LITTLE SISTER: MY INVESTIGATION INTO THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF NATALIE WOOD

LITTLE SISTER: My Investigation into the Mysterious Death of NATALIE WOOD. Lana Wood (with Lindsay Harrison). HarperCollins; 2021. 

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

Little Sister is interesting for other reasons, as it looks at a highly dysfunctional Hollywood family with a rather odious stage mother, one sister who hit the heights of stardom, while the other struggled, dealing with financial issues and her own daughter's addiction and tragic death. There are juicy if disheartening stories, such as how (according to Lana Wood) Kirk Douglas essentially raped Natalie when she was only fifteen. Lana repeats the story of Natalie divorcing Wagner (she later remarried him) because she found him in a "compromising position" with his butler! (One suspects that Lana was the source for this in other bios of Natalie and this may be why Wagner pretty much hates her.) Lana also claims that a powerful agent told her that Wagner had had her blackballed throughout Hollywood -- surely he didn't have such clout!? While nowhere near as successful as her older sister, Lana Wood amassed quite a few credits, including making an impression as Plenty O'Toole in Diamonds are Forever and appearing in other movies such as The Girls on the Beach. 

Verdict: Worthwhile, well-written, and absorbing memoir. ***.