Natasha (46 page)

The two had an intense, “push-pull” romance, with Jaglom imploring Natalie to reject
Penelope
, a glossy romantic comedy that he warned her would be “another
Sex and the Single Girl
.” Natalie’s decision to accept the role—for $750,000, the use of a white Rolls-Royce, and thirty-five lavish Edith Head costumes—was a signal that the Maria aspect of Natalie’s personality would be dominant, and of the futility of her relationship with the avant-garde Jaglom.

One night, Jaglom confronted Natalie about the way she behaved in public, discovering an astonishing thing. “She said there was
her
, and there was
‘The Badge.’
” The Badge was “Natalie Wood,” her star persona. “She would say, ‘I’m putting on The Badge,’ which was her movie star role. She talked about it as if it wasn’t her. We went to a movie theater once and I got in line, and she said, ‘Well, we don’t have to get in line. Watch. I’ll just use ‘The Badge.’ Walked to the front, walked in line—I felt really weird! I was still in my sixties sensibility then.”

Natalie eventually became embarrassed by Jaglom’s rebel attitude at Hollywood events. “She’d say, ‘Why’d you have to say this to So-and-So?’ ” Not only was part of Natalie drawn to that world of Old
Hollywood stars, noticed Jaglom, she also could not handle confrontation. “Natalie
hated
that,
hated
it, because I would inevitably get into some sort of tension. Her hatred of tension, any kind of tension—it was unbelievable.”

Lana traced this to their experience as children, having to escape to neighbors’ houses when a drunken Fahd chased Mud with a gun. In 1966, Jaglom wrote this about Natalie in his journal, observations that would take on greater meaning after her drowning:
“She turns off cold if there is any unpleasant vibration within her sensory reach. If it comes to a head between two other people, she cries. If it happens between her and somebody else, she stabs
.” Jaglom further noticed, that summer, how Natalie had an inability to relax, carrying her tension between her eyes. “There was a frown there, and I used to rub it and say, ‘Okay, let’s try to relax …’ And she thought it was funny, and then got annoyed, of course.”

Jaglom’s ill-mannered behavior at Natalie’s A-list events made him “the bad boy” to her Hollywood friends. “They thought I was obnoxious, and bad for her.”

That spring, Natalie and Jaglom spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, where he noticed “a white car following us, driven by a goon.” When they got back to Natalie’s house on Bentley, they discovered it was someone sent by Sinatra. “The phone rang, and Roz Russell was on the phone. And Natalie did what she always did, which was whisper, ‘Come here!’ and motioned for me to get on. And then I hear Roz Russell warning her that Frank is very concerned about me, and she’s checking to make sure that Natalie is okay. And she got all the wrong information—that I was some street kid who did drugs.”

Jaglom decided not to go out with Natalie in public anymore, frustrated by her Hollywood lifestyle and by her alter ego, The Badge. “I finally just said to Natalie, ‘Look, I don’t want to go to these huge things where everybody talks about nothing.’ ” He moved into her house for a few weeks to write, where he had a strange encounter with Sinatra, whom Mud, by phone, was encouraging Natalie to marry. “I remember going downstairs and saying to Sinatra, ‘Natalie’ll just be five minutes.’ Then he’d look at me, thinking, ‘Is he a homosexual or something?’ He couldn’t quite figure it out.” When Jaglom offered Sinatra a drink, “he said, ‘I know where the bar is!’ Very adolescent, like a kid who had a thing for her.”

According to Costello, Natalie was rejecting Sinatra, because he was then involved with her friend Mia Farrow. His continuing surveillance and protection of Natalie even extended to Lana, who remembers a Sinatra employee following her through Europe. Composer Leslie Bricusse, who cowrote the title song for
Penelope
and was a friend to Natalie and Sinatra, knew there was “a little ring-a-ding” between them, analyzing Sinatra’s behavior toward Natalie as vintage Frank. “He was like a huge father figure, he was a great taker-carer of people… and I think probably, the other part of Frank, is that he was probably keeping his options warm with Natalie.”

Sinatra, Jaglom, and Michael Caine were only three of Natalie’s “boys of 1966,” as Costello called them. She also reportedly received a car as a gift from millionaire Del Coleman, spent a week in New York with actor Stuart Whitman during location shooting for
Penelope
, received ardent calls from author William Peter Blatty, and dated a handsome young lawyer named David Gorton, whom she met at UCLA as part of a Career Day panel. “Anyone who came in contact with her fell in love with her,” recalls Costello, including himself, by the way “she made you want to protect her.”

Gorton, who had never been around a movie star, was surprised to find Natalie a little nervous. “In a way, it was charming, because rather than being arrogant, she seemed more just like a normal person.” They spent a weekend on a yacht off Catalina, talking, ironically, about their “shared fear of drowning.” It was Natalie who suggested the excursion. “On a boat like that, we felt pretty safe. I don’t think either of us would have gone out on a dinghy.” Gorton didn’t expect their relationship to go further, sensing Natalie “needed somebody a little more sensitive and with more presence.”

None of the men in Natalie’s life, nor anyone in connection with
Penelope
, were aware of an overdose she had that summer, though director Arthur Hiller recalls, “There was an insecurity. And you had to be daddy, pat her on the back, sometimes slap her wrist. I was almost like father-and-child with her. It makes sense looking back and looking forward… I had to be daddy.”

“The attempt in the summer of ’66 was discovered by my mother,” recalls Costello. “And she made a phone call, I don’t know who to, but I would say Dr. Lindon, Paul Ziffren, Mart, or Norma. I was out for the night and knew nothing until the following day.”

Lana heard about the suicide attempt from a catatonic Maria, who asked her to take clothes to the hospital for Natalie. Mud was barred. When Lana arrived, she could hear Natalie and Dr. Lindon shouting. Natalie told her, “I didn’t want to live.”

In the years after her drowning, the Natalie Wood lore would assign the blame to Warren Beatty for her suicide attempt during
Penelope
, based on a conversation between Lana and Mart Crowley. Lana recalls Crowley, who was not fond of Beatty, telling her that he heard the “raised voices” of Natalie and Beatty before she overdosed, implying that something Beatty said provoked Natalie to try to kill herself.

Tony Costello, whose mother found Natalie after her overdose and who lived at Bentley, remembers her blaming Dr. Lindon. “She was ranting and raving at the hospital, shouting and cursing at her therapist.” Costello never heard a word about Beatty. “This was a very tough summer for Natalie.
Property
was a stinker and she knew
Penelope
would flop, so her self-esteem was at a low point.”

Beatty was around Natalie that summer, hoping to coax her into playing Bonnie in
Bonnie and Clyde
, his pet film project, which she resisted. Natalie was so friendly with Beatty that she and Jaglom double-dated with him and a Bolshoi ballerina named Maya Plisetskaya in June, with Natalie acting as a translator for Beatty and his Russian girlfriend. Jaglom, whose 1966 journal recorded his contact with Natalie, recalls her as “joking and comfortable” with Beatty throughout the summer.

In 1968, Beatty spoke fondly of Natalie in an interview, mentioning his last conversation with her about costarring as Bonnie to his Clyde, revealing nothing to suggest an argument. “We met at her house, and she kept on taking phone calls while I tried to tell her about the picture. I guess I wasn’t too persuasive; at that point I wasn’t getting a lot of offers and Natalie was riding the crest of her career. Well, it didn’t take long to see she wasn’t interested in doing a picture with me. Besides, she figured the idea didn’t have a chance.”

In later years, Natalie would say that she turned down
Bonnie and Clyde
because it was filming in Texas and she couldn’t be apart from her analyst, a decision she would regret. “I loved the script and I loved the part,” she said in 1969, “but I had personal reasons. I didn’t want to go to Texas on location and well, Warren and I are friends, but working with him had been difficult before.”

Ironically, it was a role that might have brought Natalie the artistic validation she was seeking. Her rejection of the gritty, realistic
Bonnie and Clyde
was a further indication she was hesitant to veer too far outside the Hollywood mainstream and the studio system that weaned her, Mud’s concept of what movie acting was all about. Natalie was being called “the last great Studio star,” a symbol of an era that was fading, superseded by independent filmmakers, and actors and actresses who eschewed glamour. At the same time,
she
still wanted to do serious work, as she had since meeting James Dean, breaking out in hives from playing the flighty Penelope.

Earlier that spring, prior to
Penelope
, the Harvard Lampoon organization named Natalie the “worst actress of last year, this year and next,” two months after she received a Golden Globe Award as World Film Favorite, illustrating that her stardom had eclipsed the perception of Natalie as a serious actress. She seemed amused by the Lampoon’s “Natalie Wood Award,” which impressed Jaglom. “She got it for the joke it was.” Natalie, tutored by the shrewd Maria in the art of publicity, came up with an inspired idea. “I decided to accept it in person, and delivered an Academy Award acceptance sort of speech, telling them I was moved to tears.” Her clever joke turned an embarrassment into a triumph. She appeared on
What’s My Line?
while she was on the East Coast, where panelist Bennett Cerf, a Harvard man, pronounced Natalie “the best sport in Hollywood.” The Lampoon Award would become a Harvard/Hollywood tradition, a tongue-in-cheek honor.

After her overdose, Natalie continued to be friends with Warren Beatty, making it even less likely he had anything to do with her suicide attempt. In fact, she would invite him to her next wedding.

Natalie was so adept at playing “Natalie Wood,” the glamorous, effervescent star, her attempted suicide that summer stunned even Lana. “She never seemed suicidal to me,” states her sister. “Ever. But Natalie was also very controlling of her feelings. That was why she needed analysis. She needed one avenue where she didn’t worry about her makeup. She spent an awful lot of time not being able to be exactly as she was.” Natalie’s “puffy, scared” face in the hospital, stripped of cosmetics, “didn’t seem real” to her sister, accustomed to seeing the mask of Natalie Wood.

So effective was Natalie at putting on The Badge, Sinatra, who dated her throughout her three suicide attempts and had known her from the time she was fifteen, would remember her as “laughing all the time,” saying, after her death, “I have never known her to be depressed. What used to amaze me about her was a wonderful warmth and sweetness all the time, I don’t care what conditions prevailed.”

Only an inner circle saw the real Natalie. Costello, who lived in her house, comments, “She put on a great front as being independent and a savvy lady, which she was, but she had a lot of demons… she did need constant support.” Costello was startled to find out, during
Penelope
, how uncertain Natalie was about her talent as an actress. “Lila Kedrova had a small part, and honest to God, Natalie was afraid that she was going to be upstaged, she was so in awe of Kedrova. Natalie knew she was a star, but she was unsure about being an actress. When you’re unsure in your own profession, and yet you’re a goddess, it’s
really
got to be tough.”

In the days after her overdose, Natalie talked to Jaglom about her desire to be “real,” the dream she had nurtured since childhood, when she longed for friends at a birthday party, enrolling in junior high to blend in. Jaglom remembers her, that summer, as “searching.” She appeared to be “yearning for more, very insecure and very committed to figuring it all out, and figuring out how to be happy.” Natalie occasionally invited her parents to dinner, against her psychiatrist’s advice. Jaglom, who was present, saw how “it would always be very complicated and hard for her to have them around, and yet she somehow wanted to be the good
daughter
. It would be civil, but there would be a chill. It was clearly very fraught.” Maria, he observed, was deferential to Natalie to the point of obsequiousness. “Her mother’s whole identity was wrapped up with—not
Natalie
actually, but with ‘Natalie Wood,’ the movie star.”

Jaglom became a quasi-therapist for Natalie, who revealed some of her emotional scars from being a child actress, which always seemed to come back to the trauma of being forced to cry on cue. “Natalie always said, ‘How do you expect me to be normal when I learned that the most attention I could get was the harder I cried? And the harder I cried, the more, technically, I felt
sad
—and the happier everybody
around
me was, and how they all
loved
me.’ So it was very clear that her sadness and her success and pleasure were all mixed up.”