Brainstorm, Starring Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher, and Cliff Robertson, directed by Douglas Trumbull

Natalie Wood in Brainstorm, 1983. Those eyes...*sigh*

Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood in Brainstorm, 1983.

Christopher Walken as scientist Michael Brace. Someone needs to make this picture into a meme.

Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher, Joe Dorsey, Natalie Wood, and Cliff Robertson in a scene from Brainstorm. That's three Oscar winners and one screen legend in the same photo. And Joe Dorsey.

Advertisement for what would have been Natalie Wood's stage debut in Anastasia.

Natalie Wood’s final movie was the science fiction tale Brainstorm. The film holds up well today, and presents an interesting storyline. A scientific team led by Lillian Reynolds (Louise Fletcher) and Michael Brace (Christopher Walken) are developing a headset-like device that allows people to experience thought and emotions that have happened to other people. If person A wears the device and records their experiences, then person B can wear the device and play back the tape of what person A did, feeling and experiencing it just as person A did at the time. 

Wood plays Karen Brace, Michael’s wife, and it’s clear that the Braces’ marriage isn’t in very good shape. Karen is a designer, and she gets hired to help with the design of the device. By sharing their memories, the device actually helps bring Michael and Karen closer together again. Meanwhile, Lillian is concerned that the president of their company, Alex Terson (Cliff Robertson) might be planning to sell the technology to the government or the military. 

The device that Michael and Lillian are working on is similar to a virtual reality headset, and the idea that you can experience another person’s thoughts and emotions is a rich one to explore. Because of this, Brainstorm still feels fresh and relevant today. 

The performances in Brainstorm are all very good. It’s a rare film that features three Oscar winners and one bona fide screen legend. Fletcher brings grit and determination to her role as a committed scientist. Robertson is good in a supporting role, exuding both charm and a slight menace. Walken is excellent as Michael. Walken is believable as a quirky genius, as he has the right off-kilter mannerisms to successfully play a scientist who is fully committed to his work and has thus neglected the fact that his marriage is under strain. Wood does the best she can with the material she has to work with. Director Douglas Trumbull said that the role was expanded once Wood was cast in it. She’s good, realistic and believable. She wasn’t going to win an Oscar for her role, but she does a fine job, giving the viewer a portrait of a woman who has obviously had to sacrifice for the sake of her husband’s career. 

Director Douglas Trumbull started out working on visual effects in films. Trumbull worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Blade Runner. No big deal, just four of the biggest science fiction movies of that era. Trumbull’s original idea was to shoot most of Brainstorm in normal 35MM, but to use a new process for the scenes where characters were experiencing someone else’s thoughts and emotions. Trumbull called the process Showscan, which was filmed in 70MM and was shot at 60 frames per second, rather than the traditional 24 frames. The idea was to present these scenes as more vivid than actual reality. Unfortunately, to have made the movie this way would have necessitated equipping theaters with different projectors to show the movie. Since that was cost prohibitive, Trumbull settled for using 35MM and mono sound for the real scenes, and 70MM with stereo sound for the enhanced reality scenes. It would be interesting to see Brainstorm on a movie screen to see how this would change the effect the movie has. 

Location shooting for Brainstorm began in North Carolina in September, 1981. Just before location shooting started, members of the cast and crew spent a weekend at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, getting in touch with their emotions and doing other New Age-y stuff. Wood and Walken connected right away, and some people on the set thought they might be having an affair. 

After location shooting wrapped, studio filming took place in Hollywood, and the production took a break for the Thanksgiving weekend. Wood and her husband Robert Wagner invited Walken to spend the weekend aboard their yacht, the Splendour. Sometime during the night of November 28-29, 1981, Natalie Wood drowned off of Santa Catalina Island. The events of that evening have been the subject of much debate and speculation, to say the least. 

Soon after Wood’s death, MGM shut down production of Brainstorm. MGM was willing to scrap the movie in order to collect money from the insurance company, rather than trying to finish filming. Trumbull was incensed, as Wood’s part was nearly complete, and he tried to tell MGM that he could successfully complete the movie. The insurance company Lloyd’s of London ending up getting involved, and they agreed with Trumbull that the movie could be finished. Lloyd’s ended up putting up several million dollars for filming and post-production to be completed. 

By the time Brainstorm was finally released, it was late September of 1983; two years after filming had begun. None of the posters I’ve seen for the movie featured Wood’s photo, and while you could argue that the studio was being respectful by not wanting to seem to be profiting from her tragic death, you could also argue that not making the impressive cast more visible wasn’t going to help the box office. Also not helping the box office was the fact that Walken didn’t do anything to promote the movie, since he didn’t want to have to answer questions about what happened on board the yacht that weekend. 

Brainstorm was not a financial success, grossing $10 million dollars against a budget somewhere between $15-$18 million. To play the what if game, if Wood hadn’t died and the movie could have been released according to its original timetable during the summer of 1982, perhaps it would have benefited from a publicity push from Wood and Walken and become a hit. Brainstorm is the kind of odd, quirky movie that seems like it might have found a cult audience on VHS, but it doesn’t seem to have found any audience at all. 

Brainstorm is a movie well worth seeing, especially if you’re a fan of any of the four stars of it. It definitely fits into the paranoid thriller genre that was so popular in the 1970’s. (Spoiler alert: don’t trust any of the white guys in suits who work for the government!) There are some great Christopher Walken moments in the film, and my favorite might be a brief flashback as we see Walken from Wood’s perspective after he’s placed a large satellite dish in their back yard. Walken is wearing a chef’s hat and apron and says, “You could put flowers all around it. I don’t know what you’re so upset about.” 

Of course seeing Brainstorm makes me wonder about Natalie Wood’s career and what she would have done if she were still alive. She was only 43 years old in 1981, and although she had a lengthy career because she started in the movies so young, obviously there was much for her to still accomplish. According to Suzanne Finstad’s biography, Wood was pursuing the screen rights to Nancy Milford’s biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, which would have been an excellent role for Wood. There was also something more immediate on the horizon. In February of 1982, Wood was going to star in a Los Angeles production of the play Anastasia. It would have been Wood’s stage debut, and it might have been the start of a new era in her career. Wood was excited about playing the role, in part because it was a way of connecting with her Russian heritage. 

We’ll never know what the course of Natalie Wood’s life and career would have been had she lived longer, and while we should appreciate all the art that she gave us over the years, it’s hard not to feel the pain of what might have been.

Penelope, Starring Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Dick Shawn, and Peter Falk (1966)

Natalie Wood, in a lobby card from Penelope, 1966. Unfortunately, this scene was cut from the movie.

Natalie Wood and Dick Shawn in Penelope, 1966.

Peter Falk and Natalie Wood in Penelope, 1966. Her scenes with Falk are the best thing about the movie, and his role as a detective feels like a dry-run for Columbo.

Natalie Wood shows off one of her terrific Edith Head costumes in Penelope, 1966. Her wardrobe cost $250,000.

Penelope is a comedy caper film, starring Natalie Wood as the title character. Penelope is a bored housewife who robs her own husband’s bank, just to get his attention. She confesses her secret life of theft to her analyst, played by Dick Shawn. Lieutenant Bixbee, the detective assigned to the case, expertly played by the always excellent Peter Falk, is immediately suspicious of Penelope. Will he figure out who the true thief actually was? Will Penelope end up serving 10-15 years in prison? Will her analyst confess his true feelings of love to her? Will Penelope end up back with her boring husband at the end of the movie? Yes, no, yes, and yes. 

The problem with Penelope is that it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. It satirizes Freudian analysis and Greenwich Village beatniks, two topics that were already worn out in 1966. I couldn’t figure out what outcome is the audience supposed to be rooting for. Are we supposed to want Penelope to remain with her super-boring husband? Are we supposed to want Penelope to run off with her analyst? I didn’t really want either of those things to happen. The roles of her husband and her analyst are thankless, boring supporting roles. Ian Bannen is blandly handsome and boring as Penelope’s husband, and that’s exactly what the part calls for. Dick Shawn is fine as her analyst, but Shawn was truly at his best unleashing his zany comedic energy, as he did when playing Lornezo St. DuBois, (LSD) the over-the-top actor who plays Adolf Hitler in Springtime for Hitler in The Producers. The best-written male role in the movie is Lt. Bixbee, and because of Peter Falk’s excellent performance, the scenes between Wood and Falk are the best in the movie. Falk is perfecting the shtick he’ll use when playing Columbo. You can tell that Bixbee is more suspicious of Penelope then she realizes, and he just lets her keep talking until she makes a mistake. I half-expected Bixbee to pretend to leave, and then turn around and say “Just one more thing…” 

Bixbee also has the odd habit of carrying packs of baseball cards in his pockets just to chew the gum that came with them. (Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier just to carry packs of gum?) As a baseball card collector, I wanted to shout at the screen and tell Peter Falk and Natalie Wood to look for Jim Palmer rookie cards in their packs of 1966 Topps. As Penelope opens her pack of cards, she says, “Who’s Ron Swoboda?” That’s a very funny joke for Mets fans, but one that probably went over the heads of most moviegoers, as Swoboda wasn’t a star player—1966 was only his second year as an outfielder for the Mets. (Swoboda is most famous for his diving catch in the 1969 World Series.) The joke would have been funnier if Penelope had mentioned a more famous baseball player. 

Natalie Wood does as good a job as she can playing Penelope. She gets to do a lot of different things in the movie—disguise herself as an old woman to rob the bank, disguise herself as a French blonde to dispose of some of the money to throw off the police, and sing a folky ballad, “The Sun is Grey” when Penelope was a Greenwich Village beatnik, before she meets square, boring future husband. Wood also got to wear an Edith Head wardrobe that cost $250,000, and she looks stunning in everything she wears in the movie. Wood’s salary for Penelope was a cool $750,000, a very high amount for an actress at that time, which attests to her star power. The faults of the movie are not hers, as she does everything she can to elevate the material. 

Had Penelope been made 10 years later, it might have become a story of feminist empowerment, of Penelope taking control of her own life by stealing from the husband who controls her life. As it is, Penelope becomes a story about robbing banks just to get your husband’s attention, which makes me think there are other issues in their marriage that need addressing. The mid-1960’s were also an odd time in Hollywood—in the outside world, things were changing at lightning speed, but yet Hollywood was still cranking out comedies like Penelope that bore zero relevance to the era in which they were made. 

Wood wasn’t that thrilled about playing Penelope. Later she said, "I broke out in hives and suffered anguish that was very real pain every day we shot. Arthur Hiller, the director, kept saying, 'Natalie, I think you're resisting this film,' while I rolled around the floor in agony." (Quote from TCM’s website on Penelope. Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life includes most of this quote, but not the full quote, so I’m not sure what source the full quote is from.) 

Wood’s real passion projects during this period were the dramas Inside Daisy Clover and This Property is Condemned. However, the realities of the box-office meant that she was also making big-budget comedies like Sex and the Single Girl, The Great Race, and Penelope. Wood didn’t find these comedies fulfilling as an actress. During this period of her life, Wood was also going through frequent analysis, so one can only imagine what she felt about the satire of analysis found in both Sex and the Single Girl and Penelope. Given better scripts, I think Natalie Wood could have been successful in comedies, as she brought the same dedication and commitment to comedic roles that she did to her dramatic parts. 

Oddly enough, Penelope is one of the most difficult Natalie Wood movies to track down. Despite being produced by a major studio, MGM, it’s never been released on DVD, and doesn’t seem to have been released on VHS either. It’s not available on Netflix or iTunes Movies. I was only able to watch it because it shows up on Turner Classic Movies every so often. It’s a curious fate for a major studio release of that era starring a well-known movie star whose popularity continues to endure. 

1966 was an interesting year for Natalie Wood, as she was awarded the “World Film Favorite-Female” Golden Globe in January, and in April was “honored” by the Harvard Lampoon as the “Worst Actress of Last Year, This Year, and Next Year.” Much to the surprise of the Lampoon staff, Wood came in person to accept the award, the first honoree to do so. Wood said, “I decided to accept it in person, and delivered an Academy Award acceptance sort of speech, telling them I was moved to tears.” (Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, by Suzanne Finstad, p.314) There’s silent newsreel footage of Wood at Harvard, being a very good sport and flashing her movie star grin the entire time. The plaque that Wood accepted at Harvard sold at auction for $1,625 in 2015. 

The day after accepting the award at Harvard, Wood went to New York City and appeared as a guest on the TV show What’s My Line? You can watch Natalie Wood’s appearance on What’s My Line? here. She’s very funny as she tries to stump the panel by adopting a Russian accent, and completely throwing panelist Arlene Francis for a loop when Francis asks her, “Are you something other than American?” Wood replies, “Well, in my mind.” Wood also visited an art dealer in Manhattan. Journalist Tom Wolfe accompanied her to the art dealer, and he wrote about his time with Wood in his essay “The Shockkkkkk of Recognition,” later collected in his 1968 book The Pump House Gang. Had I been in Wolfe’s shoes and been a dashing young New Journalist working for the New York World Journal Tribune in 1966, I would have gladly accepted that assignment. I also would have gladly accepted the assignment, “watch Natalie Wood watch paint dry.”

Penelope, released in November of 1966, represents the end of an era in Natalie Wood’s career. Wood was only 28 years old when Penelope was released, but she had been working steadily in films and television since the age of 5. Her career had scaled heights that any other actress would have envied. Wood was nominated for her third Oscar in 1964 at the age of 25. She had successfully made the transition from child star to teen star, and then adult star, making movies at each stage of her life that have become classics. There’s Miracle on 34^th Street, the Christmas perennial, released in 1947 when Natalie was 8 years old, from her teenage years there’s Rebel Without a Cause, from 1955, when she was 17, and you can take your pick of several excellent performances from her early 20’s: Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story, both from 1961, Gypsy, from 1962, 1963’s Love With the Proper Stranger, and This Property is Condemned from 1966. 

After Penelope was released, to mostly so-so reviews, Natalie Wood bought herself out of her contract with Warner Brothers for $175,000. Wood also fired her agents, lawyers, business manager, and other support staff. She took a deliberate break from filmmaking, and didn’t return to the silver screen until 1969’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. After Penelope, Wood only made four more movies during the rest of her life, and was at work on a fifth when she died in 1981. She also made several made-for-TV movies during the 1970’s.

Unfortunately, Wood’s break from filmmaking after Penelope wrapped meant that she lost out on a great role, as her ex-beau Warren Beatty tried to convince her to accept the role of Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde. It was one of the few times when Beatty was not able to get what he wanted from a woman, as Wood turned him down. Beatty said, “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.” Wood said in a 1969 interview, “I loved the script and I loved the part, 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.” (Both quotes from Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, by Suzanne Finstad, p.313) Wood turned it down in part because she didn’t want to be away from her analyst. Beatty had been turned down by just about every actress in Hollywood, and eventually settled on the then-unknown Faye Dunaway for the role of Bonnie. It’s a fascinating what-if to think what Bonnie and Clyde would have been like with Natalie Wood instead of Faye Dunaway. I have no doubt that Wood could have done an excellent job as Bonnie. 

In her personal life, Wood finally found the stability and happiness that had eluded her in her 20’s. She married Richard Gregson in 1969, and gave birth to their daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner the next year. While Wood and Gregson divorced in 1972, they remained on good terms. Later that year, she remarried her first husband, Robert Wagner, and in March of 1974 gave birth to their daughter Courtney. It’s part of the cruel calculus of Hollywood that women often have to choose between having a family and having a career, and the career of Natalie Wood makes that clear. Wood pushed herself very hard to have the successful career she did, and throughout the 1960’s she was extremely successful professionally, while her personal life was often in turmoil. After Penelope, she deliberately stepped back from her career and focused on her personal life, and by all accounts was a devoted and happy mother. However, her career during the 1970’s was not as successful as it had been in the 1960’s. Wood was still a big star throughout the 1970’s, but she was now more famous for what she had done in the past than whatever her current project was. Had Wood lived longer I think she might have found a happier balance between her family and her career. 

If, like me, you’re a fan of Natalie Wood, you should try to track down Penelope. For all of its faults, it’s still worth seeing, if only for her scenes with Peter Falk and her wardrobe.

Happy Birthday Natalie Wood!

A lovely portrait of Natalie from the mid-1960's.

78 years ago today, Natalie Wood was born in San Francisco. Her birth name was Natalia Zakharenko. (Her family later changed their last name to Gurdin.) Celebrate Natalie and her talent and beauty by watching one of her many great movies today!

Details on the new Natalie Wood Book!

The cover of the upcoming book, Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life. This photo was taken by William Claxton in 1963.

As promised earlier in the spring, Natalie's daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner has co-authored a book about her mother. It's due to be released on October 11th. Manoah Bowman co-wrote it with Natasha, and the title is Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life. Robert Wagner wrote the foreword, and Robert Redford wrote the afterword. The cover photo is a gorgeous shot of Natalie taken by William Claxton in New York City in 1963. The list price is $35.00, you can pre-order your copy here on Amazon. It should be a terrific book, I'm looking forward to reading it. 

Sex and the Single Girl, starring Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, and Lauren Bacall (1964)

Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood discover some shocking information when they read the book the movie was based on.

Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda in Sex and the Single Girl, 1964. Henry looks like he's saying, "I don't know why I'm in this movie."

The lovely Natalie Wood, 1964.

Natalie looking stunning in her white dress, 1964.

Sex and the Single Girl was a change of pace for Natalie Wood as an actress. It was her first comedic role as an adult, and it was the second of three movies she made with Tony Curtis, the first being 1958’s Kings Go Forth, and the last being 1965’s The Great Race. Sex and the Single Girl was based on Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 non-fiction best-seller. The movie didn’t really have anything to do with the book, the studio just wanted the titillating title, and paid $200,000 for the film rights. 

The movie is an example of a very specific genre, the “sex comedy” that flourished in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Of course, thanks to the production code that was still in effect, the main characters don’t actually have sex until they are safely married. Perhaps the ne plus ultra of sex comedies from this era is 1959’s Pillow Talk, starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Sex comedies are replete with characters assuming false identities, and that becomes integral to the plot of Sex and the Single Girl. 

Natalie Wood is cast as Helen Gurley Brown, and the film has changed her occupation to psychoanalyst. In real life, Gurley Brown worked in advertising and publishing. In 1965, shortly after the movie was released, Gurley Brown got the job that she’s best known for, as she became the editor in chief of Cosmopolitan and transformed the magazine into one of leading women’s magazines. Tony Curtis plays Bob Weston, a writer for Stop magazine, which takes pride in being the lowest of the scandal rags. As the movie opens, another writer for Stop has just published a scalding critique of Gurley Brown’s best-selling book, titled Sex and the Single Girl. But Weston thinks there’s more to this story, and he wants to meet Gurley Brown in person, as he thinks she’s a virgin who is masquerading as a sex expert. (This is not the movie to see if you’re looking for enlightened attitudes about men and women.) It seems odd that Stop magazine would want to publish another story about Gurley Brown, since their takedown of her just appeared. 

Weston goes to Gurley Brown for treatment, but he doesn’t tell her his real identity. Instead he tells her the marital problems his friend Frank, played by Henry Fonda, is having with his wife, played by Lauren Bacall. Gurley Brown is much too nice to Weston, and quickly develops a crush on him. Hilarity, or something meant to approximate it, ensues. 

And there the plot summary stops. It’s no use telling you about how “funny” it is when Weston fakes a suicide attempt, only to have Gurley Brown save him from drowning (it’s always a little sad when Natalie Wood’s movies feature her in a water tank) or how completely “hilarious” the ten minute long car chase at the end of the movie is. I put “funny” and “hilarious” in quotation marks because I didn’t find Sex and the Single Girl to be very funny. It’s a movie that has not aged very well, and it’s ideas and stereotypes about women are hopelessly dated. I know, I should let it go, but the movie just didn’t work for me.

Tony Curtis is a charming and funny actor, but he doesn’t get to do much that’s very funny in this movie. He’s much funnier in Some Like It Hot and Operation Petticoat. I like Tony Curtis a lot, and his voice is just great. You can tell in Sex and the Single Girl that Tony is starting to lose his hair in front, as it’s always combed forward. Natalie Wood does the best she can, and she brings an earnest conviction to the role that is appealing, but the movie doesn’t give Helen Gurley Brown very much depth. I wonder how the real Helen Gurley Brown felt about the movie? I would imagine that she was probably excited that someone as beautiful and talented as Natalie Wood was playing her, but it probably annoyed her that she was turned into a woman who at the end of the movie gives up her career for her man. 

The real problem with Sex and the Single Girl is the script. It’s a real dog, and oddly enough, it was written by Joseph Heller, of Catch-22 fame. The funniest part is probably when Tony Curtis is wearing Natalie Wood’s nightie (long story) and he remarks that he looks like Jack Lemmon in that movie where he dresses up like a girl. Curtis’ character can’t remember the name of the movie, but of course, it’s Some Like It Hot, which Tony Curtis starred in. It’s a funny joke, but then it gets overdone as everyone remarks on how Bob Weston looks like Jack Lemmon. There are also some bewildering jokes about Tony Curtis’ character having to put coins in everything in the Stop office building. Curtis even needs a coin so a mirror will be revealed so he can comb his hair in the men’s room. I assume this was a joke about the popularity of automats, as after the scene in the men’s room Curtis goes to the automat for lunch, but automats had been popular for decades before 1964. They weren’t exactly a new thing, so it seems like an odd joke. 

Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall don’t have much to do in the movie. But I could listen to Henry Fonda read the phone book. He had such a great voice. The supporting cast is rounded out by Mel Ferrer, playing the rather pointless role of Rudy, another doctor in Gurley Brown’s practice whose only purpose in the movie is to flirt relentlessly with her. Although a successful actor in his own right, Mel Ferrer is probably best known today for being married to Audrey Hepburn. 

Natalie Wood looks beautiful throughout the film, and her Edith Head wardrobe is fantastic. In particular the white dress and the white robe she wears are just jaw-dropping. 

Wood’s biographer Suzanne Finstad researched her contract for Sex and the Single Girl, and discovered that, in addition to being paid $160,000 for her role, Wood had a lot of “riders” in her contract. Wood stipulated the color of the phone that was to be in her dressing room. (Unfortunately, Finstad doesn’t reveal the color.) “She requested white cigarette holders from a shop in London, a special oil of gardenia available in Cairo, and stipulated days off during her menstrual period.” (Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, by Suzanne Finstad, p.290) 

Finstad interviewed Tony Curtis for her book, and she got some very interesting quotes from him. Curtis told Finstad that he had the best on screen chemistry of any of his co-stars with Wood. Curtis said, “Natalie and I had to be careful, because we found each other quite attractive, but I just didn’t want to degenerate the relationship and neither did she.” Curtis then tells Finstad the real reason he didn’t sleep with Natalie: “Natalie’s boom-booms weren’t big enough. To each his own.” (Finstad, p.293) That’s just the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Of course, that might only be Curtis’ lame excuse. The truth might be that she just didn’t want to sleep with him. Clearly something happened in their relationship, because by the time they started filming The Great Race, shortly after Sex and the Single Girl wrapped, Curtis and Wood were estranged. (Finstad, p.295)

Wood was likely less than happy with the way the script of Sex and the Single Girl made fun of analysis, as during this time in her life she was going to therapy almost daily. Wood said, “I was in analysis for some time, and I found it very beneficial…for me it was a different way of looking at things. I think it made me less introspective, more open to other people. It really changed my life.” (Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs, by Christopher Nickens, p.131)

Sex and the Single Girl was released in December 1964. Cue magazine called it “thoroughly coarse, irritating and stupid.” (Nickens, p.126) Despite unfavorable reviews, it grossed $8 million and was the 20^th highest grossing film released in 1964. It’s an interesting time capsule, but one that hasn’t aged very well. Despite the movie’s shortcomings, you can still enjoy the beauty and talent of Natalie Wood in it.

Natalie Wood on the cover of People magazine

Natalie Wood on the cover of People magazine, 2016. They picked a great photo of her for the cover, but I think they should have picked a color photo of her.

Natalie and her daughter Natasha.

Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, 1970's. Their outfits are just so wonderfully 1970's!

Natalie Wood is on the cover of this week’s People magazine. While the cover promises to give us “the untold story,” there’s not much new inside. But there is a nice interview with Natasha Gregson Wagner which doesn’t tread the same ground as the recent New York Times profile of her. There are also some great photos from Gregson Wagner’s personal collection, including one of a radiant Natalie holding Natasha at 6 weeks old. There’s also a great photo of the whole Wood/Wagner clan, including Natasha’s half-sisters Courtney and Katie, from 1977. In that photo, Robert Wagner is wearing a denim jacket that’s just barely buttoned, and Natalie is wearing super high-waisted jeans that of course look really good on her, because no style of clothing looked bad on her. 

The cover also tells us that “Robert Wagner Breaks His Silence,” and features a nice little sidebar in which he discusses Natasha and Natalie. “Break His Silence” seems a little melodramatic as a headline, since it makes it sound like he hasn’t discussed Natalie Wood since 1981.

It’s great to see Natalie on a magazine cover again, if you’re a fan of hers, you should go pick up this week’s People.