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Natalie Wood

A Life

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Natalie Wood

Written by: Gavin Lambert
Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
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About this listen

From her starring roles as a skeptical child in the perennial classic Miracle on 34thStreet and a troubled adolescent in Rebel Without a Cause to mature roles in Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story, actress Natalie Wood transfixed the world with her hypnotic brown eyes. Yet behind the beautiful façade lurked a fragile, sparkling, generous, funny woman traumatized by her childhood and beset by personal demons. In this landmark biography, her close, personal friend Gavin Lambert sets out to tell her extraordinary story with the help of intimate interviews from her friends and colleagues, including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and her husband, Robert Wagner. What emerges is a luminous, assiduously researched portrait that sheds new light on the life and tragic death of the silver screen's most beguiling star.

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It is quite clear that screenwriter/Hollywood Biographer Gavin Lambert was a friend of Natalie Wood. He shies away from most controversies with this book (particularly in dismissing anything contentious regarding her death).. instead focussing on her evolution from a child star to an adolescent role model to a legitimately accomplished actress. Lambert touches on strained relationships with her ambitious stage-mother (Maria Zudilova) & absent father (Nicholas Zacharenko); close relationships with gay/lesbian industry figures; and troubled interactions with various husband/lovers - but spends the majority of his effort discussing her professional career (film by film).
The result is generally pretty milquetoast.

Unspectacular narration from Robert Blumenfeld contributes to the "passable" impression that I got from the retrospective, too. His crisp diction is paired with variably effective interpretations of interviewees (great Russian accents - weak British ones, for example).. and his timbre and cadence are similarly "Comme-ci, Comme-ça". The reading isn't bad, but it's not great, either.

In toto, this audiobook was a reasonable download as a 'Plus' selection - information-packed and edifying - but paying a Credit for the 6/10-star effort would be hard to defend.

Ho-Hum Biography

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