Natalie Wood went from the girl in Miracle on 34th Street to Oscar nominee
Natalia Zacharenko, daughter of Russian refugees, was spotted by a film crew shooting in Santa Rosa and made her first screen appearance at four. By eight she was playing the doubting girl in Miracle on 34th Street, and she became one of the few Hollywood stars to move convincingly from child parts to adult leads.
Both sides of her family fled Russia during its civil war, her mother's by way of Harbin in China and her father's through Shanghai and Vancouver. Her father changed the family name to Gurdin, and RKO executives later renamed her Wood, partly in tribute to the director Sam Wood. Director Irving Pichel took such a liking to her after two tiny roles that he kept in touch with the family for two years before calling her to Los Angeles for a screen test; her ambitious mother moved the whole household there despite her father's objections.
At seven she played a German war orphan opposite Orson Welles, who called her a born professional. Miracle on 34th Street made her one of Hollywood's top child stars, and Macy's invited her to ride in its Thanksgiving parade. She made more than twenty films as a child, studying on studio lots where California required three hours of class a day, and earned straight As. Joseph Mankiewicz said he had never met a smarter child actor.
At 16 she co-starred with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, the first script she said she actually chose herself, over her parents' opposition, and it brought an Oscar nomination. John Ford's The Searchers followed. Frustrated by bland girlfriend parts at Warner Bros., she refused roles and was suspended for a year. Elia Kazan, whose Streetcar Named Desire had inspired her, cast her in Splendor in the Grass in 1961 when others considered her finished, and she earned best actress nominations for it and for Love with the Proper Stranger, besides starring in West Side Story and Gypsy.
She stepped back in the 1970s to raise two daughters, yet won a Golden Globe for a 1979 television remake of From Here to Eternity. In November 1981, during a break from filming Brainstorm, she drowned off Santa Catalina Island at 43; in 2012 officials amended the cause to drowning and other undetermined factors.
Source: Natalie Wood
