff.

  Mud was fascinating to talk to, although what she said was dull. At a party her eyes were always working the room, in search not of love but of information, registering the number of stars among the guests, and sometimes missing a presence that she expected. Then she would ask, “Is Elizabeth Taylor coming tonight?” or “I wonder, where is Mia?”