Twenty-eight years ago Natalie Wood drowned off the coast of Catalina when purportedly slipping off her yacht Splendour while trying to get into or trying to secure a dinghy after a fight with her husband Robert Wagner. After what the public presumed was a thorough investigation, the police have long closed the case after the LA coroner ruled it an accidental drowning. However, in the new book Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour, co-written by the ship’s skipper, new allegations are brought to life including shoddy police work leaving many unanswered questions.
The book has opened Natalie’s sister Fantasy FemmeLana Wood eyes to these claims and she has joined the authors in demanding that the case be reopened. Click here to read more.
In my book Film Fatales (co-written with Louis Paul) we profile German actress Eva Renzi who co-starred with Michael Caine in the second Harry Palmer spy film, Funeral in Berlin(1966), which was produced by Harry Saltzman, a co-producer of the James Bond movies. Eva won the role after actress Anjanette Comer withdrew just before filming began.
And in an odd twist, Renzi, based on her excellent performance in Funeral in Berlin, was offered one of the femme fatale roles in the Bond adventure You Only Live Twiceby Saltzman but she declined (Karin Dor got the part) commenting, “Bond pictures are good for pretty girls but not for actresses. I would rather sell shoes.” Perhaps that is what she is doing today in the netherworld. She passed away a few years ago.
Click below for an interesting look at the making of Funeral in Berlin:
Check out this really cool website called Technicolor of Sound. If features groovy psychedelic hits from the ’60s.
And for fans of French cinema, author Chuck Zigman has written the definitive book on the career of iconic French actor Jean Gabin entitled The World’s Coolest Movie Star. Click here to read more and to purchase your copy today.
If you came of age during the Sixties you may well remember the name Lada Edmund, Jr. who was one of the original gyrating, mini-skirted go-go girls who danced in a cage on NBC-TV’s music program, Hullabaloo 1965-66. Similar to ABC’s Shindig, Hullabaloo featured a different celebrity host each week to introduce some of the most popular musical performers of the day. However, the show received most of its press not for the rock groups or vocalists that guest starred but for Lada and fellow dancers who bumped, grinded and twisted their way into the homes of teenagers every week. So popular was she that she landed on the cover of TV Guide magazine.
Before she found small screen fame, Lada began her career dancing on Broadway. She was one of the original dancers in the 1960 Tony Award winning musical Bye Bye Birdie with Dick Van Dyke, Chita Rivera and Paul Lynde. When rock star Conrad Birdie is drafted, his agent randomly selects high schooler Kim MacAfee from Sweet Apple, Ohio for Conrad to give his final goodbye kiss to on The Ed Sullivan Show before he goes off to the military. Lada played Penelope Ann one of Kim’s friends and one of the many hysterical fans of the singing idol. With the first Broadway revival of Bye Bye Birdie starring John Stamos and Gina Gershon scheduled to open in October, Lada has been invited to return to Sweet Apple, Ohio as a special guest and will be visiting backstage soon.
Besides dancing on stage (including productions of West Side Story and Promises, Promises) and TV, Lada shimmied across the big screen as a surf loving sorority girl in the beach flick For Those Who Think Young (1964) with James Darren, Pamela Tiffin and Nancy Sinatra
. She then went dramatic in the moonshine movie The Devil’s 8 (1968) and the coming-of-age drama Out of It (1969) starring Jon Voight in his film debut though released after he found fame in Midnight Cowboy.
During the Seventies, she became a stuntwoman in Hollywood and performed death defying feats in films including Smokey and the Bandit (1977) starring Burt Reynolds, and classic TV shows such as Charlie’s Angels and Starsky and Hutch.
Out of the spotlight for years working as a personal trainer in New Jersey (I tried to locate her for my Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood book without any luck), Lada (now known as Lada St. Edmund) has re-surfaced and has launched a comeback. She is available for interviews through her publicist Walter Newkirk at newkirkpr@aol.com.
Click here to read columnist Peter Filichia’s recent interview with Lada on theatermania.com.
