Natalie Wood

by Gavin Lambert

  Media speculation over what happened began at the press conference of Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, the Los Angeles coroner, on the afternoon of November 30, ten hours after Natalie’s body had been found. A horde of alleged close friends (former child actors, classmates from Van Nuys High, Natalie’s stand-in on Rebel) came forward with personal confidences in various magazine and tabloid interviews, an E! channel True Hollywood Story, and in the recent TV miniseries partly based on Natasha, a “biography” of Natalie Wood published in 2001.

  Many people live in the hope of living on as a memory, and one way of ensuring this is to become part of the memory of a famous dead person. The invasion of a dead person’s memory is occasionally an act of total fantasy, but more often it has a shallow root in reality; and the invader has at least been friendly (without reaching the true friendship stage) with the dead person before he or she became celebrated. And if so many people chose to invade Natalie’s memory, and claimed to know things that nobody else knew about her childhood, her love affairs, her fears, her death, “it’s because she had a quality of paying attention,” RJ believes, “that made them feel they were important to her.”

  But Lana Wood and Dennis Davern, the captain of Splendour, are more complex cases. Lana grew up in the shadow of a beautiful and talented movie-star sister, and her “memoir” is transparent with envy. Perhaps not coincidentally, in 2001 she validated the “discovery” of an extract, published in the Globe, from a spurious autobiography that Natalie was alleged to have begun in the mid-1960s. At one point it referred to the pride Natalie took in her “stunningly beautiful” and “talented” sister. And it seems even less of a coincidence that soon after RJ refused Lana’s request for a loan, the same tabloid ran a feature about Robert Wagner refusing to pay the medical bills of his favorite niece (Lana’s daughter).

  Like other tabloids, the Globe pays for “inside information,” but Lana was not the only self-appointed insider who needed money. Dennis Davern, as Liz Applegate recalled, “had a lot of debts and owed support payments to his ex-wife, who was going to sue him.” In a succession of tabloid and TV interviews, several of them paid for, he gave increasingly lurid accounts of the night of November 29. And Lana not only endorsed his final “revelation” that Natalie fell overboard after a furious argument with a drunken RJ, who stood on deck and watched her drown; she agreed that Peter G. Rydyn, a British journalist who describes himself as “the International Retributor,” “could be right” when he claimed in a 1994 interview with the Globe that Natalie was “murdered by Christopher Walken,” and the crime was “contrived by Robert Wagner, backed by Jill St. John.” After ten years of relentless pursuit, however, the Retributor has yet to produce any evidence.

  In relating the events of that weekend, I have relied on the only verifiable firsthand sources. Police files confirm that RJ was first questioned by Deputy Kroll of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s station around six a.m. on November 30, later that morning by Duane Rasure of the Sheriff’s Department, and again on December 4. Walken was questioned on November 30 and December 3, and his statements, like RJ’s and Rasure’s, are matters of police record. Other important evidence in police files comes from Ann Laughton and Linda Winkler, respectively night clerk and day receptionist at the Pavilion Lodge motel on Catalina, and Kurt Craig of the Two Harbors patrol office.

  Robert Wagner talked to me at length about that weekend, including his discussion with Doug Bombard, the owner of Doug’s Harbor Reef, who first discovered Natalie’s body, and Bombard confirmed RJ’s account of their discussion. Equally important are the coroner’s report of Thomas T. Noguchi, his subsequent memoir of the case in Coroner, which includes vital evidence from Paul Miller (whose boat was moored not far from Splendour on the night of November 29), and the joint autopsy report by Noguchi and his deputy examiner, Dr. Joseph Choi.

  During the last day of her life, Natalie made three phone calls from Catalina, one to Mart Crowley, the others to Josh Donen. Like the final entries in her daybook for November 28–29, 1981, they never came to light during the police investigation.

  Lillian Hellman: Much of what appears perfectly clear when you’re drinking never appears clear again, probably because it never was.

  Splendour anchored offshore around three o’clock on the afternoon of November 27, and around two hours later RJ took Natalie and Walken to Avalon in the motorized dinghy. While Davern remained on board to prepare dinner, the trio inspected a few tourist boutiques and the art deco casino, then began drinking margaritas with beer chasers at the El Galleon bar. Around nine o’clock they decided to return to Splendour. By this time a storm had been forecast, there was a heavy ocean swell, and an argument erupted between Natalie and RJ when she refused to take the dinghy in cold, dark and turbulent water.

  From this point on, mainly due to the Hellman syndrome, RJ’s memory (like Walken’s) is alternately clear and foggy. He recalls that he finally persuaded Natalie to change her mind about getting in the dinghy; and he agrees that his suspicion of an affair between Natalie and Walken, and Natalie’s anger with him for being suspicious, fueled all their later arguments.

  During dinner on board, all three began drinking again; and like the ocean swell, tension mounted. When RJ suggested moving Splendour to calmer waters close to the shore, Natalie gave him another argument, described by Walken as “some kind of hubbub” that he overheard as he left the saloon for his stateroom because he felt seasick again.

  Evidently alcohol and emotional confusion overcame Natalie’s earlier fear of dark, turbulent water. She broke off the argument with RJ by insisting that Davern take her to Avalon in the dinghy, and he was unable to dissuade her. Ann Laughton, on the night desk at the Pavilion Lodge motel when Natalie booked rooms for herself and Davern, thought they both seemed equally “intoxicated.” Linda Winkler, day clerk at the motel, thought Natalie seemed “somewhat disoriented” the next morning, when she asked about transportation to the mainland. She was unsure of her room number and had forgotten that she’d paid for both rooms by credit card the previous night.

  The message that Natalie left on Josh Donen’s answering machine that morning confirms Winkler’s statement: “Have you heard from RJ? I’m here [at the Pavilion Lodge] with Dennis. I don’t know what happened. I’m lost.”

  Later, when she called Mart Crowley from the dock at Avalon, Natalie had regained control of herself. “I had a terrible fight with RJ last night,” he recalled her saying, “and decided to leave the boat and got Dennis to take me in the dinghy to Avalon. We spent the night at the Pavilion Lodge and as I was scared to be alone, Dennis slept on the floor of my room. I’m going back to the boat now and make one more attempt to talk sense into RJ. But stay by your phone, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll call you again and ask you to meet me where the helicopter takes off.”

  Mart heard nothing more from Natalie, but she left a second message on Josh’s machine: “I’m back on the boat. Everything’s fine.”

  RJ could not recall what was actually said during the “hubbub” that Walken had overheard, only that in essence, like the even more violent dispute that would occur after Natalie returned, it was a replay of the scene when she was filming From Here to Eternity in Honolulu. The difference was that Natalie as well as RJ had drunk too much, and in the deepest personal crisis of her life, she was “swishing her tail” at Walken far more insistently than she’d swished it at William Devane. Only Walken, who responded in kind, knows for certain what the flirtation led to, and whether he played an Iago-like role in provoking RJ’s jealousy, or whether it was justified.

  His silence also makes it impossible to know why Natalie became so angry that she insisted on going ashore. Because RJ’s jealousy, as in Devane’s case, was unfounded? Or because it was justified, she felt guilty, and took flight? But should Walken ever break his silence, some will disbelieve him if he denies that they had an affair, and others will be equally incredulous if he admits that they did. Either way, it’s clea
r that Natalie was at least emotionally unfaithful to RJ, and that her “everything’s fine” message to Josh Donen confirms Jim Sikking’s verdict on the Honolulu episode: “As angry as they could get with each other, there was always this bond.”

  In fact, Walken echoed Natalie when he told the police that next day “everything was fine.” But not for long. After Natalie cooked a breakfast of huevos rancheros for four, RJ again suggested moving the boat to calmer waters. This time she agreed. “Cruise to isthmus. Chris Walken, RJ,” her daybook noted, and by one o’clock that afternoon Splendour was moored offshore at Isthmus Cove, on the more isolated northern end of the island. Not surprisingly, everyone decided to nap for a while, but Natalie and Walken woke up before the others, decided to go ashore together in the dinghy, and left a note for RJ.

  This was Natalie’s “going for danger” personality taking over again, an act of clear provocation to RJ, and a response to Walken’s “sense of mischief.” (After all, he could have refused to go along.) They docked the dinghy at Two Harbors, then walked to its only bar and restaurant, Doug’s Harbor Reef, and sat drinking for two hours. Around four o’clock RJ and Davern joined them, after calling for a shore boat by radio, and the drinking continued until seven, when they moved to the restaurant area for dinner.

  By then Natalie’s mood was distinctly “Russian.” She consulted the wine list, found it unsatisfactory and sent Davern to fetch three bottles from Splendour. Later in the evening, according to Walken, “we proposed a toast” (to whom or what his statement didn’t specify, and it’s hard to imagine). They all raised their glasses, and after Walken threw his glass to the floor, Natalie followed suit, announcing that it was an old Russian custom.

  Before they left the restaurant around ten o’clock, the manager phoned Kurt Craig at the Harbor Patrol office to warn him that they were all very drunk. Craig later told the police that he watched the group board the dinghy and heard Natalie “scream,” but didn’t know whether it was because she was drunk or “unhappy at something that happened in the restaurant.” RJ has no memory of this.

  Back on board Splendour, the drinking continued in the saloon, and according to RJ: “Walken kept encouraging Natalie to pursue her career as an actress, to follow her own desires and needs. He talked about his ‘total pursuit of a career,’ which was more important to him than his personal life, and said it was obvious I didn’t share his point of view. It struck me as some kind of put-down, and I got really angry. I told him him to stay out of it, then picked up a wine bottle, slammed it on the table, and smashed it to pieces.”

  But Walken didn’t stay out of it. He told RJ to “let Natalie do what she wanted to do,” which had the effect of switching the focus of RJ’s anger to Natalie. “I complained that doing what she wanted to do took her away from home and the kids too often.” Instead of answering, Natalie got up, turned her back on both of them and left for the master stateroom. The drinking and “the circular argument” between the two men continued until Walken also left the saloon and stepped out on deck. For how long? RJ wasn’t sure, but thought he came back “soon afterward,” and “soon afterward” went to bed.

  Police reports of Walken’s two interviews suggest that the Hellman syndrome had blurred his memory as well. In the first interview, he stated that he “got into a small beef” with RJ and went outside on deck for a few minutes. When he returned, Natalie was still sitting in the saloon. She “seemed disturbed,” then got up and left, and he presumed “she had gone to bed.” In the second, more detailed interview, he said that “they had all been drinking,” and RJ began to complain that “she [Natalie] was away from home too much.” Walken defended her, saying “she was an actress, she was an important person, this was her life.” Then he realized he was violating his own rule “about getting involved in an argument between a man and his wife,” and stepped out “for some air.” When he returned, “everybody was apologizing, particularly Robert Wagner, and everything seemed fine.”

  Davern’s statement that he and RJ “sat up drinking until one-thirty in the morning,” after Natalie and then Walken left the saloon is one of the few that RJ endorsed. But he was unable to recall exactly how long they sat up, and it’s unclear from either of Walken’s statements how long he stayed in the saloon with RJ before going to bed. But although a precise time frame is impossible to establish, the time frame is not the key to what happened after Walken left for his stateroom.

  The position of the dinghy is far more relevant. It could be hoisted up on deck or tied up to either port or starboard side of the boat. In the past, the ropes had occasionally loosened, and when tied up to port, Valiant banged against the side of the master stateroom. According to Guy McElwaine, a frequent guest on the boat, “RJ was a better ship’s captain than the captain he employed, and his final night duty before going to bed was to make sure that everything was secure, including the dinghy.” RJ was certain that Valiant had been tied up to port when they returned from Two Harbors on the night of November 29, and that he hadn’t checked the ropes by the time Natalie retired to the master stateroom. He also recalled that “some time after” Walken went to bed, he went down to the master stateroom “to make sure Natalie was all right,” and found she wasn’t there. “Then I checked the dinghy—gone. In my totally fuddled state, I wondered if she’d taken it and gone off because we’d started arguing again. Then I thought, surely not. Natalie was terrified of being alone on dark water, and besides, when you started the dinghy engine, it fired very quickly and we’d certainly have heard it from the saloon.”

  “She’s not there, nor is the dinghy,” he told Davern, who was equally fuddled; and in a daze of confusion and panic, RJ convinced himself that Natalie must have gone off in the dinghy after all. “I radioed for a shore boat to take me to the Isthmus. I searched the dock, but the dinghy wasn’t there. The Harbor Patrol office was closed for the night, so I went to Doug’s Harbor Reef to ask the bartender if anyone had seen Natalie, but that was closed too, so I took the shore boat back to Splendour.”

  By then it was around one-thirty a.m., and RJ decided to radio for help on the Harbor Channel, which was monitored by all boats in the vicinity. By yet another of those coincidences that haunt the lives of RJ, Natalie and her mother, the owner of a boat moored not far from Splendour that night was a deputy on the staff of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office. Paul Miller had met the Wagners a few times, and when his radio picked up the call, he heard a man say, “Someone’s missing in a dinghy,” and after a moment recognized RJ’s voice.

  “Soon afterward,” according to RJ, he called the Coast Guard, and by two a.m., according to Noguchi in Coroner, searchlights from Coast Guard helicopters, Harbor Patrol boats and private Baywatch boats were scanning the coastline around Isthmus Cove. (He was misinformed about Baywatch. They were not alerted, according to the police report, until three hours later.) “The search took a long time,” RJ explained, “because around the Isthmus area the ocean shelf goes down very deep, then rises again.” Around five-thirty a.m. the dinghy was found in an isolated cove beyond Blue Cavern Point, a mile away from Two Harbors. It was smothered in kelp, its gear was in neutral, its ignition key in the off position, and its oars still fastened to each side.

  Evidently no one on Splendour had heard the engine start because Natalie never started it.

  Shortly before dawn Doug Bombard joined the search in a private patrol boat, and toward seven-forty-five a.m. he spotted a red object bobbing up and down in the ocean swell. It was Natalie’s parka, swollen with water. She lay facedown, and when he lifted her out of the ocean with the help of a Baywatch lifeguard whom he’d alerted by radio, her eyes were wide open.

  George Segal: Those wonderful dark Russian eyes. Behind all the chatter that might be going on, they were sad and knowing.

  The handwriting of the two final entries in Natalie’s daybook slants irregularly upward. The first begins on the page for November 28, continues across part of the page for November
29, and is factual: “The undertow is very strong today.” The second, which occupies the rest of the November 29 space, is confessional: “This loneliness won’t leave me alone.”

  It seems most likely that Natalie wrote the first entry after she returned to the boat in the dinghy with Davern, and before she left it again in the dinghy with Walken. When I told Courtney Wagner about the second entry, she identified it as a line from a Ray Charles song. Its strange, terrible urgency suggests that Natalie wrote it when she went below to the master stateroom, after the climax of RJ’s final argument with Walken.

  The clothing found on her body, and the autopsy report (on the alcohol and medications in her system, the bruises on her legs and arms), provide a number of clues to what happened, and didn’t happen, during the short period of consciousness left to her. On the human level, all speculation seems indecent in view of the unimaginable terror she must have endured. But much of the later speculation is so indecent that some correctives are essential.

  UNDERNEATH THE RED PARKA Natalie was wearing a flannel nightgown and slipper socks. There were several rings on her fingers. The autopsy report listed the alcohol level in her blood as .14 percent—.04 percent above the intoxication standard in California, equivalent in Noguchi’s reckoning to seven or eight glasses of wine. But the test was performed several hours after her death, and she had drunk a good deal more during the previous night. The level would have been much higher when she retired to the master stateroom, and the amount of pain medication (Darvon) found in Natalie’s system would have increased the effect of the wine.

  The autopsy also revealed that she’d taken a new and powerful anti-seasickness drug called cyclizine, but found no trace of any of her regular sleep medications. Evidently she wasn’t ready to go to sleep, and the state of the dinghy near Blue Cavern Point makes it equally clear that she never planned to leave Splendour. In the absence of a witness, it’s impossible to prove why she went out to the aft deck, but the plan of the deck provides strong circumstantial support for RJ’s conjecture.