What is definitely known is that Wood retired for the evening. What happened next, aboard the yacht, has been a subject of continuing speculation and innuendo. They boarded Valiant at about 10 and motored back to Splendour.
After the group departed, Don Whiting, the restaurant’s manager, warned Kurt Craig, the harbormaster, to keep an eye out for their safety. Some of the restaurant’s staff thought the Wagner party was drinking rather heavily and later remembered volatile behavior on Wood’s part. They dined that evening at Doug’s Harbor Reef, the only restaurant on the cove. The following afternoon they sailed to Isthmus Cove, an isolated spot at the northern end of the island with a tiny community that caters to yachtsmen. They anchored off Avalon, the island’s main town, and went ashore for shopping and a few beers, leaving Davern behind. The Wagners, accompanied by Walken and Davern, had sailed to Catalina Island, 22 miles off the California coast, leaving around noon on Friday, November 27. Wood had invited the actor Christopher Walken, then 38, with whom she had been filming a science-fiction thriller called Brainstorm, to be her guest aboard Splendour over the Thanksgiving weekend. As both the Coroner’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department began to investigate, rumors and questions swirled in Hollywood: What had brought Wood, whose fear of deep water was legendary, to leave the yacht in the middle of a cold, starless night and board the dinghy?Īs the details of the weekend surfaced, the questions multiplied. “It’s hard to describe the horror of this thing,” said Fred Astaire, a family friend who had played the father of Wagner’s character from 1968 until 1970 in the popular television series It Takes a Thief.
The death of the 43-year-old actress stunned Hollywood.
Just to the south, Prince Valiant, the 13-foot inflatable dinghy belonging to Splendour, had washed up on the rocks, its ignition key switched to “off,” the gearshift in neutral, and the oars up in a locked position. Approximately six hours later, Wood’s body, clad in only a flannel nightgown, red down jacket, and blue wool socks, was found floating facedown in the Pacific about a mile away, 200 yards off Blue Cavern Point on Catalina Island. ‘This is the Splendour, needs help.” With those words, 51-year-old actor Robert Wagner and Dennis Davern, the captain of Splendour, sounded the alarm around 1:30 A.M., on November 29, 1981, that Wagner’s wife, Natalie Wood, had disappeared from the 60-foot yacht the couple owned. From the song “Avalon,” made popular by Al Jolson. I found my love in Avalon beside the bay, I left my love in Avalon and sail’d away.
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