Rating: 
Summary: BEAUTY, INTELLECT AND TALENT...SHE HAD IT ALL!
Review: Born Natasha Zakharenko, Natalie Wood, was the daughter of Russian immigrants. Being a granddaughter of Russian immigrants myself, I can well relate to her upbringing, particularly during her childhood years. There was a quality about this book that portrayed Natalie as a beautiful, intellegent, talented women with a little girl still living deep inside. Many of us do retain that characteristic inside of us to a certain degree, but in Natalie's case, there are times in the book when she almost torn between two worlds, the one she wanted to fit into and the one she did not want to leave behind.From childhood to Tinseltown, through happiness and sorrow, success and ultimate tragedy, this is Natalie's story as it has never been told before. No other account of her life seems quite as accurate or complete. The book leaves the the reader feeling this is not just another glittering starlet, but a real person with fears, hopes and dreams who, regardless of fame and success, was no different from you or me. The reader will share her rollercoaster life, the peaks and valleys, the dreams and aspirations, the triumphs and final tragedy. For all her strengths and weaknesses, she will forever be remembered for the beautiful lady that she was. If you are drawn to biographies and, in particular, the magnetism of this captivating woman, you will not want to miss "Natasha."
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing and compulsively readable
Review: I wasn't prepared for my reaction to this book. I mean, I was familiar with Ms. Wood's work ("Splendor in the Grass" is one of my favorites and they made us watch "West Side Story" in high school). And I knew that she died in precisely the way she feared. But I wasn't really a fan. Therefore, when I found myself feeling heartbroken for this poor woman at least once-a-chapter, I was surprised. Her life may have looked glamorous from the outside, yet it must have felt like hell from the inside. And yet to the very end, she kept trying to make it all better, to get to that happy ending. What a brave, gallant woman. A happy family and a satisfying career -- aren't the things Natalie found so illusive the same things most women want? AND ... the author is a better writer than your average celebrity scribe. The Chekov angle was truly inspired.
Rating:
Summary: Natalies Secrets, The friends who loved her never knew
Review: Suzanne Finstad pulled together an amazing biography of Natalie Wood that took years of interviews and tells the true story of Natalie's difficult life behind the scenes. Those of us who worked with her, knew her well (we thought) will be amazed at what we never suspected. I wrote my book Hairdresser to the Stars, A Hollywood Memoir about the seventeen years I worked closely with her but after reading this book, Natasha, I realize I hardly knew her. I loved her and am saddened that she could never share her life with those of us that worked closely with her. She was always a professional, an actress who only showed her lovely sides. We never knew about the darkness. Here was a beautiful woman, loved and desired by so many men, talented and wealthy and yet never achieved the happiness she desired in her life. She supported her friends in their careers and lives and yet seemed to have been left in the dark. Reading this book brought back memories and wonderful occasions along with the sadness that she left us much too soon. I think by now, if Natalie was still alive she would have said "to hell" with all this hiding my life and read the book with pleasure and a sigh of relief and would have quoted Woody Guthrie "I used to care but things have changed." Read it with love.
Rating:
Summary: very entertaining,captures your mind from the first page
Review: This book gives the most thought provoking details of natalie wood's life i especially love reading about in the seveties when she wanted to be a mother so much and put her career on hold to have a daughter that looks exactly like her.
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling, Touching, FABULOUS Bio of Glamorous Star
Review: This book was so fascinating that I actually read it in one day. "Natalie Wood" continues to be a household name even twenty years after her death, but this is the first biography to focus solely and objectively on Natalia "Natasha" Zakharenko (Nat's sister Lana wrote "Natalie: A Memoir" in 1984 and Warren G. Harris also wrote a bio of both Natalie and her husband RJ Wagner). Suzanne Finstad interviewed nearly four hundred people in her research for this book and offers some startling revelations in her portrait of Natalie's life. Finstad does an excellent job of drawing a very clear distinction between the person, Natasha, and the creation "Natalie Wood" and the demons these dueling personalities created within her life. The best thing about this biography is the unwavering (and well deserved) respect Finstad has for her subject. Especially touching is Finstad's dedication of the book to Natasha "the little girl lost in 'Natalie Wood'" and her two sisters, Lana and Olga, as well as the parallel Finstad uses with Chekov's "Three Sisters". From the beginning of "Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood" where Finstad traces Natasha's geneological roots in depth, to the end of the book where Finstad examines the possible events that led to the tragic loss of this great star at such a young age, Suzanne Finstad provides the reader with the spell-binding tale of Natasha and the people and events that shaped her life. This is a MUST HAVE for any fan of Natalie Wood and/or her films.
Rating: 
Summary: natural beauty
Review: I am fan of Natalie Wood since I saw, as a child, movie "Splendor in the grass". She was beautifull and so much different then the other "star-system" actresses. A long time I could not find some interesting article regarding her life and tragic death so I was surelly suprised when I read "Natasha". I have read it in one breath. I have read it earlier that she was famous in all the hollywood parties and that she was rebel. Thats why I was suprised when I`ve read that she was connected to her family and children. Maybe she was captivated by her mentally abused childhood as the author presented, and she was searhing for true love. I was very suprised when I heard the editors preview regarding the bisexual activity of Robert Wagner. The author was just indirectly show us the possible, "shocking" divorce reason of their first marriage. I was more suprise that she returned to him after that "compromised position" she saw. The book is very interesting but only thing it is not such clear to me is RJ. According to the author, they were really in love and he was quait and nice man. But Finstad is not paid so much attention to him, as he was not interested her. What is still question for me is that relationship with C. Walken on that day when she drowned. Is in Hollywood really ordinary thing to be bisexual?
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling, Touching, FABULOUS Bio of Glamorous Star
Review: This book was so fascinating that I actually read it in one day. "Natalie Wood" continues to be a household name even twenty years after her death, but this is the first biography to focus solely and objectively on Natalia "Natasha" Zakharenko (Nat's sister Lana wrote "Natalie: A Memoir" in 1984 and Warren G. Harris also wrote a bio of both Natalie and her husband RJ Wagner). Suzanne Finstad interviewed nearly four hundred people in her research for this book and offers some startling revelations in her portrait of Natalie's life. Finstad does an excellent job of drawing a very clear distinction between the person, Natasha, and the creation "Natalie Wood" and the demons these dueling personalities created within her life. The best thing about this biography is the unwavering (and well deserved) respect Finstad has for her subject. Especially touching is Finstad's dedication of the book to Natasha "the little girl lost in 'Natalie Wood'" and her two sisters, Lana and Olga, as well as the parallel Finstad uses with Chekov's "Three Sisters". From the beginning of "Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood" where Finstad traces Natasha's geneological roots in depth, to the end of the book where Finstad examines the possible events that led to the tragic loss of this great star at such a young age, Suzanne Finstad provides the reader with the spell-binding tale of Natasha and the people and events that shaped her life. This is a MUST HAVE for any fan of Natalie Wood and/or her films.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing mystery around her death and a fast-paced life
Review: My mom sent me this book - Natalie Wood was before my time. I was surprised at the sex and drugs in Hollywood even in the 50s! The 2 best parts of the book are reading about Natalie's very eccentric Russian mother who was a pushy stage mom, and reading about Natalie's lifelong fear of drowning in dark water which did eventually come true. The mystery around her death is very intriguing. Was it just a drunken mistake that her husband RJ did not to call the Coast Guard earlier? Could the people on neighboring boats have saved her if only their inflatable dinghy had not been stored away deflated? If she hadn't been drinking heavily that night, would Natalie have fallen overboard? Like all accidents, there are a lot of "what ifs." She had a very interesting life, with lots of husbands and lovers, and lots of friends who were also famous movie stars like James Dean. The book does get a bit graphic talking about the seamier side of stardom.
Rating:
Summary: NATASHA brings Natalie Wood to life
Review: Suzanne Finstad's thorough research and sympathy for her subject make for a thoroughly engrossing and illuminating look at the public and private life of Natalie Wood. The reader is left with a vivid idea of who Natalie truly was as a person, making the ultimate tragedy of her drowning that much more painful to read about.
Almost without variation, Natalie Wood was regarded by those that knew her as a person with an exceedingly kind nature, and a nimble mind as well. (I,for one, was not aware of how whip-smart she was.) It is easy to imagine that, had her Russian-born, obssessed stage mother not singlemindedly forced the life of a movie star on her favored daughter, Natasha Gurdin could have had a happy, fulfilled life, going to college and marrying her true love. She never had a choice of what she was going to be, and the wrongheaded selfishness of a mother using a child to realize her own uncaptured dreams is made poignantly clear in the book. Although Natalie Wood's growth as a person throughout her life is illustrated, it seems to me that she never was able to grow into her true self. Her identity was so intertwined with her mother's, and with what her mother believed a Movie Star should be, that she probably never felt truly comfortable in her own skin. It is only through becoming a mother that Natalie finds true contentment.
Natalie's numerous romances (often with famous men) reveal a person who was searching for something in a man that she could not find in herself; the book gives the impression that it was Robert Wagner's easygoing steadiness that led her to marry him not once, but twice. Her outgoing, emotional vivacity complemented his charming, old Hollywood ways.
It was truly hard to get through the last section of the book; although I was very curious to know what information the author had uncovered regarding Natalie's death, and I could not put the book down, by the time I reached that point, I felt I had such an understanding of Natalie's personality that it hurt to read about her mysterious death. Many unsettling details are brought to light in the book, the most disturbing of which to me, is that the people in the boat closest to Natalie's yacht heard a woman screaming for help in the water and a man's mocking reply. Along with the timeline that develops over the bizarre weekend of Natalie's death, and the friction between Natalie, her husband Robert Wagner, and possible lover Christopher Walken, makes one very suspicious that someone got away with murder. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves biographies or nonfiction or anyone who has ever wondered: What really happened to Natalie Wood?
|
