Splendor in the Grass

"What though the radiance which was once so bright, be now for ever taken from my sight, though nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."   These are the immortal words of William Wordsworth, the Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century English poet.  

The above phrase was co-opted into the 1961 film Splendor in the Grass directed by Elia Kazan and which starred Natalie Wood (nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, but lost to Sophia Loren in Two Women) and Warren Beatty (screen debut).  William Inge won the Academy Award for Best Writing-Story and Screenplay, Written Directly for the Screen.

Splendor in the Grass is the story of Deanie (Wood), a teenage girl growing up in a small town in Kansas in the 1920s.  She is conflicted by her passionate feelings towards her boyfriend, Bud (Beatty), and the sexual repression passed down to her by her mother and the community she lives in.  After much turmoil, Deanie and Bud do not live together happily ever after.

There is an interesting scene near the end where Deanie's mother apologizes for whatever mistakes she made raising her daughter.  She said she raised her daughter the same as her mother raised her and perhaps as her grandmother raised her mother as well.  At the time, how else did anyone know how to raise a child? 

As my high school classmates and I were growing up in a small town in New York State forty years after Deanie and Bud, we perhaps experienced the same feelings they did.  I remember hotly debating the film's point of view with one of my female classmates.  I forget what I thought at the time, but I felt it strongly.

Natalie Wood was born in San Francisco in July of 1938.  Her parents were immigrants from Russia and the Ukraine.  Natalie's first credited movie role was in 1946 at eight years of age (Tomorrow is Forever as Orson Welles' daughter).  Her first starring role was the following year in the unforgettable Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street (at Macy's Department Store) as Maureen O'Hara's daughter.  

In 1955, Natalie Wood appeared with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (she was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Actress in a Supporting Role, but lost to Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden, also a James Dean movie).  In 1956, Natalie was kidnapped by Comanches in my favorite John Wayne film, The Searchers.  In 1961, she played the lead, Maria, in the movie musical, West Side Story.  

In 1963, Natalie Wood starred opposite Steve McQueen in the romantic film, Love With The Proper Stranger.  She was nominated for the third and last time for an Academy Award (Best Actress), but lost to Patricia Neal in Hud.  I remember the final scene which was shot at the intersection of West Thirty-Fourth Street and Seventh Avenue in New York City, near Macy's Department Store.  Cristina and I have frequently passed by where Natalie and Steve once stood.

Natalie Wood died in November 1981 at the age of forty-three.  She was on board her yacht (Splendour) near Santa Catalina Island (southwest of Los Angeles) with her husband, the actor Robert Wagner, and another actor Christopher Walken, with whom she was making a movie (Brainstorm).  While Natalie was presumably alone late at night she wound up in the Pacific Ocean (she once said, "I've always been terrified of the water") under unclear circumstances.  Her body was found the following day.  The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled that Natalie died as a result of accidental drowning and hypothermia.

After thirty-six years, Natalie Wood's death has recently been reclassified as "suspicious" by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.  Apparently, she quarreled with her husband shortly before she disappeared into the water.  Robert Wagner (now eighty-eight years old) is currently listed as a "person of interest."  

What ever happened that night, it was a shame as Natalie Wood was a beautiful woman and a wonderful actress who was taken from us too soon.