"Wistful, elegant, humane."

A child star, insecurities, bouts of depression, brief affairs with men who were clearly poor fits from the outset, occasionally a fine turn on screen but often cast in stinkers, and then, despite a fear of water, death by drowning. Writes Stephanie Zacharek in the New York Times Review of Books:

With all that built-in drama, [Natalie] Wood's story would be hard to mess up, and if Natalie Wood: A Life were simply solid and readable (and it's both), that would be enough. But this biography has a wistful, elegant, humane quality that feels out of place in the American cultural landscape of 2004. This isn't just the story of one beloved, bedeviled actress: Lambert's book also represents a lost mode of thinking about movie stars.

The first pages of Gavin Lambert's biography - it begins with the Russian Revolution - are a click away.

Scott Eyman, who's working on a biography himself (Lion of Hollywood: The Life of Louis B. Mayer), reviews the book for the New York Observer, though it's actually more a review of Natalie Wood's career.

Liz Smith (yes, Liz Smith) compares Lambert's Natalie with Suzanne Finstad's "excellent and extremely sympathetic 2001 biography," Natasha. On the one hand, Smith detects Robert Wagner answering Finstad's dirt on him via Lambert's authorized bio; on the other hand, "Lambert knew Natalie. Friends of the actress, who would not speak to Finstad, spoke to Lambert."

Just so you know.

Posted by dwhudson at January 21, 2004 1:30 PM