Vintage 1960s Large Format Posed Candid Natalie Wood Dinner Party Photograph
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:655910 | Size: 11" x 14" |
| Country/Region of Manufacture: United States | Subject: Natalie Wood |
| Original/Reproduction: Original | Modified Item: No |
Thanks to all our eBay bidders! We are honored to be your one-stop, 5-star source for vintage pin up, pulp magazines, original illustration art, decorative collectibles and ephemera with a wide and always changing assortment of antique and vintage items from the Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Mid-Century Modern eras. All items are 100% guaranteed to be original, vintage, and as described. Please feel free to contact us with any and all questions about the items and our p...olicies and please take a moment to peruse our other great eBay listings. All sell no reserve!
ITEM: This is a 1960s vintage and original, large format photograph of Natalie Wood. The Hollywood star is all smiles for the photographer while wearing a plunging, spaghetti strapped gown with a sparkling necklace that glitters around her neck. Wood appears to be at a dinner event given the place settings on the table in front of her.
Wood began her career in film as a child and became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she turned 25 years old. She began acting in films at the age of four and, at age eight, was given a co-starring role in the 1947 classic Christmas film "Miracle on 34th Street." As a teenager, her performance in "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She starred in the musical films "West Side Story" (1961) and "Gypsy" (1962), and received Academy Award for Best Actress nominations for her performances in "Splendor in the Grass" (1961) and "Love with the Proper Stranger" (1963). Her career continued with films such as "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" (1969). Wood also starred in several television productions, including a remake of the film "From Here to Eternity" (1979), which earned her a Golden Globe Award. During her career, her films represented a "coming of age" for both her and Hollywood films in general. Wood drowned on November 29, 1981, at the age of 43; the events surrounding her death have been controversial due to conflicting witness statements, prompting the LASD to declare the cause of her death as "drowning and other undetermined factors".
Measures 11" x 14" on a glossy double weight paper stock.
Verso is blank.
CONDITION: Fine condition with rippling in the top and bottom of the photograph and nominal storage/handling wear. Please use the included images as a conditional guide.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
••••••••••••••••••••
Natalie Wood was born on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, California, as Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko. Her parents, Maria Stepanovna (Zudilova) and Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko, were Russian-born émigrés, of Ukrainian and Russian descent, who spoke barely comprehensible English; they changed the family name to Gurdin after becoming US citizens. When she was just four years old, Natalie appeared in her first film, Happy Land (1943). A production company had come to Santa Rosa, California, where the Gurdins were living and Natalie won a bit part of a crying little girl who had just dropped her ice cream cone. With stars in her eyes for her daughter, Mrs. Gurdin packed the family and moved south to Los Angeles in the hopes that more films would come her daughter's way. Unfortunately they did not, at least not at first, and the family continued to scrape by much as they had done in Santa Rosa. In 1946 Natalie tested for a role in Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). She was only seven at the time, and flunked the screen test. Natalie's mother convinced the studio heads to give her another test, and this time she was convincing enough that they gave Natalie the role. In 1947's Miracle on 34th Street (1947), she won the hearts of movie patrons around the country as Susan Walker in a film that is considered a Christmas classic to this day.
Natalie stayed very busy as a child actress, appearing in no less than 18 films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When she was 16 Natalie appeared in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) with James Dean, Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper. She played Judy, a rebellious high school student who was more concerned with hanging out with the wrong crowd than being a sweet teenager like her contemporaries. The result was her first Academy Award nomination and a defining moment in her development as an adult actress. She appeared in Splendor in the Grass (1961), West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).
While Natalie was reported to be unhappy making "West Side Story", the film did win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. In short, it was a smash hit. Although she wasn't nominated for an Academy Award in that one, she did receive nominations for her roles in "Splendor in the Grass" and "Love with the Proper Stranger". After This Property Is Condemned (1966) in 1966, Natalie stayed away from Hollywood for three years to have time for herself and to consider where she was going. When she did return her star quality had not diminished a bit, as evidenced by her playing Carol Sanders in the hit Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). From that point on Natalie didn't work as much. She made a few television appearances, but nothing of substance with the exception of the TV mini-series From Here to Eternity (1979).
After making The Last Married Couple in America (1980), Natalie began work on Brainstorm (1983) in the fall of 1981 with Christopher Walken. She did not live to see it released. On November 29, 1981, she was sailing on the yacht she shared with her husband, Robert Wagner, and their friend Walken, when Natalie fell in the ocean while trying to board the dinghy tied up alongside the yacht and drowned. She was 43 years old. Natalie had made 56 films for TV and the silver screen and it's hard to say what she could have done while making her comeback. "Brainstorm" was finally released in 1983.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson
••••••••••••••••••••
00313
