Free Natasha by Suzanne Finstad

a different version. In either case, Natasha had no say. Goetz simply walked up to her and declared, “From now on your name will be Natalie Wood.” “I hated it,” she said later. “It didn’t conjure up a pretty image.” “Couldn’t we make it Woods instead of Wood?” she suggested. “Then I could think of trees and forests.” “Don’t fret,” she would recall Goetz replying. “When you see ‘Natalie Wood’ up in lights, you’ll love it.” Maria (“Mary”) promptly signed an amendment authorizing “Natalie Wood” as her daughter’s professional name and screen credit, taking away Natasha’s identity at six. The Gurdins did not
legally
change their daughter’s name, probably because she was a minor. As she became famous as Natalie Wood, she would preserve her real name for legal purposes, remaining Natasha Gurdin all her life, the one vestige of the little girl she once was.
    Natasha’s hint of spirit concerning her name was the last time she would question an adult for seven years. Mud spent countless hours before
Tomorrow Is Forever
admonishing her to do anything Pichel orthe producers asked, to be polite to the adults, be on time, never forget her lines, and curtsy when introduced to a grown-up. Small wonder that as an adult actress, Natalie was once compared to a wind-up doll. Mud’s plan was to turn Natasha into the most cooperative child actress in town, so that her contract would be extended and studio heads, directors, and casting agents would want to hire her. “Be nice to the director,” Natalie recalled Mud saying, over and over. “Even when I’d disagree, I’d have to smile and be sweet, and listen.”
    Since Natasha did not know how to read, Olga and Mud read the script of
Tomorrow Is Forever
aloud to her, telling her which lines were hers. She memorized her part as the Austrian orphan by hearing her mother and sister read it, a process Natalie would recall as extremely difficult, since “I had to do it with a German accent and I had to learn a bit of German.” According to Olga, Natasha had no voice coach and learned the German phonetically, extraordinary for a six-year-old. Robert Blake, who befriended Natalie when they were child actors, estimated her IQ at 150 or 160, “Phi Beta Kappa smart.” Natasha quite possibly had a photographic memory, something Musia discovered reading the script to her. “She had unusual memory. She will memorize not only her part, but all who’s with her.” An early boyfriend, while acknowledging Natalie’s intellect, ascribed her childhood memorization of complete scripts to sheer terror. “That mother did something to her at night—she must have—in bed… getting her to remember all those lines as a kid.”
    Natasha approached playing a war orphan opposite Orson Welles much as she had appearing in the kindergarten play, as an exercise in make-believe. Just as she put white powder in her hair to transform into an old woman, the studio hairdresser bleached her Russian brown hair Austrian blond so she could become Margaret Ludwig—braiding it, ironically, into pigtails. “Acting to me was just like playing house or playing with dolls.” Olga or Mud explained to Natasha who the characters in the film were “in language I could understand,” and she “played pretend.” How Natasha
felt
about acting is less clear; sadly, even to her. “My feelings were largely submerged. I’d been told to act, and I simply acted without questioning,” she reflected in middle age, speculating, “something in me obviously wanted to act. When I was told to do so, I cooperated and enjoyed it.” Natalie’s analysis was probably correct, for as Pichel observed from his experience as a director, “If a child doesn’t want to act, you can’t make him.”
    Natasha’s first day on a movie set as “Natalie Wood” was March 30, 1945. Her first scene was with Orson Welles. She walked onto the International Pictures lot with her mother, wide-eyed,