Natasha (38 page)
Authors: Suzanne Finstad
He recalled, two years later, “I put paint remover on her, took off her glamorous clothes, and put her up there, naked and gasping. She wanted a new career, and I guess I gave her a new career. She had tremendous willpower to be good. So many actors, you feel they have a private life, a husband and kids, and acting has a place. But with her, acting is her whole life.”
Natalie told Kazan she would do anything for him in the picture, with one exception: she confessed her terror of “feeling helpless in dark water,” saying that she would require a double for the scene where Deanie tries to drown herself. What else she confided only they knew.
Before Natalie arrived on the East Coast to begin
Splendor
, assistant director Don Kranze recalls, “I remember Kazan saying to us—because Natalie was sort of a lightweight from the Kazan standpoint, okay?—he said, ‘You’re going to see a Natalie Wood that you’ve never seen before.’ So he had something in mind.”
Natalie and R.J. left Hollywood like movie stars on April 8, 1960, for Natalie to begin
Splendor in the Grass
, taking the luxurious
Super Chief
, accompanied by Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor, who was on her way back to New York to complete
Butterfield 8
. The Wagners rented an apartment on Sutton Place overlooking the East River, where R.J. practiced the piano for a picture that never materialized,
Solo
, despondent over his career, which he said later was “going downhill.”
Natalie started
Splendor
with the mingled fear and pleasure she had
Rebel
, describing her work with Kazan as a return to the “golden world” of Nick Ray. She would recall Kazan encouraging her, “Don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself,” to be bold, be free, to “shock herself,” helping Natalie to realize that her perfectionism was inhibiting her. She was stimulated by the cramped, makeshift New York stages where they were shooting, so unlike the artificiality of Hollywood. “She worked as if her life depended upon it,” as Kazan famously would later say.
Kazan’s makeup person, Bob Jiras (“B.J.”), had been preparing for Natalie’s arrival with the same idea of transforming her. “I knew that Kazan didn’t like makeup that much, and I went to see a couple of Natalie’s films, and she was always very heavily made-up. And I knew
that Kazan wouldn’t want that.” Jiras used “a very simple makeup” on Natalie in a filmed test as the sweet Deanie—less, even, than in
Rebel Without a Cause
—leaving it to Kazan to convince her that she would still look beautiful without her Natalie Wood mask.
Kazan watched the test with Natalie and Jiras, as Natalie gasped at her nearly naked face, “and Kazan turned to Natalie and said, ‘B.J. is really talented, don’t you think?’ And that’s how he got her. He could feel her negativism, so we had to present it as that’s the look
she
wanted, instead of her saying, ‘Don’t you think I need more lipstick?’ It ended right there.” Natalie was enamored of the way she looked in
Splendor
because
Kazan
was. She became instant close friends with the affable, talented Jiras and requested him on nearly every subsequent picture.
Natalie’s costar in
Splendor in the Grass
was Warren Beatty, a gorgeous, intense young actor making his film debut as Deanie’s teen love, Bud, on the recommendation of William Inge, who had earlier cast Beatty in an unprofitable production of his play
A Loss of Roses
, Beatty’s only other credit. “Warren, hell, hadn’t done anything,” as Pat Hingle, the Kazan protégé who played Beatty’s/Bud’s tyrannical father recalls. “Warren had been in a Bill Inge play that didn’t succeed… he could hardly have been more of a neophyte.”
The popular mythology in Hollywood, in future years, would be that Natalie and Beatty began a love affair while making
Splendor
, under the noses of Robert Wagner and Beatty’s fiancée, Joan Collins, who left for London early in the production to star in
Esther and the King
. The rumor about Natalie and Beatty became so pervasive by 1988, that Kazan included it as fact in his memoir published that year.
In truth, Natalie and Beatty disliked each other throughout the filming of
Splendor in the Grass
. Natalie talked about it in later years, in interviews with the
New York Times, Interview
, and
Cosmopolitan
, describing Beatty as “difficult to work with.” Bob Jiras, who was doing her makeup, confirms Natalie found him problematic.
“Warren was a pain in the ass,” affirms Kranze, the assistant director. “He was very young, anyway, but his emotional maturity was about thirteen… we all sort of felt about Warren that he’s an immature boy playing a man’s game.” Richard Sylbert, the Oscar-winning production designer who worked on
Splendor
, one of Beatty’s best friends, admits, “He was a real pain in the ass. The crew called him ‘donkey dick.’ He
was the Warren Beatty he was gonna become, meaning—and I say this, this is all good—he was gonna do what he wanted to do. He didn’t care what anybody thought.”
Natalie became so annoyed with Beatty she asked Kazan’s right-hand man, Charlie Maguire, his associate producer, to keep Beatty out of her dressing room. As Kranze explains, “In New York it wasn’t so fancy shmancy. We didn’t have a separate room for her and a separate room for him, so they shared the makeup area. Charlie said she didn’t want him in there. ‘She can’t stand him, she wants him out of there.’ That was his remark to me.” Natalie would later tell several Hollywood writers, for publication, that she and Beatty had so much friction, she worried whether they would be convincing in their love scenes.
Natalie repeated this to Robert Redford, when they became friends later. “She told me she didn’t like him. That’s not when they got together.” The production designer, Sylbert, one of Beatty’s best friends and a friend of Natalie’s, confirms, “There was nothing going on during the film. And not only that, they didn’t like each other. Nothing happened, I guarantee it. And he’s told me that, and she told me that.” Natalie’s confidant, Jiras, states flatly, “There was no love affair. There was nothing.”
Joan Collins, who flew to New York on weekends to see her fiancé, further denies there was an affair between Natalie and Beatty. “She wouldn’t let him out of her sight,” Jiras says of Collins. As filming progressed, Natalie began to respect Beatty’s talent, and found him attractive, Jiras noticed, but she still considered him a pain. Natalie gave Beatty the secret nickname “Mental Anguish.” “Here comes ‘Mental Anguish,’ ” she would whisper to Jiras. “Then it was shortened to ‘M.A.’”
During an in-depth interview between her two marriages to Wagner, Natalie addressed the rumor she had an affair with Beatty, calling it “complete, utter nonsense.”
As free-spirited as Natalie was in her rebellious teen years, when boyfriends lined around the block, once she married, she respected her marriage vows, as those close to her knew. The image of gaiety that became associated with Natalie from her zany movie magazine covers as America’s Teen was “Natalie Wood,” not Natalie. Lana comments, “Natalie was—I don’t want to say that she was more serious than she was fun, but if you had to draw lines, she was. Even her type of ‘fun’ was more serious than anyone else’s.”
Natalie viewed her marriage to R.J. as her one-and-only, her fantasy fulfilled, and she committed herself in the only way she knew how to do things, all or nothing. “She really wanted these things to work,” observes her friend Sylbert. “Not that people don’t have affairs in Hollywood, but it’s not something, I don’t think, that she would have done—by nature. She wasn’t gonna be married and have an affair at the same time.”
Natalie’s love affair on
Splendor
was with Deanie, the movie, and working with Kazan, who brought her to the greatest emotional heights of her career. The experience was exhilarating but wrenching for Natalie, who faced her demons on
Splendor
.
She was panicky about shooting the bathtub scene, where Deanie has a volatile confrontation with her mother about sex and purity, ending by Deanie dunking her head in the bath water, then standing up, naked and hysterical, shouting, “I’m a
good
little girl, Mom!” Natalie dreaded the scene, confessing to Kazan (“Gadge,” as friends called him) that she had an emotional block about crying on cue. According to Lana:
Elia Kazan—Gadge—said to her, “Do you not understand the scene? Do you not understand how you’re feeling?” She said, “Yes, I do, I do. I just don’t think I can shed tears. I won’t be able to cry.”
And he said, “Aha.” And he said, “Okay,” and he asked [actress] Barbara Loden to come over, and he said, “Could you cry for Natalie?” And Barbara said, “Sure,” put her head down for a moment, lifted her head up and tears were streaming down her face. Kazan said, “Thanks.”
Barbara left, and he said to Natalie, “Well, how did that make you feel?” And Natalie said, “Well, it makes me feel terrible. I can’t do it!” And he said, “No, no, you’re missing the point. How did it make you
feel?
What were you feeling when you were watching her cry?” And Natalie said, “Well, I was in awe that she could do it.”
And he said, “Yes, but did you feel empathy? Were you moved?” And she said, “Well, no.” And he said, “Exactly. There’s a big difference between just being able to turn on tears and actually feeling something and have that come true in your
scene, in your acting. As long as you know what it is that you are feeling, and it’s true for the character, it doesn’t matter if you shed a tear or not. It’s still going to be moving.”
And then she felt better about that.
According to Kranze, the assistant director, Kazan put off the bathtub scene for several weeks, knowing Natalie was frantic about crying, and about putting her head under water. She would also be performing wearing only pasties. As he was preparing to shoot the scene, Kazan cleverly baited Natalie by telling her he could shoot the scene without showing her face if she didn’t think she could be emotional enough.
Then he whispered into the ear of Audrey Christie, the actress who was playing Natalie’s mother, to stand offstage and taunt Natalie before the cameras started to roll. “He had Audrey say a line which he knew would set me off. It wasn’t the line in the script. But it was a line which, when I was little, used to drive me crazy. You know that mother’s tone, so sweet: ‘Darling, is there something bothering you? Is there something I can do to help?’ Audrey just said that line in that sweet tone, and I went off the way I always used to [with my mother] and they shot it and that was it.”
Kazan may also have come up with the idea to have Natalie remove her “magic” bracelet, knowing that the feeling of insecurity that caused would heighten her performance, for she is not wearing a bracelet in the bathtub scene in
Splendor
, one of the few times when Natalie’s misshaped left wrist was exposed to the camera.
The combination of Kazan’s wizardry, Natalie’s emotional connection to the mother/daughter conflict in the scene, the panic of dousing her head under the bath water, and the vulnerability she felt at being seen “naked”—without her bracelet—produced a hysteria in Natalie that may be her most powerful moment as an actress.
“She broke wide open that day,” recalls Kazan’s assistant director, Don Kranze. “That was her first day where she really—she hit the scene. And it was clear that she was just terrific. I know Kazan felt good that day. He felt that he had really hit something. And we all did. Anyone who really was thinking about the movie other than their paycheck, saw something pretty good happening.”
According to Kranze, “From then on, it was easy” with Natalie. “She broke open. She became a full-fledged—she was gonna hit that
role out of the park after that day.” Kranze noticed that when Natalie finished the mother/daughter confrontation scene in the bathtub, “she was emotionally moved… she felt lousy afterwards.”
According to Natalie, Kazan employed other “tricks” to provoke her into an emotional state, related to her fear of heights and of water. She told the
London Times
that Gadge lied to her about the scene where she had to walk on a high ledge, telling her that his assistant would be holding her hand off-camera. As soon as Kazan called action, the assistant released Natalie’s hand, terrifying her—the reaction he wanted for the scene.
Kazan was more diabolical toward the end of filming, when the cast and crew traveled to a reservoir at High Falls in upstate New York to film the sequence where Deanie tries to commit suicide by jumping off a ledge into a waterfall, the scene Gadge promised Natalie he would hire a double to perform. Several versions exist as to what happened. Natalie said later:
Elia Kazan assured me a double would do the scene where I was required to swim under an eight-foot waterfall. But then it turned out the double couldn’t swim at all, and I had to do it. I told Kazan: “I’ll do it only if you take me out to the waterfall and throw me in. I know I can’t swim that far, and I’m scared besides.” And that’s what they did. They threw me in, and had to get me out fast before I drowned.
Kazan denied it, after Natalie died. “How could you use a damn double? You had to go ten miles away,” he protested, claiming that he “gentled her into it,” and used his assistant, Charlie Maguire, to stay near her under the water for reassurance, admitting she was “not entirely reassured.”
There
was
a double. Natalie gave an interview to the
New York Mirror
that June, shortly after filming the waterfall scene, complaining about her bruised legs, scraped hand and swollen right wrist, offering the same account of how Kazan had hired a double who couldn’t swim well. Less than two months later, a bit player named Martha Linda Martin threatened to sue Warner Brothers over Natalie’s comments in the press, alleging that
she
was Natalie’s double for the scene, and that she
could
swim—suggesting that Kazan
had
employed a double, but
misled Natalie that the double couldn’t swim to deceive her into doing the scene.
