Natalie Wood ‘was sexually assaulted by Kirk Douglas’
Tragic star’s sister makes shock claim in new memoir
FOR decades, it has been one of Hollywood’s darkest rumours: That a teenage Natalie Wood was sexually assaulted by a major star more than twice her age.
Now the late actress’s younger sister has claimed that her attacker was movie legend Kirk Douglas.
Lana Wood alleges that the incident happened in the summer of 1955 at the exclusive Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles, around the time Natalie was 16 and filming The Searchers and Douglas was in his late thirties.
The meeting had been arranged by their mother, Maria Zakharenko, who thought that ‘many doors might be thrown open for her, with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf’, Lana writes in her memoir Little Sister, due out next week.
‘I remember that Natalie looked especially beautiful when Mom and I dropped her off that night at the Chateau Marmont entrance,’ she says. ‘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 looked awful. She was very dishevelled 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, who was about eight at the time, Natalie did not discuss with her what happened until both were adults.
She said Natalie described going to Douglas’s suite before telling her: ‘And, uh ... he hurt me, Lana. It was like an out-of-body experience. I was terrified, I was confused.’
Lana, now 75, remembered her sister and their mother agreeing it would ruin Natalie’s career to publicly accuse him. Their mother’s advice was to ‘suck it up’.
Much of Lana’s book focuses on Natalie’s tragic death in 1981, when she apparently fell from a yacht. Authorities initially ruled it an accidental drowning, but that has changed after years of scrutiny and more witnesses emerging.
Wood’s husband at the time, actor Robert Wagner, has been called a person of interest and Lana is among those who hold him responsible for her death.
In her book, Lana recalls promising her sister not to discuss the assault by Douglas, but rumours were so prevalent that when he died in 2020 aged 103, Natalie’s name trended with his on Twitter. Lana writes: ‘With no one still around to protect, I’m sure she’ll forgive me for finally breaking that promise.’
Douglas’s son, actor Michael
Douglas, said in a statement: ‘May they both rest in peace.’
In his memoir The Ragman’s Son, published in 1988, Spartacus star Douglas writes briefly about Natalie Wood. He remembers driving home one night and stopping at a red light.
A ‘pretty little girl’ jumped out of the car in front and asked him to sign her jacket. ‘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.’
‘I was terrified, I was confused’