As an actress, she’s always been a child wonder. Orson Welles remembers her vividly in her first major part, with him in Tomorrow Is Forever: “She was so good she was terrifying. I guess she was born a professional.” In her teens, when there was nothing better to do, she’d collect a bunch of young actors together to improvise scenes with her, which she immortalized on her tape recorder. On top of the world at twenty-three, she drew $250,000 for West Side Story, with more money promised from Warners.
She yearns to do more live TV, which her contract allows, as a prelude to Broadway. “The last five minutes before you start, while you’re waiting for the first cue, is like being poised on a roller coaster, before it swoops down. When it’s over, you feel you’ve really accomplished something.”
Off camera, she is a ninety-eight-pound kitten who gazes adoringly upward from her 5 feet 2 inches at the current man who takes her fancy. Warren Beatty jumped into that category when they worked together in Splendor in the Grass, and he dumped Joan Collins after two years of going steady. Joan turned down four pictures so she could stay with her ambling heartthrob. They’d talked about a wedding.
This very sexy member of the new male generation came to me to ask: “Do you think I should marry Joan?” He received a quizzical look. “If you can put that question, you know the answer.”
Warren isn’t alone among young actors of any generation in having an eye for the publicity mileage to be obtained from a newsy romance. As for Natalie, she wasn’t talking about marrying anybody, by her account. Like most young actresses, she can’t be taken seriously on the subject. Two months before she married Bob Wagner, she was saying much the same thing.
When she was seventeen, she had one concealed admirer who lost fifty pounds in weight while the torch burned him. Raymond Burr specialized in menace roles when they worked together in Cry in the Night. She was the screaming heroine, he was the kidnaper who had the audience chewing its fingernails down to the knuckle wondering whether he would kill her or rape her before the final fade-out.
I had Ray literally at my feet when I met him for the first time. I used to lunch most every day with Dema Harshbarger in the garden of Ivar House, a restaurant now demolished which used to stand around the corner from my office. One day a husky fellow was laying bricks in the patio where we were sitting, and we had to keep moving our chairs to make way for him.
I finally looked down and saw a handsome face and a very large body. “You don’t look to me like a bricklayer,” said I.
“I’m not; I’m an actor.”
“Then what are you doing this for?” If looks could kill, I wouldn’t be here, he was so mad. He quit his job that night and never laid another brick.