The sister of Natalie Wood alleges in an upcoming memoir that the actress was sexually assaulted by Kirk Douglas when she was a teenager.
“Little Sister,” written by Lana Wood, will be released Tuesday, Variety reported. Lana Wood writes that Douglas, who died in February 2020 at age 103, assaulted her sister in the summer of 1955 when she was 17, according to The Associated Press.
According to Lana Wood, 75, the assault occurred after she and her mother, Maria Zakharenko, dropped Natalie Wood off at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles to meet with Douglas, the AP reported.
In a memoir being released on Tuesday called “Little Sister,” Lana Wood, Natalie Wood’s sister, writes that Kirk Douglas sexually assaulted Natalie when she was a teenager. https://t.co/r9MJHgTjOf pic.twitter.com/NGoFWv577V
— Variety (@Variety) November 4, 2021
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko on July 20, 1938, died under mysterious conditions when she drowned in the Pacific Ocean on Nov. 29, 1981. Natalie Wood’s body was found off Catalina Island in California. Authorities initially ruled her death an accidental drowning, but since then, her husband at the time, Robert Wagner, has been called a person of interest in the case, according to the AP.
Michael Douglas, the son of Kirk Douglas, did not respond to Variety’s request for comment. Michael Douglas, told the AP in a statement through his publicist: “May they both rest in peace.”
“I remember that Natalie looked especially beautiful when Mom and I dropped her off that night at the Chateau Marmont entrance,” Lana Wood writes in “Little Sister,” alleging that the incident happened around the time Natalie Wood was filming “The Searchers.” The meeting had been arranged by their mother. According to Lana Wood, her mother believed that “many doors might be thrown open for her, with just a nod of his famous, handsome head on her behalf,” the AP reported.
“It seemed like a long time passed before Natalie got back into the car and woke me up when she slammed the door shut,” Lana Wood writes in her book. “She looked awful. She was very disheveled 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.”
Natalie & Lana Wood by Earl Leaf pic.twitter.com/1iXteAwJBd
— Catherine Vollaire (@c_vollaire) October 28, 2021
According to Lana Wood, Natalie Wood did not discuss what happened until both were adults, the AP reported. Natalie Wood, after describing being brought into Douglas’ suite, told her sister, “And, uh ... he hurt me, Lana.”
In the biography, “Natalie Wood: The Complete Biography,” which was reissued in March 2020, Suzanne Finstad wrote about the actress being raped, without naming her assailant, Variety reported. Finstad refers to the rapist as one of Wood’s “childhood idols, a powerful, married movie star more than 20 years older than she.”
Kirk Douglas, in his late 30s at the time of the alleged assault, was known for such films as “Spartacus,” “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” according to Brittanica.
The 2020 HBO documentary “Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind” was produced by Natasha Gregson Wagner, the oldest of Natalie Wood’s three daughters, Variety reported. The show was critical of Lana Wood, asserting that she has exploited her sister’s death with sensational allegations about Natalie Wood’s fatal boating accident.
Kirk Douglas received a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1991 and an honorary Academy Award in 1996, according to the website.
Douglas also received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981 and the Legion of Honor from France in 1985, according to the AP.
©2021 Cox Media Group