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A Life
Harper Entertainment
October 2008
On Sale: September 23, 2008
336 pages
ISBN: 0061373311
EAN: 9780061373312
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
He grew up in Bel Air next door to a golf course that
changed his life. As a young boy, he saw a foursome playing
one morning featuring none other than Fred Astaire, Clark
Gable, Randolph Scott, and Cary Grant. Seeing these giants
of the silver screen awed him and fueled his dreams of
becoming a movie star. Battling a revolving door of boarding
schools and a father who wanted him to forget Hollywood and
join the family business, sixteen-year-old Wagner started
like any naïve kid would—walking along Sunset Boulevard,
hoping that a producer or director would notice him. Under the mentorship of stars like Spencer Tracy, he
would become a salaried actor in Hollywood's studio system
among other hot actors of the moment such as his friends
Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis. Working with studio mogul
Darryl Zanuck, Wagner began to appear in a number of films
alongside the most beautiful starlets—but his first love was
Barbara Stanwyck, an actress twice his age. As his career
blossomed, and after he separated from Stanwyck, he met the
woman who would change his life forever, Natalie Wood. They
fell instantly and deeply in love and stayed together until
the stress of their careers—hers marching upward, his
inexplicably deflating—drove them to divorce. Trying to forget the pain, he made more movies and spent
his time in Europe with the likes of Steve McQueen, Sophia
Loren, Peter Sellers, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Liz
Taylor, and Joan Collins. He would meet and marry the
beautiful former model and actress Marion Marshall. Together
they had a daughter and made their way back to America,
where he found himself at the beginning of a new era in
Hollywood—the blossoming of television. Lew Wasserman and
later Aaron Spelling would work with Wagner as he produced
and starred in some of the most successful programs in
history. Despite his newfound success, his marriage to Marion fell
apart. He looked no further than Natalie Wood, for whom he
still pined. To the world's surprise, they fell in love all
over again, this time more deeply and with maturity. As she
settled into a domestic life, raising their own daughter,
Courtney, as well as their children from previous marriages,
Wagner became the sole provider, reaping the riches of
television success. Their life together was cut tragically
short, though, when Wood died after falling from their
yacht. For the first time, Wagner writes about that tremendously
painful time. After a serious bout with depression, he
finally resurfaced and eventually married Jill St. John, who
helped keep his family and his fractured heart together.
With color photographs and never-before-told stories,
this is a quintessentially American story of one of the
great sons of Hollywood.
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