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Natalie Wood becomes Maria

Broadcast Date: May 14, 1962

She's a jet-age Juliet in the mean streets of New York and the lead female in a highly successful Broadway musical. No wonder Natalie Wood was pleased to win the part of Maria in the 1961 movie West Side Story after an extensive talent search. But winning the "wonderful role" was easy compared with all the rehearsing she had to do before filming began. In this 1962 interview, Wood tells CBC Radio's Assignment about the challenges of becoming Maria.

Natalie Wood becomes Maria

• Natalie Wood was born in San Francisco in 1938. She was a child actor, starring in 1947's Miracle on 34th Street at age nine. In 1955 she played opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. She married fellow actor Robert Wagner, who was eight years older, in 1957; they split in 1961 but reunited in 1972.

• In 1961 she also starred in Splendour in the Grass and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was nominated again two years later for Love with a Proper Stranger.

• Wood continued to work through the 1960s and '70s. She had almost completed filming on her last movie, Brainstorm, in 1981, when she died in an accidental drowning.

Natalie Wood becomes Maria

Medium: Radio

Program: Assignment

Broadcast Date: May 14, 1962

Guest(s): Natalie Wood

Host: Maria Barrett, Bill McNeil
Interviewer: Dick Strout

Duration: 3:55

Movie poster: West Side Story, The Mirisch Corporation, Seven Arts Productions.

Last updated:
July 23, 2009