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It’s been one of Hollywood’s darkest rumors for decades: A teenage girl Natalie Wood was sexually assaulted by a movie star twice her age when she met him in a Los Angeles hotel.
In a memoir due out next week, Wood’s younger sister identifies the long-suspected attacker: Kirk Douglas.
“I remember Natalie looking particularly beautiful when Mom and I dropped her off at the entrance to Chateau Marmont that night,” Lana Wood writes in Little Sister, claiming the incident occurred in the summer of 1955, around that time when Natalie Wood was filming “The Seekers”. The meeting was arranged by her mother, Maria Zakharenko, who thought “many doors could be opened for her with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf,” said Lana Wood.
“It seemed to be a long time before Natalie got back in the car and woke me when she slammed the door,” she writes. “She looked terrible. She was very disheveled and very upset, and she and mom began to whisper urgently. I couldn’t really hear or understand what they were saying. Obviously something bad had happened to my sister, but what too always it was, I was apparently too young to be informed about it. “
According to Lana Wood, Natalie Wood didn’t speak to her, which happened until they were both adults, and Natalie, after describing being taken to Douglas’ suite, told her sister, “And, uh … he hurt me , Lana. “
“It was like an out of body experience. I was scared, I was confused, “Lana Wood recalls her testimony. Lana, now 75 and about 8 when the alleged incident occurred, remembered her sister and mother agreeing that it would ruin Natalie’s career to publicly accuse him.
“Suck it up” was Maria’s advice, according to Little Sister, much of which focuses on Natalie Wood’s death in 1981 when her body was found off Catalina Island, California. Authorities initially ruled the death was an accidental drowning, but after years of scrutiny and further testimony, Wood’s then-husband Robert Wagner changed as a person of interest and Lana Wood is among those who hold him responsible for her death.
In her book, she recalls that she had promised her sister not to talk about her being attacked by Douglas, but rumors were so widespread that Natalie Wood’s name when he died in 2020 at the age of 103 was along with his was trending on Twitter. Lana Wood, whose own acting roles include “The Searchers” and the TV series “Peyton Place,” believes enough has changed since she spoke with Natalie that she can now tell the full story.
“With no one around to protect, she will surely forgive me for finally breaking that promise,” she wrote.
Douglas’ son, actor Michael Douglas, said in a statement issued by his publicist: “May you both rest in peace.”
Kirk Douglas, in his late 30s at the time of the alleged attack, was known for films such as “Spartacus”, “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “Gunfight at the OK Corral”. He was also one of the first great actors to start his own production company and a prominent liberal activist widely credited for helping break the Cold War blacklist against alleged communists when he hired Dalton Trumbo, to write “Spartacus,” listing his name for the 1960 publication. Douglas and his second wife Anne donated millions of dollars through the Douglas Foundation, which they co-founded in 1964, to “help those who might otherwise not be themselves.” could help ”.
NBCLA reports on the investigation into Natalie Wood’s death. Originally aired on November 1981.
Douglas received the President’s Medal of Freedom in 1981 and the French Legion of Honor in 1985. In 1996 he received an honorary Oscar when the film academy praised him as a “creative and moral force”.
Douglas himself admitted that he was a womanizer and an unfaithful husband. Speaking to The Associated Press about Douglas in December 2016, less than a year before the #MeToo movement took off, actress and dancer Neile Adams said lightheartedly of her boyfriend, “You couldn’t sit next to him without his hand your leg crawls up. ”
In his 1988 memoir “The Ragman’s Son”, Douglas wrote briefly about Natalie Wood. He remembers driving home one night and stopping at a red light. The door of the car in front of him opened and “a pretty little girl in a suede jacket hopped out” and ran towards him.
“‘Oh, Mr. Douglas, would you sign my jacket, please?'” He remembers how she said. “As I oblige, the driver got out and introduced her. ‘This is my daughter. She can also be seen in films. Her name is Natalie Wood. ‘ That was the first time I met Natalie. I saw her many times after that before she died in this gruesome accident. “
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