would ask them, ‘How about
this
picture, or
that
picture?’ She was very much
on
to things,” recalls Olga. According to a family friend, Maria still negotiated Natalie’s contracts; Famous Artists did “what she told them to do.” “My mother ran my career and did it well—seeing that I got the right parts,” Natalie later complimented. Mud, with Famous Artists, submitted her for virtually every child’s role that summer, capitalizing on her momentum from
Tomorrow Is Forever
.
Natasha began to go by her screen name of “Natalie Wood” around this time, though she signed her letters to relatives and friends“Natasha,” or she would write “Natasha” in parentheses underneath “Natalie,” symbolizing the distinction in her mind between who she really was and her movie persona.
Other sweeping changes came into her life near Halloween. Her mother felt cramped with a new baby, so the Gurdins purchased a somewhat larger house in less expensive Burbank, using Natalie’s studio salary. Maria gave no thought to Olga, who wanted to finish her senior year at Hollywood High. “I was in an operetta there,
Sweethearts
, and I really liked the people, liked my teachers. I didn’t want to switch schools yet again.” Olga chose to stay behind, renting a room from a Bulgarian neighbor which she paid for with her department store wages. Mud did not even bother to attend her operetta, claiming it was too far from Burbank. Olga, who was devoutly Russian Orthodox, accepted her mother’s heartlessness with her usual grace. “My girlfriend’s family came. It
felt
like my family.”
Natalie had her own adjustment problems. She felt displaced transferring to public school in Burbank with other third-graders. “I didn’t like it at all—in those days, I didn’t like children. I didn’t think of myself as a child, and I didn’t like any of the things children were interested in. Also, studio school had been so far advanced I was way ahead of the kids in public school and I was bored.”
With Olga out of the house, no one in the family had any friends. “My mother never got to know neighbors,” recalls Lana. “She had no sense of community or anything like that. Natalie was
it
.” Natalie’s touchstone was the faithful Edwin, who would hear from her via occasional letters telling him what her next movie would be. Maria set aside thirty percent of her daughter’s salary in a savings account as required by law and was conservative with the rest (“It was a little bitty house in Burbank,” remarks Lana), but it was Natalie’s money supporting the family. Six months had passed since she was seen on the screen, a lifetime to Maria. When she was rejected for a part, “I felt awful,” Natalie said later, “as if I had let everybody down.”
Sometime after Halloween, Natalie’s agents placed her in contention for a small film at Twentieth Century Fox called
The Big Heart
. She was up for the part of a precocious six-year-old Manhattanite named Susan Walker, instructed by her divorced, disenchanted mother not to believe in Santa Claus. The picture, which would become the Christmas classic
Miracle on 34th Street
, “was actually being filmed as a low budget ‘B’movie,” recalls one of the actors. Director George Seaton, a former stage actor, wrote the screenplay, called
It’s Only Human
, based on a story suggested by his friend Valentine Davies while they were vacationing with their wives. Darryl Zanuck, the head of Fox, read the script and sent Seaton a note saying he loved it. The title was changed to
The Big Heart
and Zanuck assigned Maureen O’Hara, who was under contract, to play Susan’s mother, a Macy’s personnel director who hires a replacement Santa for the Thanksgiving parade who believes he
is
Kris Kringle. To play Kringle, the producers hired English stage actor Edmund Gwenn. Zanuck suggested John Payne as the neighbor determined to restore both mother and daughter’s faith in miracles. “I
this
picture, or
that
picture?’ She was very much
on
to things,” recalls Olga. According to a family friend, Maria still negotiated Natalie’s contracts; Famous Artists did “what she told them to do.” “My mother ran my career and did it well—seeing that I got the right parts,” Natalie later complimented. Mud, with Famous Artists, submitted her for virtually every child’s role that summer, capitalizing on her momentum from
Tomorrow Is Forever
.
Natasha began to go by her screen name of “Natalie Wood” around this time, though she signed her letters to relatives and friends“Natasha,” or she would write “Natasha” in parentheses underneath “Natalie,” symbolizing the distinction in her mind between who she really was and her movie persona.
Other sweeping changes came into her life near Halloween. Her mother felt cramped with a new baby, so the Gurdins purchased a somewhat larger house in less expensive Burbank, using Natalie’s studio salary. Maria gave no thought to Olga, who wanted to finish her senior year at Hollywood High. “I was in an operetta there,
Sweethearts
, and I really liked the people, liked my teachers. I didn’t want to switch schools yet again.” Olga chose to stay behind, renting a room from a Bulgarian neighbor which she paid for with her department store wages. Mud did not even bother to attend her operetta, claiming it was too far from Burbank. Olga, who was devoutly Russian Orthodox, accepted her mother’s heartlessness with her usual grace. “My girlfriend’s family came. It
felt
like my family.”
Natalie had her own adjustment problems. She felt displaced transferring to public school in Burbank with other third-graders. “I didn’t like it at all—in those days, I didn’t like children. I didn’t think of myself as a child, and I didn’t like any of the things children were interested in. Also, studio school had been so far advanced I was way ahead of the kids in public school and I was bored.”
With Olga out of the house, no one in the family had any friends. “My mother never got to know neighbors,” recalls Lana. “She had no sense of community or anything like that. Natalie was
it
.” Natalie’s touchstone was the faithful Edwin, who would hear from her via occasional letters telling him what her next movie would be. Maria set aside thirty percent of her daughter’s salary in a savings account as required by law and was conservative with the rest (“It was a little bitty house in Burbank,” remarks Lana), but it was Natalie’s money supporting the family. Six months had passed since she was seen on the screen, a lifetime to Maria. When she was rejected for a part, “I felt awful,” Natalie said later, “as if I had let everybody down.”
Sometime after Halloween, Natalie’s agents placed her in contention for a small film at Twentieth Century Fox called
The Big Heart
. She was up for the part of a precocious six-year-old Manhattanite named Susan Walker, instructed by her divorced, disenchanted mother not to believe in Santa Claus. The picture, which would become the Christmas classic
Miracle on 34th Street
, “was actually being filmed as a low budget ‘B’movie,” recalls one of the actors. Director George Seaton, a former stage actor, wrote the screenplay, called
It’s Only Human
, based on a story suggested by his friend Valentine Davies while they were vacationing with their wives. Darryl Zanuck, the head of Fox, read the script and sent Seaton a note saying he loved it. The title was changed to
The Big Heart
and Zanuck assigned Maureen O’Hara, who was under contract, to play Susan’s mother, a Macy’s personnel director who hires a replacement Santa for the Thanksgiving parade who believes he
is
Kris Kringle. To play Kringle, the producers hired English stage actor Edmund Gwenn. Zanuck suggested John Payne as the neighbor determined to restore both mother and daughter’s faith in miracles. “I
Similar Books
