Inside Natalie Wood and Mart Crowley’s 20-Year Friendship
Natalie Wooden’s first style of fame got here as a toddler when she scored the lead function in 1947’s Miracle on thirty fourth Avenue. She would develop as much as develop into a three-time Academy Award-nominated actress, however her mysterious 1981 dying has develop into her lasting legacy. Pioneering homosexual author Mart Crowley would additionally entice worldwide fame…
Natalie Wooden’s first style of fame got here as a toddler when she scored the lead function in 1947’s Miracle on thirty fourth Avenue. She would develop as much as develop into a three-time Academy Award-nominated actress, however her mysterious 1981 dying has develop into her lasting legacy. Pioneering homosexual author Mart Crowley would additionally entice worldwide fame when his breakthrough and controversial play, The Boys within the Band, opened Off Broadway in 1968. However to one another, Wooden and Crowley have been merely simply the very best of buddies.
READ MORE: The Thriller Surrounding Natalie Wooden’s Dying
Wooden and Crowley met on the set of ‘Splendor within the Grass’
Edward Martino “Mart” Crowley was born on August 21, 1935, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After graduating with a level in theater from the Catholic College of America in Washington, D.C. in 1957, he quickly struck out for New York. The daughter of poor Russian immigrants, Wooden started her appearing profession at age 4 and was a number one Hollywood draw due to star turns in Insurgent With out a Trigger (1955) and The Searchers (1956). She married fellow actor Robert Wagner in 1957.
When Wooden and Crowley first met, she was desirous to be acknowledged as a critical actor and had pegged her hopes on the lead function within the 1961 Elia Kazan-directed melodrama, Splendor within the Grass. As a manufacturing assistant on the movie, a few of Crowley’s day by day duties included helping Wooden, usually accompanying her to the set. “Subsequently we talked an terrible lot,” Crowley says within the 2020 documentary Natalie Wooden: What Stays Behind. What started as a working relationship rapidly morphed right into a trusted friendship and confidences have been shared.
It was at the moment Wooden and Wagner’s marriage was in turmoil. A scenario Crowley was aware about because of his personal rising emotional attachment to Wooden. “It was clear to me there was hassle of their marriage,” Crowley stated. Wooden and Wagner divorced in 1961 amidst rumors of infidelity on Wooden’s half with Splendor co-star Warren Beatty. When Wooden was solid within the big-screen adaptation of West Aspect Story (1961), she employed Crowley as her private assistant, with the aspiring author rapidly turning into a part of Wooden’s inside circle.
Crowley caught by Wooden’s facet by robust instances
Although Crowley would stay buddies with each Wooden and Wagner, his deep attachment to Wooden was simple. Having grown up within the Hollywood film system, Wooden was cautious of opportunists, preferring to encompass herself with these few she actually trusted. In line with daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner in her memoir, Extra Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mom, Natalie Wooden, she “created a nucleus of individuals round her, together with loads of homosexual males and others who felt marginalized, and my reminiscence is that everybody was all the time speaking about their emotions and their feelings.”
Crowley was current the night time Wooden tried suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping drugs. Within the aftermath of her divorce from Wagner and the alleged affair with Beatty, a susceptible and lonely Wooden reached a breaking level throughout the 1964 filming of The Nice Race. “It was an overdose and a half. I imply God Almighty she was out,” Crowley tells Wooden’s daughter in What Stays Behind. “And I used to be advised after they pumped her abdomen they didn’t know whether or not she was going to drag by or not. However she did.”
Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Photos for Tony Awards Productions
Wooden inspired Crowley to put in writing ‘Boys within the Band’
Within the following years, Crowley’s profession faltered, with Wooden encouraging the author to provide authentic work, finally resulting in the creation of Boys within the Band. “Natalie did assist me out after I was writing the play,” Crowley advised Playbill. “And my profession, such because it had been as much as that time, had been nothing however sputtering failure. … So, I used to be type of dropped by brokers and given up for useless. My profession was going nowhere. I actually did not have any cash. I house-sat in Beverly Hills for a really rich pal, the actress Diana Lynn. I needed to do one thing with my time. So I wrote this play.”
Debuting Off Broadway in 1968, the play was hailed as groundbreaking because of its frank and lifelike portrayal of homosexual characters. It performed 1,000 performances and was a theatrical precursor to the historic protests at New York’s Stonewall Inn a yr later. In 1970 it was made right into a function movie whereas persevering with to play in theaters all over the world, and in 2018 was revived for Broadway with a solid that includes Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells and Zachary Quinto, all of whom reprised their roles for a 2020 Netflix-release movie model.
READ MORE: Inside Natalie Wooden and Robert Wagner’s Tumultuous Relationship
Crowley was virtually with Wooden the night time she mysteriously died
Crowley was current when Wooden met British movie producer Richard Gregson, whom she married in 1969. When Wooden gave delivery to daughter Natasha, it was Crowley who was chosen to be the kid’s godfather. Wooden and Gregson filed for divorce in 1971. Although Wooden’s profession acquired a lift due to her function within the 1969 movie comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and a Golden Globe-winning flip within the TV miniseries From Right here to Eternity (1979), she spent a lot of her thirties in semi-retirement.
Wooden and Wagner remarried in 1972, with Wooden telling Individuals that Wagner had now “develop into a person as a substitute of a boy.” A daughter, Courtney, was born in 1974. “Each of them have been besotted with one another,” Crowley stated to CBS News. “I imply they actually, actually liked one another. And I believe that explains the truth that after they bought divorced they went on to different companions and had youngsters, however these marriages didn’t work out and finally, they discovered one another once more and bought again collectively. … It’s simply tragedy the second marriage was ended the way in which it was, together with her dying.”
It was Thanksgiving 1981 when Wagner, together with Wooden and her then-Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, would take the household cruiser Splendour out to California’s Catalina Island. Crowley was invited to attend however had turned the invitation down. Wooden and Wagner reportedly argued on board, supposedly over the connection between them and their costars, with Wooden retiring to a cabin and Wagner unable to find her hours later.
Wooden’s physique was discovered the next morning floating within the water off Catalina, the Splendour’s dinghy close by. Her dying was dominated an unintentional drowning, but rumors circulated within the many years following about inconsistencies within the tales of these current and the precise circumstances of Wooden’s dying. Citing new proof, the reason for dying was modified from “unintentional” to “undetermined” in 2012 and Wagner confronted scrutiny as soon as extra over his function within the occasions of that night time.
“I believe it’s ridiculous,” replied Crowley when requested by The Advocate in regards to the reopening of the case some 30 years later. “It’s obscene to recommend that R.J. may have harmed her. There isn’t a human being on the face of the earth that he worshiped and adored greater than Natalie.” So satisfied, Crowley continued working straight with Wagner as a author and producer on the hit tv sequence Hart to Hart all through the early Eighties.
Shortly earlier than his dying in 2020 at age 84 from problems because of coronary heart surgical procedure, Crowley acquired the Tony Award for greatest revival of a play for Boys within the Band. “I believe that was the spotlight of his life,” life-long pal Wagner advised the New York Occasions upon his dying. Protecting the household shut, Crowley’s date to the Tony Awards that night was his goddaughter, Natasha.
