Remembering Natalie Wood on Her 85th Birthday: A Glamorous Life, and a Mysterious Death After Boat Accident
variety.comTim Gray Senior Vice President Some celebs achieve strange immortality because they died young, beautiful and under mysterious circumstances.
There have been years of conspiracy theories about Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana and Whitney Houston, for example. But Natalie Wood is a special case because officials redefined her death, three decades after the fact.
Wood would be 85 this year; she was born July 20, 1938, and died Nov. 29, 1981. She and Robert Wagner — her husband from December 1957 to April 1962, then again from July 1972 until her death — were on their boat Splendour in Catalina for Thanksgiving weekend, along with guest Christopher Walken and the captain, Dennis Davern.
Everybody agrees on those facts; otherwise, it’s been decades of what Variety described at the time as “speculation and as-yet unanswered questions.” Wood was found floating in the water, wearing a flannel nightgown and down jacket.
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