Natasha, Finstad, Suzanne

We watched her mature on the movie screen before our eyes--in Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass, and on and on. She has been hailed--along with Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor--as one of the top three female movie stars in the history of film, making her a legend in her own lifetime and beyond. But the story of what Natalie endured, of what her life was like when the doors of the soundstages closed, has long been obscured.

Natasha is based on years of exhaustive research into Natalies turbulent life and mysterious drowning. Author Suzanne Finstad conducted nearly four hundred interviews with Natalies family, close friends, legendary costars, lovers, film crews, and virtually everyone connected with the investigation of her strange death.

Through these firsthand accounts from many who have never spoken publicly before, Finstad has reconstructed a life of emotional abuse and exploitation, of almost unprecedented fame, great loneliness, poignancy, and loss. She sheds an unwavering light on Natalies complex relationships with James Dean, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Raymond Burr, Warren Beatty, and Robert Wagner and reveals the two lost loves of Natalies life, whom her controlling mother prevented her from marrying.