What Really Happened to Natalie Wood?

A month ago I wrote about the tragic death of Natalie Wood. Some startling developments in the case meant that it was time to update my story for The Vintage News today:

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators say Robert Wagner is a “person of interest” in tragic death of Natalie Wood in 1981

By Nancy Bilyeau

In a stunning development, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigators said in an interview released on February 1, 2018, that actor Robert Wagner is now a person of interest in the mysterious death of his then-wife Natalie Wood in 1981, and investigators want to speak with Wagner about the circumstances surrounding that death. No charges were filed after Wood drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981. Law enforcement ruled the death accidental, but in 2012 the case was reopened and Wood’s death certificate was amended to “drowning and other undetermined factors.”

“As we’ve investigated the case over the last six years, I think he’s more of a person of interest now,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant John Corina said in an interview with “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty. The full interview will air on the program “48 Hours” on February 3rd.

Hollywood mysteries have a way of seizing hold of us. To some, Marilyn Monroe’s death has contradictory, strange aspects to it, turning her 1962 demise into a cottage industry of books forwarding various dark theories. Unsolved crimes invite speculation, from the murder of silent-film director William Desmond Taylor to that of Hogans Heroes star Bob Crane.

But the death of actress Natalie Wood on November 29, 1981, is in a special category. When news broke that the 43-year-old was found drowned off California’s Catalina Island after being declared missing from their yacht by her actor husband, Robert Wagner, the world was horrified. Wood had been a star since she was a child, winning hearts as Maureen O’Hara’s daughter in Miracle on 34th Street in 1947. She dazzled in Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, Splendour in the Grass, Gypsy, and other big-budget Hollywood pictures.

After an investigation by the Sheriff’s Department and an examination by Los Angeles’ Chief Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi, Wood’s death was declared accidental. New images flooded the newspapers and TV news, of a devastated Robert Wagner, wearing dark glasses....

For rest of the story, please go to The Vintage News.

Steve McQueen, Anyone?

I've always been fascinated by Steven McQueen--and I feel it's safe to say I'm not alone--but when I researched this story on him for The Vintage News, I learned about his ambition, his competitiveness, his troubled childhood, and his talent.

Steven McQueen, the Icon Who Started Out As a Scene Stealer

Ever since his death in 1980s at the age of 50, Steve McQueen’s reputation as the King of Cool has grown and grown. Black-and-white photos of McQueen’s lean, weather-beaten face squinting into the sun compete with vivid color images of him straddling a motorcycle or climbing out of a race car, his eyes startling blue. Then there are the photos of McQueen with his arm around his second wife, Ali Macgraw, the patrician brunette beauty fresh off Love Story who he stole from her Hollywood husband, Robert Evans, while she was his co-star in The Getaway.

An essential aspect of a cool persona is a temperament that is laid-back and confident. In the photos, it’s as if McQueen were saying, “I don’t have to work to get these acting parts or awards or million-dollar fees, or these race cars, or even these beautiful women, they just come to me without effort.”

But what is being lost in the iconography of Steven McQueen is how badly he wanted certain things, none more so than a film career in the late 1950s. There wasn’t much of anything he wouldn’t do to get it. The Magnificent Seven, released in 1960, is the story of McQueen’s reality. The King of Cool did more than break a sweat to get cast in and film this movie–he had a series of meltdowns.

To read the whole story, go here.