Natalie Wood photographed “rehearsing for Gypsy as if it were Otello,” 1962.
He arrived late for the first rehearsal, roaring in on his motorcycle, dressed in jeans, a dirty T-shirt, and a large safety pin holding his fly together. “He was exactly what I expected. A junior version of Marlon Brando. He mumbled so you could hardly hear what he was saying, and he seemed very exotic and eccentric and attractive.” Natalie Wood by Suzanne Finstad.
Natalie Wood and James Dean eat at a hot dog stand during a break in filming “Rebel Without a Cause,” 1955.
- Why do you do that? why are you so fanciful? why do you make everything special? -Because it is.
— Natalie Wood in This Property Is Condemned (1966).
Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon attend the opening of the 1969 New York Film Festival.
“The next day, she ... went to see Dean in “East of Eden,” which had opened at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. “She walked out and said, ‘I’m gonna marry him.’ Natalie later admitted she had ‘a big crush’ on Dean. “I remember going with my school girlfriends to see East of Eden like fifteen times, sitting there sobbing when he tried to give the money to his father. We knew every word by heart.”
Natalie said her favorite scene in Rebel Without a Cause was one she shared with James Dean that was cut from the film.
“It was in the car. I was waiting for him and he comes up and we talk to each other. There was a section of the scene where I imply that I’ve sort of been around, that I’m not really pure.
I say to him, ‘Do you think that’s bad?’ And he says ‘No, I just think it’s lonely. It’s the loneliest time.’
I thought it was a wonderful line—right on the cutting room floor.”
Photo (x)
Natalie Wood and her then-husband Robert Wagner photographed by Peter Basch, 1957.
Natalie Wood photographed at the opening of “the Boys in the Band,” 1969.