The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (47 page)

After the man had died, the nurse phoned the police and told them that she had briefly gone to the building’s laundry room and returned to see the body of the elderly actor lying face down on the floor. His bedroom window was open, she said, and his wife was in the living room, oblivious to everything that had happened. Unfortunately for both Wagenheim and the police, the ailing woman was unable to help with any details after a stroke had left her unable to communicate.

At first the police said they had no idea who could have done such a thing to the innocent actor. However, just five days later, their suspicions were aroused when it was reported that Victor Kilian, who had acted with Wagenheim just a short time before, was also found beaten to death at his home at 6550 Yucca Street.

Kilian’s son, Victor Jr, had been trying to get his father on the telephone but was unable to get through. Being concerned, the man travelled to his house and was devastated to discover his father was dead; the television was still switched on and a snack remained uneaten nearby. The police were called and an investigation revealed that the apartment doors looked as though they had been opened with a pass key. There was no definite motive for the killing, but it was decided that robbery was most certainly a possibility.

When they then discovered that Kilian and Wagenheim had recently worked together in
All in the Family
, the police were intrigued. Was it possible that the two men had been targeted because they had worked together? Was there a serial killer on the loose, going after old actors? It was hard to tell. However, there was no doubt that at first the two deaths did look as though they were somehow related, and police began intensively investigating the Wagenheims’ nurse over the course of the next three months to see if she was responsible for one or both murders.

After looking at the case for some time, the police came to the conclusion that while it was likely that the care-worker was at the very heart of the Wagenheim mystery, it just did not make sense that she would have had the inclination or opportunity to be at Kilian’s house too. So in the end, their suspicions came to nothing and, to this very day, the savage killer of the elderly actor Victor Kilian has never been found or brought to justice.

The same could not be said in the Wagenheim case, however. After the police discovered the nurse’s past armed robbery and escape convictions, things started to make more sense. On Friday, 25 May, the police travelled to the Los Angeles County Animal Shelter, where the nurse was now working as a kennel attendant. There they arrested and charged the woman for the murder of Charles Wagenheim, and for good measure added on a charge of grand theft too. She eventually pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and in January 1980 was sentenced to eight years in prison.

No other details were ever revealed about why the nurse had any motive or wish to kill Charles Wagenheim, and to this day people still take to the internet to discuss what really happened during the course of that week in March 1979. Many still believe that somehow the two killings are related, though after studying what we know of the events, it seems unlikely. The two actors had worked together, certainly, but it appears just a tragic coincidence that they were both taken from life within a week of each other, and in such a violent and undignified way.

There have been many, many mysterious deaths in Hollywood. Some involve hotels, some involve mansions, a few involve gardens or driveways, but ask anyone for the name of someone who suffered a strange death involving a boat, and most – if not all – will say just one person: Natalie Wood.

Born on 20 July 1938, Natalia Nikolaevna Zahkarenko was the daughter of Russian parents, though she herself was born in San Francisco. Natalie loved the movies and her mother would take her to the cinema at every opportunity, where she would sit on her lap and watch the great stars sparkle on the silver screen. Her mother saw a certain something in her child, and after Natalie gained a few small roles, she decided to move the family to Los Angeles, where she actively pursued a career as a showbiz mother to her young daughter. Once in California, things looked bright for Natalie and she was cast – aged just seven – as a German orphan in the movie
Tomorrow Is Forever
(1946). Not only that, but the film was a vehicle for Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles, meaning that Wood was introduced to Hollywood royalty from a very early age.

But while
Tomorrow Is Forever
was a success, it was her appearance in the 1947 Christmas movie
Miracle on 34th Street
that propelled the young child to superstardom. The film tells the story of a department store Santa who insists he is the real thing, and Natalie plays a young girl who had been prompted by her mother to reject all notions of Santa Claus, magic and fantasy. Of course, everything works out well in the end and as a result the film has gone on to become one of the all-time Christmas favourites, still being shown on television each year over sixty-five years since its first release.

Natalie’s star continued to climb and she made a successful transition from child star to young actress, starring opposite James Dean and Sal Mineo in the 1955 film
Rebel Without a Cause
. But in spite of the fact that she was a hard-working actress, she still managed to keep up with her studies and graduated successfully from high school, much to the delight of herself and her family. Then six years after
Rebel Without a Cause
came
West Side Story
, which was undoubtedly one of her most – if not
the
most – famous and successful movies as an adult actress.

But away from a movie career, the young woman craved a happy and peaceful personal life, and in the mid-1950s, while still a teenage actress, Natalie was introduced to actor Robert Wagner, who was eight years her senior. The two travelled in different circles, so they did not have the chance to get to know each other well at that time, and it was not until 1956 when Wagner saw her again at a fashion show that he began to take a real interest in her. Natalie had long since had a crush on the famous movie star (although she had chosen not to advertise the fact), so when Wagner asked her to accompany him to a film premiere – which also happened to be on her eighteenth birthday – she was absolutely delighted.

The couple began dating seriously from that moment on, though Natalie’s family – and in particular her mother Maria – were very much against the idea of the young actress dating an older man. Still, the relationship continued and on 28 December 1957 they were married in a quiet ceremony in Scottsdale, Arizona, away from the glare of Hollywood glitz and glamour.

Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner were classed as Hollywood’s golden couple – the happiest romance in the whole of California. It was, as these perfect marriages often are, just an illusion though, and in reality the marriage began to crumble quite quickly, with Wood later complaining that her husband would criticize her friends and the way she kept house. He was also reported to have left her alone while she was ill with flu and had also been rude to her mother, which did not go down too well at all, considering her mother was against the marriage in the first place.

Things were tested even more when Natalie got herself into a dispute with Warner Brothers, which saw the studio taking offence at the actress asking for more money and retaliating by suspending her for eighteen months, the longest suspension in Hollywood history. With no work to do, Wood was often seen sitting on Robert Wagner’s sets, watching him film his latest movie, but this too caused problems and on one particular occasion a director put his foot down and ordered her off the set.

The problems were further intensified when rumours came of a romance between Natalie and actor Warren Beatty, which columnist Hedda Hopper decided to ask Natalie about in the midst of her marriage problems. “You may or may not know that I haven’t been discussing anything that personal,” she told the reporter, and when Hopper mentioned that it had always appeared that she and Wagner shared an idyllic marriage over the years, she replied, “Lots of things can happen in that time – and did.”

When the couple announced a separation in June 1961, their representatives told reporters that there were no plans for divorce and the couple hoped that they would be able to work their problems out. This was not to be, however, and in April 1962 the couple were granted a divorce in just eleven minutes after Wood told the judge that during the last year of their marriage, Wagner preferred going out by himself to staying in with her. “He was always telling me he was going out to play golf and didn’t have time to discuss our problems,” she said.

On 30 May 1969 Natalie married Richard Gregson, a British producer whom she had been dating for a couple of years. The marriage did not last and they separated in 1971, though the relationship did give Natalie a much-loved daughter called Natasha. Shortly before the divorce was finalized, Wood and Wagner ran into each other in a restaurant and, much to the surprise of everyone, rekindled their romance. It was a fast-paced affair and just months after the divorce from Gregson, the two tied the knot again in a quiet ceremony aboard their boat,
The Splendour
, in the presence of just a few of their closest friends.

“It’s wonderful,” Natalie told reporters at the time. “We’re starting again. We’re starting new.” Wagner got in on the act, too, by declaring that their new life was beginning aboard the boat, which as it turned out would become a highly ironic comment.

It would seem that this second attempt at marriage was a lot more successful than the first, possibly as a result of both Wagner and Wood being older and more settled, and also because by this time the actress had decided to tone down her acting career and go into semi-retirement. She gave birth in March 1974 to their daughter, Courtney, and while she did still enjoy the occasional film role, she spent most of the time at home, raising her children.

In late November 1981, Natalie was making a movie entitled
Brainstorm
with actor Christopher Walken. Despite being scared of water – and particularly dark water – Natalie loved sailing in their yacht and that Thanksgiving weekend, she and Wagner invited her co-star to join them on their boat. The friends, together with the ship’s captain Dennis Davern, sailed the boat out to Catalina, stopping first in Avalon, and then continuing to Isthmus Cove where they went ashore for dinner and drinks. The official statement from Wagner’s representative stated that after the trip to the restaurant, they all returned to the boat, where Robert went to his cabin and Wood to the stateroom. By the time the actor went to the room to join his wife, however, she was apparently nowhere to be found, and an inflatable boat that had been tied to the yacht had disappeared.

“Since Mrs Wagner often took the dinghy out alone, Mr Wagner was not immediately concerned,” said the representative, adding, though, that after ten or fifteen minutes Wagner was worried enough by the disappearance to take a small boat out to look for Wood himself, only to come up with nothing. Help was called and by 7.45 a.m. on 29 November 1981 the body of Natalie Wood was found tragically floating face down in the ocean, her inflatable boat close by.

After formally identifying the body of his late wife, a distraught Robert Wagner returned to Beverly Hills where his family were waiting for him. He then had the unenviable task of breaking the news about Natalie’s death to her daughters Courtney and Natasha, who took it very hard. Natasha was told first, and it was the sound of her screams that woke Courtney. She later told
Fox News
that she was very lucky to have her nanny by her side when her father announced the news that she wouldn’t be able to see her beloved mummy again.

Meanwhile, the body of the beautiful forty-three-year-old actress was taken back to Los Angeles for an autopsy to be performed. It was announced shortly afterwards that a blood alcohol level of .14 was found, as well as caffeine and “very small amounts” of two medications, though this was said to be in no way related to her death. Coroner Richard Wilson released a statement that said it looked as though the actress had taken a headache tablet, a seasickness pill and had drunk a cup of coffee, hence the traces of medications and caffeine found during the autopsy.

It was determined that Natalie Wood, wearing just a nightdress and parka coat, must have untied the dinghy boat and tried to climb aboard, only to lose her footing, slip and consequently drown in the water below. This was further shown to be a possibility when it was revealed that the actress had slipped while trying to board the same boat in order to go to dinner that evening. On that occasion she did not fall into the water, but she was not so lucky, it would seem, later that night. Bringing all the evidence together, a verdict of accidental drowning was reported although even at this early stage there were rumblings and rumours that not everything had been as simple as had previously been thought.

Coroner Thomas Noguchi – who was famous for performing the autopsies on the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Robert Kennedy – claimed that while on the yacht, there had been a heated argument between actors Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken. Conclusions were formed that the argument may not have been about Natalie Wood, nor involved her in any way, but had annoyed her to such a degree that she decided to seek solace on board the inflatable boat. She then slipped and fell into the water in the process.

This idea of a heated argument was brushed aside somewhat by investigator Roy Hamilton, however, who told reporters, “I don’t know where the coroner got that information. I think he was juicing it up a little bit.” It would seem that Noguchi’s love of talking freely to the press and “juicing things up” led him to be reprimanded shortly after the investigation, and he would ultimately step down from his position as a result. Meanwhile, Assistant Coroner Richard Wilson came into the debate by adding that argument may be too strong a word, and instead there may have been an “animated conversation . . . a heated conversation . . . a lot of conversation over a number of hours”.