From Russia with tragedy
QUESTION Was actress Natalie Wood a Russian speaker?
Natalie WOOD was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco in 1938 to emigre parents. Russian was their first language and was used in the home, where she was called Natasha.
Her mother, Maria Gurdin, was a White Russian who fled from Siberia to the Russian enclave of Harbin, China, following the Bolshevik Revolution.
legend has it that she visited a Chinese fortune teller who told her she’d have a child who ‘would be a great beauty, known throughout the world’, but also to ‘beware of dark water’.
Maria’s second husband was Nikolai Zakharenko, who left his home in the Siberian port of Vladivostok after the Bolshevik uprising. a former miner and sailor, he loved to play the balalaika — the traditional Russian stringed instrument — and drink vodka.
Starstruck Maria thrust four-year-old Natasha into the movies, telling her to hop onto the lap of director irving Pichel, who was shooting the film Happy land on location in Santa Rosa, California, where they were living.
this approach earned Natasha a walkon part in the film. When Pichel tried to warn Maria that the film business was no place for a young girl, Maria responded by moving the family to Hollywood.
Renamed Natalie Wood, her daughter’s rise to stardom was swift. Nicknamed One take Natalie, aged eight she excelled as the sceptical Susan Wood in Miracle On 34th Street.
Despite academy award nominations for Rebel Without a Cause, Splendour in the Grass and love With the Proper Stranger, her pressured childhood had taken its toll.
She spent a great deal of time in the therapist’s chair and at times relied on alcohol or prescription drugs.
Natalie’s death by drowning on a boating excursion off Catalina island, California, with her husband Robert Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken on thanksgiving weekend 1981, remains one of the great Hollywood mysteries.
Mark Dunning, Exeter, Devon.
QUESTION What is the origin of the phrase ‘Can’t hold a candle to’ meaning can’t compare to?
iN 1641, Sir edward Dering used a similar phrase in the Fower Cardinal-vertues Of a Carmelite Fryar: ‘though i be not worthy to hold the candle to aristotle.’
Before the advent of electric lighting, craftsmen would employ a child or unskilled worker as a candle holder so they could perform close work.
it became an insult to accuse apprentice craftsmen of being unable to hold the candle to, let alone do the work of, a real craftsmen.
A. P. Wilson, Margate, Kent.
QUESTION What were the first golf balls made of? How do they compare with today’s high-tech versions?
GOlF probably originated with shepherds passing their time on the hills by using their crooks to hit small objects such as pebbles and pine cones.
exactly when golf was refined and formalised can’t be determined, but it was played sufficiently for James ii, known as Fiery Face, to ban it in Scotland in 1457 because it was deemed a public nuisance and a waste of people’s time.
it was also being played on a Sunday, which may have caused greater offence.
Golf was legalised again in 1522 by his grandson, James iV, who appears to have been a keen golfer.
the first proper golf balls date from at least the 14th century and were made from beech wood, hand-turned on a lathe. examples can be seen in Scottish golfing museums. as a hand-crafted ball was expensive, golfers employed cheap labour known as forecaddies to stand along the fairway and spot where the ball landed so it wouldn’t get lost.
this is probably the origin of the term ‘fore’ as a shouted warning that a ball is flying towards someone.
in the 17th century, balls began to be made from leather pouches filled with feathers, known as featheries. Being much lighter than wood, this allowed the development of clubs with thinner, more flexible shafts, which increased the distance the ball could be hit.
the next development arrived in the middle of the 18th century with the importing of the rubbery sap of the Malaysian Sapodilla tree.
inventor Robert adams Patterson created a ball from this substance, known as a gutty, after the native name for the sap, getah-perca. it had the advantage that if it was damaged, the ball could be heated to soften and remould it.
an observant golfer noticed that a gutty ball with nicks and cuts flew further and straighter than a smooth sphere, because of the ability to apply spin to it.
Ball makers began to apply their own designer nicks and cuts, which led to the manufacture of balls covered with pimples and later dimples.
the next innovation was something of an accident. an american, Coburn Haskell, was visiting the BF Goodrich rubber factory. Passing the time while waiting for his friend Bertram Work, he started wrapping rubber bands together to create a ball.
Bouncing it, he observed the release of potential energy from the taut rubber bands made the ball bounce further than the simple kinetic energy applied in throwing it. the two friends created the technology that lies at the heart of all golf balls.
today, the golf ball market is worth £840 million a year.
No written records exist of how far early golf balls could travel. However, it is unlikely to have been more than 100 yards. thanks to the advances in ball and golf club technology, professional golfers can hit an average of 304 yards with a driver. the world record is 516 yards, held by 64-year-old american Mike austen, set in 1974.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton.
IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence. Visit mailplus.co.uk to hear the Answers To Correspondents podcast