Last December, The National Inquirer published a story about the drowning death of movie star Natalie Wood. The story interested me because I knew how she died, and, worse, I knew of her phobia about drowning.
I got to know her in this way.
My father was a Hollywood writer and director and he knew a lot of famous people. One my first trip out to meet him, he introduced me to Natalie and her husband, actor Robert J. Wagner. They took us aboard RJ’s boat, My Other Lady, the destination the island of Catalina, 22 miles off Newport Beach, south of LA. RJ and Natalie had been married twice, and my father was best man at the first wedding. At the time, I was a Christian Scientist, forbidden to take any medicines, I didn’t drink, but on the way to the island, I drank a quart of milk. The wind had whipped up the ocean into choppy white caps, and very soon, I got seasick. Wishing I were dead, I leaned to vomit over the side, when RJ grabbed the seat of my jeans and hauled back with all his might to stop me going overboard. The next day, deeply chagrined, I would see him with a hose-brush cleaning my vomit off his boat. I blushed with shame. No one wants to open a friendship in that way. I was a newcomer, and wanted people to like me, and no sooner had I met them, I had vomited all over their boat. It still bothers me.
RJ Wagner was collegiate, handsome, courteous but lacking in force of personality. Natalie was the stronger personality of the two by far, and I found she was extremely attractive. She had shapely legs, beautiful hands and feet, and modest nicely shaped breasts. My father told me the story of how Natalie had been seduced by the director of Rebel Without a Cause, Nick Ray, when she was fourteen. My father was still steaming over it when it when I arrived. Even for Hollywood, seducing a fourteen year old was entirely despised.
Catalina was lovely, an island rising out of the sea, mountainous, impressive, At night you could hear sheep up on the slopes of the mountains. The boat was moored in a quiet cove, and that night, the three of them were playing poker and drinking heavily. I sat outside, gazing at the stillness of the calm night, and reading some of Aristotle Ethics by a light on the deck. Poker, at that time was the trivial pursuit of Hollywood then. I was a serious kid, reading Aristotle, when the door came open and Natalie came out. She was always stunning. She asked me what I was doing, and I said I was reading, and we talked and then she shook her head, smiled, and said “Richard, you are such a square.” But I was a person not eager to express what was in my mind. I was still too shy.
Except I was a horny square. The next morning, while my father and RJ were sleeping, I was up early and crept out on the deck only to see Natalie was already there. She was lying face down, getting a tan. She had undone her bathing suit bra and when she saw me, she sat up arched her back. I saw most of her breasts then and I stopped breathing. She still lay down while we talked. She was Russian, and her real name was Natasha Gurdin. (Gurdeen.) Her mother barely spoke English. I learned that when the ship to shore phone rang one day, and I found Natalie’s mother on the line, asking for her. Her mother’s English was smothered in a heavy Russian accent.
Natalie and I got along well. We met several times, and had good conversations. We talked about her career. My father’s basic line about show business women was, “I’m tired of talking about me. Why don’t you talk about me?” But Natalie was not like that. I asked her questions, curious and wanting to know her better, and she said she had starred in a movie when she was five, Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street, where she had to sing song in the film. I asked her to sing for me, and she did. It was a lovely, understated voice, soft and full of charm, pitched perfectly. I was entranced.
The sun was beating down sharply, and I wanted to go swimming. I had my trunks on, and I left her and dove off the stern of the boat, going straight to the bottom where, eyes open, I could see fish that were about 18 inches long swimming leisurely through the water. I came back aboard, draining like a waterfall, and Natalie’s face looked disquieted. She told me she never dove overboard. She never swam. She told me that she had many nightmares about drowning. There was such distressed suffering in her face when she talked of swimming.
So when I heard she had drowned, yearning, grief, and dire sorrow filled my soul. Of all deaths, that was the one she had dreaded most, and her death left me to grieve.
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