when Natalie Wood drowned off Catalina Island under mysterious circumstances, the tabloids erupted in headlines that hinted at foul play.
The actress, husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken were aboard the Wagner yacht, Splendour, that November night.
After drinking and arguing for hours, Wood and Walken retired to their staterooms and Wagner remained topside with the pilot. Sometime later, Wagner went to the master stateroom to check on Wood and found she wasn't there. The dinghy, which had been tied beside the boat, was also missing.
Walken notified the authorities and a search began. The dinghy was soon discovered in a Catalina cove. Shortly before dawn, the body of the 43-year-old actress was found floating face down in open sea; her parka kept her afloat.
The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office decided that Wood had died accidentally, "possibly attempting to board the dinghy and had fallen into the water, striking her face." Still, the rumors continued: Was it murder?
"It was so tragic that she died that awful way," recalls writer Gavin Lambert, a Wood friend for 16 years and author of the just-published "Natalie Wood," a thorough, albeit partisan, account of her remarkable life.
Because she died amid a blizzard of tabloid headlines, the real Natalie Wood was lost, Lambert says. "Nobody remembered Natalie as a person or as an actress. What happened? Was she having an affair with Walken? That was one reason I decided to write a book about Natalie."
