The best showbiz biography I ever read was the one by film critic Alexander Walker about Vivien Leigh. And I didn't even like Vivien Leigh. Hated almost all her films, especially that pre-War one aboutt the American Civil War, which I consider to be one of the worst films in human history, a real crime against humanity. In her childhood, Natasha's mother turned her into nothing less than film industry marionette, ready and willing to please anybody.
But the job of a showbiz bio should help us understand how these "stars" come to be, what made them develop and how they ticked. It should also give a look into the world they inhabit. This book isn't as good as Walker's biography of Miss Leigh. But it comes close.
Wood was even more beautiful than Miss Leigh, and a better actress. Unfortunately, at least for me, most of her films have dated. "Rebel Without A Cause" and "West Side Story" are two just symbols of outdated American ideals that, like the American economy, are now just as bankrupt. America won the Cold War because it produced better films. Now the Russians have caught up. Natasha, ironically, was Russian-born!
Another prinipal character in this book is Natasha's mother, Maria (or whatever name she went by). Today, at least in the UK or the US, the way she treated Natasha (and her two other daughters) would be bordering on child abuse. The way she manipulated and abused her daughter (and others around her) was borderline criminality. Today people are put in prison for treating animals with less cruelty!
More interestingly, especially here in the UK with all the recent allegations about former "celebritries" having sex with schoolgirls, is that fact that nobody (including hr mother)said very much about Wood having an affair (when she was 16) with Frank Sinatra (who was divorced and almost 40). How times change. Or do they?
The real enigma about Miss Woods was that sex and nudity were largely still censored in most of her films (and she hated nudity). So unlike later actresses of my generation, Helen Mirren (herself with Russian origins) and Jenny Agutter, we don't get the full benefit of all her full physical beauty. But that's even better. It makes her even more enigmatic.
The one drawback to the book is the change between Russian names, English names and other names which people have in the book. But that is a minor flaw.
A must for all Natalie Wood fans and people who like showbiz biographies. And I am not really a fan of her films. But that doesn't mean that I cannot appreciate the qualities that made up this beautiful, talented and enigmatic woman. She would have made a perfect
Helen Of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore
, the character of Bethany Hughes' book about this historical myth that caused a war. Maybe, in a thousand years time, a future society will turn Natalie Wood into a similar myth, or even a goddess. Though they will probably make her breasts bigger. And her male companion could be called "Clyde".
That's life, that's Hollywood: it's all fantasy!
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