When Kirk Douglas died in 2020, at age 103, it was Natalie Wood’s name that trended alongside his on Twitter. In 2018, Natalie’s younger sister, Lana, claimed on a podcast that 16-year-old Natalie had been raped by a “big star” at the Chateau Marmont hotel. Rumors linking Douglas to Natalie’s assault persisted, but her alleged abuser had gone unnamed—until now.
“I remember that Natalie looked especially beautiful when Mom and I dropped her off that night at the Chateau Marmont entrance,” Lana writes in her upcoming memoir, Little Sister: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood (out November 9), per the Associated Press. According to the news outlet, Lana claims that Douglas raped Natalie in the summer of 1955, around the time that both sisters were filming The Searchers.
Their mother, Maria Zakharenko, had reportedly scheduled Natalie’s meeting with Douglas, hoping that “many doors might be thrown open for her, with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf.” Lana, then about eight years old, remembers “it seemed like a long time passed before Natalie got back into the car and woke me up when she slammed the door shut.” She writes that Natalie “looked awful,” adding, “She was very disheveled and very upset, and she and Mom started urgently whispering to each other. I couldn’t really hear them or make out what they were saying. Something bad had apparently happened to my sister, but whatever it was, I was apparently too young to be told about it.”
According to Lana, she and Natalie never discussed what had happened until they were both adults. It was at that point that Natalie detailed her rape, telling her sister, “And, uh … he hurt me Lana.… It was like an out-of-body experience. I was terrified, I was confused.” According to Lana, her sister and mother had decided that it would tarnish Natalie’s Hollywood standing to publicly accuse Douglas. “Suck it up,” were Maria’s words of advice to her daughter, per Lana.
Douglas mentions Natalie in his 1988 memoir, The Ragman’s Son, detailing the night “a pretty little girl wearing a suede jacket hopped out” of a car and ran to him. “‘Oh, Mr. Douglas, would you please sign my jacket?’” he recalls her saying, per the AP. “As I obliged, the woman who was driving got out and introduced her. ‘This is my daughter. She’s in movies, too. Her name is Natalie Wood.’ That was the first time I met Natalie. I saw her many times afterward, before she died in that cruel accident.”
The mysterious death of Natalie Wood has plagued pop culture—and authorities—for four decades. In 1981, Natalie drowned off Catalina Island after going missing from the yacht she shared with her husband, Robert Wagner. Suspicions surrounding the circumstances of Natalie’s drowning cast doubt on the manner of her death, prompting the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to reopen its investigation in 2011. Natalie’s cause of death was later changed by the coroner to “drowning and other undetermined factors.” By 2018, Wagner was named a person of interest by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Lana herself has publicly questioned Wagner’s possible involvement. (Wagner has long denied any wrongdoing in his wife’s death.)
In the past, Lana has shielded Natalie’s secret from the world. Now that Douglas and Natalie have both died, she believes the time is now to share it. “With no one still around to protect, I’m sure she’ll forgive me for finally breaking that promise,” Lana writes. Kirk’s son, Michael Douglas, responded to the allegation in a statement to the AP: “May they both rest in peace.”
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