Natalie — When  'All Sound Stopped'
                 by Sherryl Connelly             NY Daily News Feature Writer
 

.................

                Twenty years after Natalie Wood drowned, the circumstances of her
                death are still a mystery. It seems likely, though, that the former child star,
                a woman adored throughout her life as the epitome of Hollywood glamour,
                died somewhat drunk and certainly disoriented.

                Suzanne Finstad, author of the recently published "Natasha: The Biography of
                Natalie Wood" (Harmony Books), regards those final moments as an aberration in the
                25-year, sometimes stormy relationship between Wood and her husband, Robert Wagner.

                The book includes various accounts of that night, including one of several by the captain
                of their yacht that suggests Wood died within earshot of Wagner, as an argument continued
                even after she went overboard. Wagner vigorously disputes the allegation. The book's publisher
                stands by Finstad's decision to include it.

                "[What happened] that last weekend was so unlike Natalie, so unlike the Wagner marriage,"
                 Finstad claims. "That this is the persisting image, the one people hold of them, is wrong."

                There have been differing accounts of the events of Saturday, Nov. 28, 1981, when, between
                10:45 and 11:30 p.m., Wood, who was 43, disappeared from her yacht Splendour, which was
                anchored off Catalina Island, about 25 miles from Los Angeles. After a period of time, perhaps
                more than two hours, Wagner called for help. Wood's body was found by a search team around
                7:45 on Sunday morning.

                There was a combustible mix of personalities on the boat. Wood, who was
                going through a period of anxiety common to many middle-aged actresses, had
                bonded with the actor Christopher Walken on the set of the movie "Brainstorm,"
                and he had joined her and Wagner on the boat the previous Friday morning.

                Captain's Account

                The author's reconstruction of the final argument between Wood and Wagner relies
                most heavily on accounts by Dennis Davern, the captain of the boat. According
                to Lana Wood, Natalie's younger sister, Davern told her in 1992 that Wagner
                continued fighting with his wife after she had gone overboard.

                Drawing from Davern's conversation with Lana Wood, among other sources, Finstad
                writes: "Natalie was in the ocean alongside the boat, yelling, while R.J., who was
                still furious, and desperately drunk, continued the argument from on board the boat.

                "'Dennis said he was very panicky,'" the actress' sister said. "He was sitting, and
                would say, 'Come on, let's get her.' And he said Robert was in such a foul mood, at that
                point that Dennis then shut up."

                The book continues: "'Time slipped away,' Davern told Lana, 'until all the sound stopped.'"

                Finstad says she understands that Davern has been a less-than-reliable source in the
                years since the drowning. On more than one occasion, he has sold revelations to
                supermarket tabloids — telling details that varied from his version of events that
                appears in the original police reports.

                "Obviously, there are questions about his credibility," says Finstad, "though he has
                been fairly consistent in the public versions he's proffered."

                Davern refused Finstad's request for a direct interview. So did Wagner, who also
                declined to answer questions from The News. However his lawyers labeled the account false.

                A Harmony Books spokesman defended Finstad's work. "We believe the book is a
                careful, well-balanced examination of Natalie Wood's life, based on extensive
                research and interviews," the spokesman said in a statement.

                The author, a former lawyer, has been burned by a source before. In 1998, Elvis Presley's widow,
                Priscilla, won a defamation suit against Lavern Currie Grant, an Army      buddy of Presley, who,
                in Finstad's headline-making book, "Child Bride," claimed Priscilla had slept with him to win an
                introduction to Presley. Presley has insisted she was a virgin when she married.

                Finstad says she was inspired to write a biography of Wood by a television
                documentary about her. "I was so touched. There was something so vulnerable about
                her, and wrenching," she recalls.

                A Stage Mother

                Much of "Natasha" focuses on Wood's relationship with her mother, Maria, whose obsession
                with fame pushed Natalie to Hollywood. An emotionally scarred survivor  of the Russian Revolution,
                Maria put enormous weight on a gypsy fortuneteller's prediction "that her second child would become
                famous throughout the world for her beauty."

                Wood was born in San Francisco on July 20, 1938 — the second of Maria's three
                daughters and her first with Nikolai Zakharenko, like Maria a Siberian émigré,
                and a man full of rage.

                Maria was so ambitious that when Natalie, an aspiring 6-year-old actress, could not
                summon tears for a screen test, her mother tore the wings off a butterfly in front of her.

                Guided by director Irving Pichel in her first
                three movies, Natalie had her greatest
                success as a child actor in 1947's "Miracle
                on 34th Street."

                As a sophisticated 16-year-old, she forced
                her way into 1955's "Rebel Without a
                Cause." At her mother's urging, she already
                had infiltrated Frank Sinatra's crowd.

                "I don't know that they were sexually
                intimate at that stage," says Finstad of
                Wood and Sinatra, who remained close for
                years. She certainly had an affair with
                Nicholas Ray, the 43-year-old director of
                "Rebel."

                The Rape

                It was while she was waiting to find out if she had been cast in the film that Wood was
                raped by a major Hollywood figure, whom Finstad refuses to identify.

                (Ronald Reagan popped into my head)

                "It was a very brutal attack," she says. "And after that her behavior became very
                rebellious. It also led Natalie to feel comfortable in the company of gay men."

                Based on what she learned from Wood's friends, Finstad claims that Wood's fairy-tale first
                marriage to Wagner ended when she wandered downstairs one night and found him in a
                compromising position with a man. Again, Wagner has objected to the inclusion of the allegation.
                Through his lawyers, he denied ever having had a homosexual relationship.

                Finstad also details Wood's repeated suicide attempts.

                Wood and Wagner first married in 1957, divorcing in 1962. Wood then married
                British talent agent Richard Gregson in 1969. They had a daughter, Natasha, in
                1970, but Wood left him shortly afterward when, according to Finstad, she discovered
                he was having an affair with Wood's secretary.

                Wood remarried Wagner in 1972. They had a daughter, Courtney, in 1974. Wood
                submerged herself in motherhood, but the star of such classic films as "Splendor in the
                Grass" and "West Side Story" still wanted satisfying movie roles and the attention
                granted a Hollywood star.

                But Wagner, a hit in the TV series "Hart to Hart," was the bigger star in the '70s.
                The shift in fame confounded both of them.

                Finstad believes that Wood and Wagner were still committed to their marriage when
                she died. "There was a real emotional connection," she says. "It was permanent."