Little Sister Read online

  Natalie’s and my half sister, Olga, from Mom’s first marriage, arrived from Northern California with her husband, Alexi. Evan adored her aunt Olga, but she wasn’t around to greet her—she’d become overwhelmed by this growing, deeply upset stream of visitors and locked herself in her room.

  The phone rang nonstop. I had no idea who was calling or who kept answering. Someone asked if we’d heard from R. J. We hadn’t. Not a word, all day.

  I gave in to an inexplicable compulsion to wash my hair. Who doesn’t run upstairs to wash their hair when they have a house full of people?

  It was when I was coming back down that I heard Mom shriek to everyone within earshot, “The wrong one died!” Heads turned to look at me for a reaction. I didn’t have one. It was an awful thing to say but no big surprise. By all accounts, as Mom was giving birth to me, she’d cried out, “I didn’t want another baby!” Her daughter Natalie was already an eight-year-old movie star when I was born, so what did she need with this ordinary, gangly little inconvenience?

  Guy McElwaine, a close friend of R. J.’s, was miffed that there was no bourbon in the house, only wine. He and I had a long, complicated twenty-year relationship, and he seemed like someone I could ask. “Guy, have you talked to R. J.? Do you know what happened to my sister?”

  “I know exactly what happened to your sister,” he snapped back, “but I don’t think I can trust you.” Then he walked away. My mind was such a blank that it didn’t occur to me at the time what a bizarre thing that was for him to say about an accidental drowning.

  Suzanne Miller, a lovely woman who watched Evan when I was working, arrived and volunteered to take care of her for as long as I needed her. She was a godsend.

  Alan flew in from back east and came straight to my place from LAX. He walked in the door, made a beeline for me through the crowd, and pulled me into my bedroom. The only time I remember crying—shattering, in fact—was when he closed the door and held me.

  I WAS EXHAUSTED THAT NIGHT AND MANAGED TO FALL ASLEEP, BUT SLEEP WAS almost more exhausting than being awake. Even with Alan right there beside me, the nightmares just kept on coming, obviously my subconscious mind trying to process what my conscious mind couldn’t begin to grasp: Natalie was gone.

  Dream after awful dream revolved around images of my sister’s trying desperately to escape dark water, her greatest terror. Natalie Wood’s legendary fear of water has been discussed in more articles and interviews than I can begin to count, but very rarely have I read an accurate account of where it came from.

  Our mom was born in Barnaul, Siberia, into a family who escaped to China when the Russian Civil War broke out. She was a very religious, very superstitious woman with a fascination for all things mystical. She insisted on telling Natalie’s and my fortunes throughout our lives, using a deck of playing cards. I don’t remember a single thing she predicted for either of us, let alone whether or not any of it ever came true. I also don’t remember either of us turning Mom down when she pulled out those playing cards, not because we were into it but because we simply never said no to her—Natalie was programmed to follow her orders from the moment she was born, and I had so few rules growing up that it was easier to just go along to get along.

  Mom loved nothing more than telling stories, and one of her favorites was about her visit to a Gypsy fortune-teller while she was living in China. The Gypsy, it seems, told her that someday she would give birth to an exquisite little girl, a little girl who would become a famous movie star, celebrated all over the world . . . which, by the way, is part of what drove Mom’s fierce, relentless obsession with Natalie and her career. It’s a complete myth, and a really tired cliché, that Mom was an aspiring actress and/or a ballerina who never quite achieved stardom when she was growing up and pushed Natalie in order to fulfill her own shattered dreams. The truth is, Mom was just a somewhat wild kid brought up by wealthy Russians who was only following through on what the Fates had already decided were her and Natalie’s destinies.

  The Gypsy’s other prediction, which we were told when we were children, was that the life of that same extraordinary little superstar would ultimately end in a tragic drowning in dark water.

  Natalie always believed every word that came out of Mom’s mouth, and she spent the rest of her life terrified of dark water and admitting to it in any number of interviews. Even pools frightened her. She would pose for photos in them or be filmed in them if she absolutely had to, but then she’d spend hours afterward recovering from the panic it caused her. At most, she could dog-paddle short distances, under duress, but she couldn’t really swim. There was a scene in Splendor in the Grass in which she had to wade out into a pond in an attempted suicide. Elia Kazan, the director, had been told about Natalie’s terror of water and promised her they’d shoot the scene quickly, with no retakes, but she was still so frightened anticipating it that she called me twice for moral support. I didn’t know what to say beyond, “You’ll be fine,” and reminded her, “There will be plenty of people around to help you,” but her fear was still so palpable, even over the phone, that I cried after we hung up. She got through the scene in one take, but she was in terrible emotional shape for days afterward.

  Mom couldn’t swim either, by the way, so she saw no reason not to encourage Natalie to stay as far away as possible from water, especially dark water.

  MY THOUGHTS KEPT SPIRALING. IF I’D JUST BEEN ON THE SPLENDOUR WITH HER when she fell overboard—and she must have fallen overboard, there was no way she voluntarily jumped—I could have saved her in the blink of an eye when I heard the splash. There had to have been a splash, right? You don’t fall off a boat into the ocean without a loud splash . . . So how did not even one of the three guys on board hear it and pull her out of the water? Where were they? What were they doing? Maybe they’d had too much alcohol. I didn’t know about Christopher Walken or Dennis Davern, but R. J. was definitely a drinker, a heavy one sometimes. Natalie didn’t drink much, although she did overindulge every once in a while. Maybe that was it, maybe it was one of those rare occasions when she got drunk, and she fell overboard . . . which still didn’t explain why no one heard it and rushed to save her . . .

  I couldn’t make sense of any of it, and I really, really wanted to. Not that it would bring her back, but still . . .

  I needed to talk to R. J., once things quieted down after we got the funeral over with. It wouldn’t be easy. I figured he must have been a complete basket case, especially with three daughters to deal with who’d just lost their mom and stepmom, and on top of that, he’d never been my biggest fan. No matter how he felt about me, though, we were still family, we were both grieving an incomprehensible loss, and he was the only one I could talk to about that night on the Splendour.

  THE FUNERAL IS AS HAZY TO ME AS THAT TERRIBLE FIRST DAY.

  Ron Samuels and his wife, Lynda Carter, were kind enough to pick up Mom, Evan, Alan, and me and drive us to the chapel and cemetery in Westwood Village. We arrived very early, before the press and the crowds arrived, just as the funeral director was opening Natalie’s casket so that R. J. and the girls could see her one last time. I stayed away. I’d seen her full of life on Thanksgiving, impossibly only a week ago. I’d cling to that rather than get even a glimpse of my sister’s lifeless body.

  I could see the tears in R. J.’s eyes as he clung to his daughters, and my heart broke for all of them. Evan left me to go join her cousins. I held on to Mom, who was heavily medicated on her Valium prescription, and Alan held on to me as we took our seats in the front row of graveside chairs. Then the cemetery lawn began to fill with mourners, a sea of bowed heads and sunglasses, and I went into another semiconscious trance. People took turns speaking. There was Russian music that made me think of our dad and the beloved balalaika he’d sat alone and played every night after dinner. If he hadn’t already died, Natalie’s death would have killed him. They adored each other. A glance at Mom. She was staring off into space, her eyes dry and glassy. A glance at Evan, sitting with R. J., Katie, Natasha, and Courtney. R. J.’s face was red from crying. The girls sat very still, holding hands, looking haunted.

  I’d never seen or smelled so many flowers as there were around Natalie’s grave that day. I read later that Roddy McDowall, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Stefanie Powers were at the funeral, and the pallbearers included Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Laurence Olivier, and Gregory Peck—I hadn’t noticed any of them. Someone pointed out that Natalie Wood was being buried in the same cemetery as Marilyn Monroe. I remember thinking, “No, Marilyn Monroe is buried in the same cemetery as Natalie Wood.”

  Then we all went to R. J.’s house—that big, beautiful house Natalie loved and had taken such joy in decorating. Willie Mae had distracted herself from her grief by making enough food to feed the state of Michigan for a year. Suzanne Miller arrived to take care of Evan. I hugged and comforted my way through the crowd while Alan stood nearby, keeping an eye on me and taking care of me but giving me enough space to do whatever I needed to do. At one point Christopher Walken and I found ourselves face-to-face, discovered we had no idea what to say to each other, and kept moving.

  I noticed Mom at the bar, having some kind of intense exchange with Dennis Davern. They were sitting in the two chairs Natalie and I had sat in a million times when we were having our most serious, confidential conversations. I’d met Dennis at the house once or twice, but I’d never been invited on the yacht—it was easier on Natalie, who knew R. J. wouldn’t appreciate having me there and trusted me not to make an issue of it, which I never did. I found out later that Mom was tearing into Dennis, telling him that as far as she was concerned, it was his fault that Natalie was dead: he was in charge of that boat, and she’d trusted him to take care of her daughter. That poor man; he already loo
ked as if he’d been through more than enough.

  I hadn’t seen R. J. since we got to the house. Finally I took a deep breath, headed upstairs, and found him in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, his head down, distraught and seemingly all cried out for the time being.

  “R. J.?” I said quietly.

  He didn’t look up.

  “What happened? What the hell happened?”

  He raised his head and faced me. “It was an accident,” he said. “You’ve got to believe me. Please believe me.”

  “But how, R. J.? What does that mean? It was an accident, but how did it happen?”

  There were so many things I wanted to say: I believed him, but I needed to know how my sister died. I needed someone who had been there with her to tell me what had happened, and to walk me through how and why Natalie ended up in the water. Despite our differences, I felt the pressing need for R. J. to describe whatever he’d seen. With the media circus and all the rumors adding confusion to my grief, I just needed to hear the truth from someone I could trust.

  I was pleading with him when someone, I don’t know who, grabbed my arm and pulled me away with a stern, “Come back downstairs and leave him alone.”

  I looked at R. J. and then turned to go as he repeated, “Lana, please. Believe me.”

  I did, because I really wanted to. Because I trusted that when he could tell me more, he would.

  I had no idea my world was about to shatter again.

  2

  “Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t . . .”

  Three days later, the Monday after the funeral, I dropped Evan off at school and then headed on to the Warner Bros. office of Ron Samuels Productions, where I was his director of development.

  Ron was startled to see me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I work here.” I forced a weak smile and he gave me a look of sympathetic concern.

  “I’ve got to stay busy,” I told him. “Between the press and everyone I’ve ever met in my life, the phone’s ringing nonstop, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t even think . . . Not that I want to, because if I let myself think, I’ll start crying and never be able to stop . . . I just want her back, Ron.”

  He walked over, hugged me, and left the office. He was a good man, and I enjoyed working with him. I was associate producer on many TV movies he produced and on some Lynda Carter specials, and I worked hard to make sure he never regretted hiring me. We didn’t always have the same taste in projects. There was one script in particular he kept tossing on my desk that I kept turning down. He was sure it had potential. I was sure it didn’t. Finally he left it on my desk for about the eightieth time, with a note that read, “How can we fix this?” I returned it to him with no note, just a book of matches stapled to the cover page. But despite the “artistic differences” that ultimately caused us to amicably go our separate ways, I’ll always be grateful to him for making my transition from acting to development and production so much easier than it might have been otherwise.

  Even though some people might have thought it was “too soon,” being back at work was important to me in so many ways. Driving through a studio gate and walking into a production office felt more normal, safe, and familiar than being at home, a much-needed reminder that one essential part of my life was intact. I was still in “the business,” where I knew I could excel, where I knew I was welcome, where I fit in, where I belonged, where some of my most treasured childhood memories of Natalie and me together would always be waiting.

  I MADE MY ACTING DEBUT WHEN I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD, A SENIOR CITIZEN COMPARED to Natalie, who appeared in her first film when she was four. Mom kept me out of school one day, which wasn’t unusual for her—she thought school was a complete waste of time—and told me I was going to the studio for an audition, not for Natalie but for me, with some very, very important people, for a very, very important film. I wasn’t into it. I liked being at school with friends, playing, being a tomboy with a dirty face and scraped knees, while Natalie was expected to be perfect every minute of every day and always on a set somewhere making movies. But I never bothered to argue with Mom, and neither did Natalie. In the end, Mom was going to win anyway, right or wrong, so why waste the time and energy?

  The audition was for a film called The Searchers. All I knew when I dutifully followed her into an office at Warner Bros. was that Natalie had already been cast in the film to play a fifteen-year-old named Debbie Edwards, and Mom had persuaded the casting director that I was the obvious choice to play the younger Natalie/Debbie. She’d prepared me for this meeting by making sure I was bathed and wearing a clean dress. Other than that, I was clueless.

  My audition went like this:

  John Wayne and director John Ford were sitting there waiting for us. They introduced themselves. John Wayne seemed nice. Mom chatted with them while I sat there not saying a word. Then John Wayne walked over to me and picked me up to make sure he could do it easily with his bad back. He said, “Yup,” while he held me, gently lowered me into my chair again, and I had the job.

  And they say it’s a hard business to break into.

  The Searchers was set in the later 1800s and was about a Civil War veteran (John Wayne) on a mission to find his niece (me), who’d been abducted seven years earlier by the Comanches. By the time he found her, she’d grown up to be Natalie. My part was actually bigger than hers. I got to wear pioneer dresses, and the only time director John Ford, who notoriously hated children, ever spoke to me was to snap, “Can’t you bend over when you talk to the dog?” Thanks to Natalie, I’d grown up on movie sets, and I’d seen her do this all my life, so there was nothing to adjust to; it was familiar territory. Because I was a child, my scenes were the first to be shot every day, which meant Mom wasn’t there—she was with Natalie, whose scenes were shot later in the day and who was always outside sunbathing so she’d be tan and look appropriately “outdoorsy.” I didn’t mind a bit that Mom was nowhere to be seen. By the age of seven, I was used to it.

  Besides, I was surrounded by adults and felt perfectly safe and perfectly comfortable. John Wayne and I never really interacted offscreen, but he’d slip black currant pastilles from his pocket to me when he passed by. Ken Curtis would pick up twigs and whittle little animals for me. And Jeffrey Hunter could not have been lovelier and more attentive, sitting with me and talking to me and really listening to me, as if what I had to say mattered to him. I’ll never forget him for that.

  We spent some time on location in the Monument Valley desert, where John Ford and John Wayne had filmed Stagecoach years earlier. We got there by train and stayed at a former trading post that was now Monument Valley’s historic Goulding’s Lodge. I remember Mom and Natalie and I sitting silently in our dark room at night with the window open so we could hear the mystical sound of Indian chanting nearby.

  Turning on the water in the sink and waiting for the orange sand to wash through . . .

  An outdoor meal blasted apart by a sudden sandstorm . . .

  Panic on the set one day, with everyone yelling, “Get the kid out of here!” when Ward Bond was bitten by a scorpion . . .

  Yeah, we were in it for the glamour. But it was a great adventure for a little girl, and Natalie and I had the added bonus of being around John Wayne’s son Patrick and falling madly in love with him. The best moment, though, was at the premiere, when my big sister told me she was proud of me.

  I kept acting regularly until I was thirteen, when I hit a wall. I was loving the structure and predictability of school—not to mention the old friends, and crushes, and dances. No pressure about where to stand, how to look, how to say lines I’d worked hard to memorize, and then being bored for hours waiting to do my next scene. School felt right, and “mine,” like a much-needed place to land.

  I was in eighth grade, leaving the house one morning to walk to school, when Mom stopped me on my way out the door.

  “Be very careful today. Do not get messed up, do not spill anything on yourself, do not go to phys ed, and be ready when I pick you up immediately after school. You’re going on an interview for a big film.”