Natalie Wood

A Life

By: Gavin Lambert

Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld

From her starring roles as a skeptical child in the perennial classic Miracle on 34thStreet and a troubled adolescent in Rebel Without a Cause to mature roles in Splendor in the Grass and West Side Story, actress Natalie Wood transfixed the world with her hypnotic brown eyes. Yet behind the beautiful façade lurked a fragile, sparkling, generous, funny woman traumatized by her childhood and beset by personal demons. In this landmark biography, her close, personal friend Gavin Lambert sets out to tell her extraordinary story with the help of intimate interviews from her friends and colleagues, including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and her husband, Robert Wagner. What emerges is a luminous, assiduously researched portrait that sheds new light on the life and tragic death of the silver screen's most beguiling star.

©2006 AudioGO (P)2015 Blackstone Audiobooks

Bad narration and biography is too dry

I found the biography at times boring due to the monotonous way it is narrated. I found it too dry and at times choppy.

Story was choppy

Some of the facts and people were interesting but the book was put together using her diary, bites from movie clips, stories from people that gave interviews about her and previously published articles. Although quoted and credit given, the story jumps all over. It talks about her kids, relationships, movies and her life but not in any sequence that I could figure out. I have no idea how she died, but was told well before the end of the book. And the last Chapter seemed to be about one of her movies, but not her last movie, and just had really odd placement. I feel like this book could’ve been written in a less choppy and more sequential basis, to provide a better flow for the listener.

Best Natalie Wood biography

I learned the most from this biography over others. Well written, it was witty at times.

Sad Tale About a Beautiful Person

Very good detail. Good narration. She had so much going for her, it seems, then to be fighting pills, and dying the way she did. what a sad loss. Good book. Thanks

Emotional Rollercoaster

Natalie's life was an emotional rollercoaster. From her cold, self centered mother to the emptiness she was left with.