Natalie Wood’s death remains a mystery

Are all children of famous parents told they must have a book in them? Since Allegra Huston’s wonderful memoir Love Child in 2009, standards have been slipping. More Than Love is by a minor actress whose only claim to fame is that she is the daughter of Natalie Wood and won’t ever let you forget it.

The book begins with Natasha Gregson Wagner waking up on 29 November 1981 and hearing a voice on the radio saying that Natalie Wood’s body had been found in the sea off Catalina Island. Suddenly the house was full of people and there were mobs of cameramen outside. Robert Wagner (who she always calls Daddy, though he was not her father) came home and told her and her half-sister Courtney that their mother had died but that he was there for them always. Then he took himself to bed, where he stayed for a week. When he finally emerged, he went off to film another series of Hart to Hart and came back with a new girlfriend, the actor Jill St John, whom he would eventually marry.

Natasha was 11 at the time, and had not been on the boat, so she only knew what Wagner told her. He, Wood and a friend, the actor Christopher Walken, had sailed over to Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California, on their boat Splendor (named after Wood’s best film, Splendor in the Grass). They anchored and stayed up late drinking. Eventually Natalie said she was going to bed, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive. The inquest concluded that she probably went down the yacht steps to tie up the dinghy and somehow fell into the water. The verdict was accidental death.