"After three husbands, it takes a lot of butter to get you back in the frying pan."
Rose (Rosalind Russell)
Natalie Wood was in a distinctly different phase of her career when she appeared in "Gypsy," which premiered on this day in 1962.
She began her career just shy of her fifth birthday and made more than 20 films as a child — including "Miracle on 34th Street."
But as Wood got older, she began transitioning into more mature roles in the 1950s and early 1960s — and her performance in "Gypsy" was, to say the least, mature.
Or, to be more specific, for mature audiences.
It didn't begin that way. It started innocently enough.
But the young girl who captured the nation's hearts in "Miracle on 34th Street" grew into a complex young woman, alternately enchanting, captivating and beguiling on the silver screen.
Sometimes she was all three. That was how it was in "Gypsy."
When the movie began, Wood played Rosalind Russell's supportive daughter. Russell was the epitome of a stage mother, but she wanted Wood's older sister (Ann Jillian) to be the star so, with the help of an agent (Karl Malden), she formed a Vaudeville act around the girls and took it on the road. That wasn't what Jillian wanted, though, and she eloped.
See, part of Russell's pitch was presenting her daughters as young girls. But, of course, no one stays young forever, and that illusion became harder and harder to maintain as the years went by.
Jillian just couldn't keep doing it and eloped with one of the dancers in the sisters' Vaudeville act, which left Wood — Russell's less talented daughter — and Russell poured everything she had into promoting her.
But there was a complication.
The rising popularity of movies with sound was causing a decline in the popularity of stage entertainment, and work was scarce. To make ends meet the act took a job at a burlesque house, in effect providing cover for the more unsavory activities that went on there.
One day one of the strippers was arrested for shoplifting, and Wood was more or less drafted to fill in for her. She didn't make much of an initial impression, but as she gained confidence in herself, the audience responded.
And a star was born.
Inevitably, though, Wood's stardom clashed with her mother's obsessive behavior. Something had to give.
The audience got to witness a remarkable transformation. The first time Wood was seen, she was about 13. Roughly 15 years passed by the end of the movie, and Wood had turned from a rather ordinary young girl into a self–assured and beautiful young woman.
I always thought she deserved an Oscar nomination, but "Gypsy" received no nominations for acting. It did, however, receive three Oscar nominations — ironically, given the subject matter, one of the nominations was for costume design.
