Now, The Huffington Post quoting something – “a sex secret” – found in The National Enquirer? And, to boot, under the heading “Natalie Wood Death: An Alleged Affair With Christopher Walken Is Revealed.” That’s pretty low.
Rumors of an affair between Wood and Walken, the two stars of visual effects master/director Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm, have been floating around since the early 1980s. Other rumors have Walken dating Robert Wagner, Wood’s husband. Others yet have a WWW triangle: Wood, Walken, and Wagner all rolled up as one.
Although anything could have happened, it makes little sense that various people – including one with a book out – would finally be revealing the truth in 2011 about a death that took place exactly thirty years ago. Why didn’t all those revelations – from love triangles to death threats and desperate cries in the middle of the night – come out back in 1988? 1996? 2007? (If any came out back in 1981, they surely weren’t taken seriously.)
This reminds me of another death that allegedly was the result of foul play on another November boat trip, this one back in 1924. That’s when film producer Thomas H. Ince was taken ill while aboard publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst’s yacht. Ince died on Nov. 19.
The yellow press claimed that Ince had died after being shot by Hearst because of an alleged affair with Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies. According to other such tales, Hearst had actually aimed his gun at Charles Chaplin after catching The Little Tramp in an NC-17 situation: Chaplin was either on top of Davies or topped by her – I forget the exact positions. Those stories have been debunked elsewhere, though many have chosen to believe the sensational lies. Chances are that’s what’s going to happen in Natalie Wood’s case as well.
A beautiful (the older she got, the more striking she became) and at times a quite capable actress, Wood was nominated for three Academy Awards: as Best Supporting Actress for Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), with James Dean and Sal Mineo; and as Best Actress for Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass (1961), losing her sanity after being rejected by rich boy Warren Beatty, and Robert Mulligan’s Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), unmarried, pregnant, and loved by Steve McQueen. Wood’s best performance, however, was in Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), as the female half of one of the film’s two swinging couples (Robert Culp, Dyan Cannon, and Elliott Gould were the other partiers).
Elizabeth Taylor diamond ring & jewelry collection fetch exorbitant amounts; Richard Burton was a long-ago “benefactor.” In addition to being wife and husband a couple of times, Taylor and Burton were also costars in ten big-screen features and one TV movie. On the big screen: Cleopatra, The V.I.P.s, The Sandpiper, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedians, Doctor Faustus, Boom!, Under Milk Wood, and Hammersmith Is Out. On the small screen: Divorce His, Divorce Hers. Additionally, Elizabeth Taylor has a cameo in the Richard Burton star vehicle Anne of the Thousand Days.
Elizabeth Taylor diamond ring and other pieces of jewelry break auction record
Two-time Best Actress Oscar winner Elizabeth Taylor (BUtterfield 8, 1960; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966), who died of congestive heart failure at age 79 on March 23 in Los Angeles, was known for wearing diamonds the size of icebergs.
Unsurprisingly, the Elizabeth Taylor jewelry collection – including her notorious North Pole-sized diamond ring – fetched a record-setting $115 million this past Dec. 13 at Christie’s in New York City.
Multi-carat diamond ring & Michael Jackson gift
For starters, the 33.19-carat diamond ring given her by two-time husband Richard Burton (Taylor and Burton were married and divorced twice) fetched $8.81 million.
Another trinket Taylor received from Burton – a pearl, diamond, and ruby necklace known as “La Peregrina” – went for $11.84 million. That’s a world record, as per an Associated Press report.
Also at the Elizabeth Taylor jewelry auction was a diamond bracelet Michael Jackson bought his actress-friend: it sold for $194,500.
An unspecified percentage of the proceeds from the auction will reportedly go to The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, established in 1991.
Reflections in a Golden Eye with Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Forster. Adapted by Gladys Hill and Chapman Mortimer from Carson McCullers’ 1941 novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) is likely the most bizarre movie in John Huston’s 46-year directorial career. Set at a U.S. army post in the American South in the mid-20th century, the psychological drama features Marlon Brando as a gay and impotent army major, Elizabeth Taylor as his sexually dissatisfied wife with a deep attachment to her stallion horse, Robert Forster as her stalker, Brian Keith as her lover, Julie Harris as his emotionally unbalanced wife, and Zorro David as the couple’s flaming houseboy.
5 Best Actress Oscar nominations
The London-born Elizabeth Taylor (on Feb. 27, 1932) was nominated for a total of five Best Actress Academy Awards. Her win for Daniel Mann’s BUtterfield 8 came on the heels of a tracheotomy; her win for Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? came on the heels of some first-rate acting.
Her other three (consecutive) ominations were for Edward Dmytryk’s Raintree County (1957), Richard Brooks’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).
On the big screen, Taylor was active from 1942 (There’s One Born Every Minute) to 1980 (The Mirror Crack’d). There would be two comebacks: Franco Zeffirelli’s Young Toscanini (1988), as one-time opera singer Nadina Bulichoff, and a cameo as Pearl Slaghoople in Brian Levant’s The Flintstones (1994).
In her 2002 memoir My Love Affair with Jewelry, Taylor wrote, “I never, never thought of my jewelry as trophies … When I die and they go off to auction I hope whoever buys them gives them a really good home.”
Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane Oscar statuette auction to proceed despite previous Academy lawsuit. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, at the 1942 ceremony Welles’ masterpiece – considered by many the greatest movie ever made – won one single Oscar statuette: Best Original Screenplay for Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. The top winner that year was John Ford’s family/labor relations drama How Green Was My Valley. Starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, and Roddy McDowall, How Green Was My Valley took home five Oscar statuettes, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp).
Orson Welles’ ‘Citizen Kane’ Oscar statuette to be auctioned following convoluted history
This December 2012, Elizabeth Taylor’s jewelry collection has just fetched a record-setting $115 million. Chances are Orson Welles’ Academy Award for his 1941 classic Citizen Kane won’t be sold for even one hundredth of that amount next Dec. 20.
Even so, Welles’ little golden, sword-holding bald man is bound to earn its anonymous seller much more than the $1 price tag the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences imposes on all post-1950 Oscar statuettes.
Cinematic masterpiece
Considered one of the masterworks of world cinema, Citizen Kane lost the Best Picture Oscar of 1941 to John Ford’s family/labor relations drama How Green Was My Valley.
Director Orson Welles also lost the Oscar to Ford – who by then already had two Best Director statuettes at home (The Informer, 1935; The Grapes of Wrath, 1940) – while actor Orson Welles lost to Gary Cooper for his performance as the aw-shucksy title character in Howard Hawks’ juvenile and wildly popular World War I drama Sergeant York.
On the positive side, screenwriter Orson Welles and collaborator Herman J. Mankiewicz (brother of All About Eve writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz) did take home the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. That turned out to be the only Citizen Kane win out of nine nominations.
Complex Oscar statuette history
On his website, auctioneer Nate D. Sanders provides a brief history of Welles’ Oscar statuette:
The movie’s legacy of on and offscreen drama has beset even the award itself; for years [Orson Welles’ statuette] had gone missing and the Academy issued a replacement to Beatrice Welles, Orson’s youngest daughter and sole heir. The original had all along been in the possession of cinematographer Gary Graver [Welles’ collaborator on The Other Side of the Wind, Bikini Traffic School, Hidden Beauties, and Hotel Exotica], who tried to sell it in 1994. Beatrice learned of her father’s treasure resurfacing and filed suit in California, stopping the sale, and returning this precious piece to the Welles family, who displayed it at the 75th Academy Awards in 2003.
That same year, Beatrice Welles tried to sell “her father’s treasure” at a Christie’s auction in New York City, but she was sued by the Academy, which wanted the right to buy the statuette for that pesky $1.
Welles, however, ended up retaining the right to sell the Oscar, proceeding to do so to the Dax Foundation, a California nonprofit whose stated mission is to help humans and their fellow animals.
Unsuccessful auction attempt
Later on, a 2007 attempt to auction off Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane Oscar was unsuccessful, but Hollywood-related auctions – e.g., Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels, Debbie Reynolds’ movie memorabilia collection – have fetched quite a bit of money in recent months.
And let’s not forget that twelve years ago Michael Jackson bought the Best Picture Oscar for Gone with the Wind for $1.54 million.
Also on his site, Sanders asserts that “complete chain of ownership will be provided to the winning bidder.” The Academy, for its part, has remained mum about the whole matter.
Dec. 21 update: Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane Oscar was sold for $861,542.
notes
Elizabeth Taylor Sweet Bird of Youth image: NBC.
*last modified in July 2025.