Natalie Wood was born on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, with the birth name of Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko. Her parents were Ukrainian emigres who hardly spoke any comprehensible English, but they changed the family name to Gurdin after becoming U.S. citizens. When she was just four years old, Natalie appeared in her first film, called “Happy Land”, which was released in 1943. A production company had come to Santa Rosa, where the Gurdins were living at the time, and she won a bit part of a crying little girl who had just dropped her ice cream cone. With stars in her eyes for her daughter, Mrs. Gurdin packed up the family and moved south to Los Angeles in the hopes that more films would come her daughter's way. Unfortunately they did not, at least not at first, and the family continued to scrape by, much as they had done in Santa Rosa. Three years later, in 1946, Natalie appeared in her second film, entitled “Tomorrow is Forever”. She was only seven at the time, and flunked her first screen test for the role. After being convinced by her mother to give her another test, the studio heads were impressed and awarded the role to Natalie. In 1947, Natalie won movie patrons' hearts as Susan Walker in the film “Miracle on 34th Street”, which is considered a Christmas classic to this day. For a child actress, Natalie stayed very busy, appearing in no less than 18 films in the late 40s and early 50s. Not all the films she appeared in were successful. As a matter of fact two were duds.
When she was 17, Natalie appeared in the 1955 cult classic “Rebel Without a Cause”, with stars James Dean, Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper. She played Judy, a rebellious high school student who was more concerned with hanging out with the wrong crowd than being a sweet teenager like her contemporaries. The result was her first Academy Award nomination and a defining moment in her development as an adult actress. She then appeared in “Splendor in the Grass” and “West Side Story” (both in 1961). While Natalie was reported to be unhappy making “West Side Story”, the film won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. In short, the film was a smash hit. The next year, she played in “Love with the Proper Stranger”, for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
She made two more films in the second part of the 1960s and then devoted herself mostly to taking care of her family. In 1980, she had a comeback with “The Last Married Couple in America”. In 1983, she began work on a film called “Brainstorm”, which she never saw released. On November 29, 1981, Natalie was sailing on the yacht she shared with her husband, Robert Wagner, and their friend Walken, when she drowned while trying to board a dinghy tied up alongside the yacht. She was only 43 years old. Natalie had made 56 films for TV and the silver screen.
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