Oh yeah! There’s no one else quite like her beauty, and a damn good actress too. I love her especially in Sex and the Single Girl, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and This Property is Condemned. But my personal all-time favorite is her role in Love with a Proper Stranger, opposite Steve McQueen.
Hi Noel!
I love almost all of her movies, especially Love with the Proper Stranger and West Side Story. Her performance in Sydney Pollack’s This Property is Condmened is remarkable :)
I also remember her in Splendor in the Grass, which I found to be quite an impressive performance.
Her performance in Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass is memorable indeed :)
“I’m not spoiled!”
She was one of the few child stars who made the transition so smoothly into adult roles. She was an amazing talent whose glamour and allure added to every role she played. I, too, remember her best in Splendor in the Grass and also the immortal Miracle on 34th Street. I definitely think Rebel Without a Cause would make an excellent Criterion candidate as it has both Natalie and James Dean. Her early death was a tragedy, but she left us quite a legacy in film. Although not every film she was in was always a classic (like every other hard-working Hollywood actor/actress), she always gave a good performance. One the most beautiful actresses to grace the screen. She was the full zowie!
Exactly! :)
Isn’t there already a pretty good DVD release of Rebel Without a Cause?
I think so…but, I’m still looking forward and hoping for a Criterion release :)
Man, oh man, you are so right IZA. She had the most beautiful eyes. Her face was just lovely. I was a kid when I saw her for the first time in Miracle on 34th Street. I had crush on her immediately.
Be sure to read Gavin Lambert’s biography. She was a remarkable woman. Met her once.
She glowed in the dark.
Love with a Proper Stranger. A film worth a DVD issue.
I grew up loving old movies and they always made me wish I had been born earlier, when all the really cool people were in their prime.
Then one Sunday night when I was 17 I saw “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,” which was not that old at the time, and made me glad to be alive simply because Natalie Wood was. Sadly, this is no longer the case, but that was the power she had over me as an actress. The fact that she was in the world made the world a great place to be.
Natalie was always someone where I could look at her eyes and lips and just be mesmerized…..that dark beauty of hers always hit me hard.
Remember her in ’The Searchers" at, what, 18….goodness.
She should have lived and worked much longer.
She was a great actress but I almost feel like she often played on-screen, what she often was in real life, a spoiled bitch….
She WAS the James Dean of her gender. Funny how they paired the two up in Rebel Without a Cause. Only she and Elizabeth taylor were 20 years ahead of their time, shedding the stage-actor style for method acting, which was a whole new concept in the 50s and 60s.
I found her to be very different than Dean in character. Often Dean was the outcast from the get-go looking in, while Wood was often very “in” but always looking out or would become somewhat of an outcast like seen in Splendor in the Grass or Rebel Without a Cause. So if anything they played two different sides of the spectrum…
Natalie Wood – hers is the face you’ll never get tired looking at. She’s like a flower in full bloom :)
Natalie Wood – hers is the face you’ll never get tired looking at. She’s like a flower in full bloom :)
Beatifuly put IZA.
Has anyone here seen that film she was in with Sean Connery?
Joshua-Meteor? Not one of hers or Connerys more stellar moments.
I agree
Has anyone here seen “Brainstorm” – her last film?
She was robbed of that Oscar for Splendor in the Grass. But my favorite performance of hers is in This Property is Condemned.
Iza Larize
She’s one of my fave actresses of all time. I really think that some of her films (especially Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause) deserves a Criterion treatment. Those eyes of hers…so beautiful. One of the most beautiful faces and powerful actresses in the history of cinema.
What do you guys think of Natalie Wood? :)