I admit I didn't expect much from this book, but it is so skillfully put together by co-author Lindsay Harrison, so well-paced and constructed, that it actually makes for a very compelling read. Of course the animosity between Natalie Wood's younger sister and her widower, Robert Wagner, is no secret, so one has to take some of this with a grain of salt. Lana Wood also doesn't seem to realize how people's behavior can be affected by copious amounts of alcohol. Still there's never been any proof that Natalie, say, surprised her husband and shipmate Christopher Walken having sex and took off in a dinghy in distress -- one of the theories -- and indeed the evidence seems to clearly point in another direction. If we are to believe reports and comments made by the two detectives (as filtered through Lana) who were assigned to Natalie Wood's death after the case was finally reopened, the original investigation was severely botched, either by incompetence or a star-struck attitude toward Robert Wagner, still a TV fixture at the time; and pathologist-to-the-stars Thomas Noguchi made serious errors as well. Clearly something bad happened on that ship and Wagner knows a lot more than he's telling. His account of that evening [Pieces of My Heart] simply doesn't match the facts, but so many years have gone by that he can only be considered a "person of interest" and not a "suspect." Well, judge for yourself.
Lana and Natalie Wood |
Verdict: Worthwhile, well-written, and absorbing memoir. ***.
2 comments:
Absolutely will go and pick up a copy of this book; have been fascinated with the mysterious death of Miss Wood ever since I heard the sad news after Thanksgiving in 1981. To date, I think the best Wood biography is the Suzanne Finstead (which I believe Lana was a main source for).
I do not know what happened that night, but I do believe that a lot of the blame lays with the Wagners' alcohol-fueled lifestyle. All the players in the event were very, very heavy drinkers, including Walken and the boat captain. So my belief is that this was a very unfortunate accident after some sort of alcoholic altercation, and help was not gotten in time.
I look forward to reading Wood's in-depth memories of life in Hollywood...
-Chris
Chris, alcohol certainly played a hand, as well as Wagner's jealousy. Based on what I read in this book I think he and Wood argued, things got violent, and when Wagner realized what he'd done he did everything he could to cover up. Involuntary manslaughter? Perhaps.
Post a Comment