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Wood had commanded so little respect during WEST SIDE STORY that on the first day, according to Bill Davidson’s Saturday Evening Post story (April 7, 1962), she walked in with an entourage an hour late, ordered people around and demanded Bette Davis’ old dressing room. In a Time interview (Sept. 22, 1961) Wood admitted her career troubles, “I’ve done lots of lousy films, but I hoped they would be good. Now I’ve done two pictures I know are good, and it’s affected my whole life. For the first time I come home after work tired but exhilarated, instead of tired and depressed.”

At this time, Hollywood was shocked by her private life. She was seeing her SPLENDOR co-star Warren Beatty and Wagner began seeing Beatty’s fiancée, Joan Collins. One day, Wagner asked Wood to help him give the wrap-up party for SAIL A CROOKED SHIP. She stopped by with Beatty, left with him to go to a Jane Fonda set and later that night, the foursome had an argument in a Hollywood restaurant and the Wagners separated. Wise gave her a week off from WEST SIDE STORY to patch up her life and she moved into a Bel Air apartment. The Wagners were divorced in 1962.

Kazan had been impressed by Natalie’s talents but he was upset a year after they worked together to find that she had lapsed back into her old habits: the makeup and circus outfits. Wood was nominated to the Ten Worst Dressed Women List.

However, at this time, Wood developed to a fine point her business instincts and founded Rona, a company which invested in real estate and which would produce movie properties. A photo in Life of December 20, 1963 which examined the Hollywood colony shows her demurely but fastidiously groomed surrounded by a heavyweight contingent of agents, lawyers and public relations people. She frankly considered herself her own best friend. Around this time, Wood also stated that, “You get tough in this business until you get big enough to hire people to get tough for you.”

She made a success of GYPSY (1962), even though Wood received indifferent notices and Harvard Lampoon gave her the Roscoe Award for her “atrocious performance in GYPSY, which she did her utmost to ruin.” Gypsy Rose Lee approved of her portrayal by Wood and liked the innocent way she performed the striptease.

Wood’s next, LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER (1963), was a charming love story set among the lower East Side Italian-Americans of New York City. Pregnant by a jazz trumpeter (Steve McQueen) who doesn’t remember her, she gave a feisty performance as the Macy’s salesgirl, first seeking an abortion, then deciding to have the baby. Everyone, Edie Adams, Herschel Bernardi, Tom Bosley, Nina Varela, was natural and superb as “ordinary” people. Wood gave her first real comedy performance and was nominated for the last time for the Best Actress Oscar, which was won by Patricia Neal for HUD.

Wood was ideal for Hollywood filmmaking in the 1960’s, which was producing provocative material and not sure of public acceptance. Her innocent, appealing manner and beauty always neutralized any salaciousness. A Hollywood executive in Life stated that Wood was the most extraordinary actress since Taylor and she did it without scandal. Rather, she was America’s daughter; she had played a stripper, an abortion-seeking woman, a sexually frustrated teenager without offending anyone because she looked too innocent to know what she was doing. Oddly enough, she never made the top ten exhibitor’s list, but she was named “world-film favorite female” for 1965 by the Golden Globes.

Then she made her mistakes. Her next, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL (1964), though based on the highly successful bestseller by Helen Gurley Brown, was arch Hollywood trash which degraded all who were in it. As a sexologist (who is virginal), she is pursued in a “Pamela-like” chase by a smut magazine editor (Tony Curtis) who wants to discredit her. Nevertheless, it made money. It was Wood’s last hit for five years, and is forgotten today. Would you believe Joseph Heller wrote it?

THE GREAT RACE (1965) paired her again with Tony Curtis and was directed by Blake Edwards, the golden boy at that moment because of THE PINK PANTHER. It was a flop. Overdone to the point of exhaustion, with vaudeville acts and pie fights interspersed between the turn-of-the-century car race, it suffered in competition that year with THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. Wood’s role of the suffragette-reporter was insincerely done and exhibited the mechanical smirking comedy technique which had ruined SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL.

INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (1965) fully revealed why it took Wood so many years to become accepted as an adult performer. In this film, Wood plays a Garland-type teenage performer of the 30’s who is the studio’s hottest property. This film inspired Pauline Kael’s famous analysis: “Natalie Wood’s way of being teenage is to act like Tom Sawyer; her way of being a movie star is brassy, mechanical, with wind-up emotions.”

PENELOPE (1966) was an unfortunate attempt to play comedy in the corniest way. Wood plays a kleptomaniac who decides to rob her husband’s bank. Typical of many mid-60’s Hollywood comedies it is super-TV, overdone “stuff.” Her return to serious drama, the film version of Tennessee Williams’ THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED (1966) was phony. As a backwoods babe, she was too far away from her basic glamour-loving self to be convincing. That year she got her revenge on the Harvard Lampoon by acknowledging it. She showed up to collect her worst actress award and the shocked but ready group presented her with a living “Oscar:” a 220 lb. man in gold lame. They named the award after Wood, a tradition which has held to this day.

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