Natalie Wood Buried Pallbearers Funny Videos
To the soft strains of Russian balalaika music, a sobbing Robert Wagner bent and kissed the flower-covered casket of his wife, Natalie Wood, as she was buried today in the city she loved.
About 100 people gathered around the gravesite in the warm afternoon sunshine, bidding farewell to the actress who drowned over the weekend.
And yet throughout the day, new questions on the actress' death surfaced.
The Los Angeles Times reported that a Los Angeles woman who was on a boat in Isthmus Cove off Santa Catalina Island the night Wood drowned says she and a friend heard a woman repeatedly calling for help and believes the sound was clear enough for other people to also have heard it.
Marilyn Wayne, a stockbroker, said that last Saturday night "my friend woke me up on our boat around 11:45 and said, 'Do you hear a woman calling help?' I listened through the porthole and I could hear someone saying, 'Help me, somebody help me.' "
She said the cries for help stopped about 12:10 a.m. Clyde French of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Sunday that "something after midnight" Wood's husband, actor Robert Wagner, discovered that his wife was missing.
However, the precise time of Wood's disappearance from the Wagner boat, the Splendour, has never been established.
Wayne said she and her friend, who she would not identify, did not go to the woman's aid because they thought the woman might have been with people who were having a "loud party" on another boat, and added that she and her friend heard those people call out "We're coming to get you" several times.
She also said, "We mulled over, 'Should we interfere?' Boats are funny. People don't want you interfering on their boats. You never know what the reaction will be . . ."
Reuter news service reported that the manager of the Pavilion Lodge Hotel on the island, Paul Reynolds, said Wood spent Friday night there. "She looked as if she was feeling down, rather depressed," he said.
A desk clerk, who identified himself only as Rick, said Wood checked out of the hotel Saturday morning.
Earlier, Sheriff's homicide investigators had said they planned to re-interview Wagner and actor Christopher Walken, 38, after hedging on the coroner's comments that the two actors' "heated argument" prompted Wood to leave the Wagners' yacht Splendour about midnight for a dinghy ride.
The mourners at the funeral today included Wood's two daughters, Courtney, 7, and Natasha, 11, a daughter by a previous marriage.
The 43-year-old actress' body, contained in a white casket draped with white flowers, was interred at Westwood Memorial Park after a brief graveside ceremony with eulogies by actress Hope Lange, author Thomas Thompson and actor Roddy McDowell.
Honorary pallbearers included Laurence Olivier, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra.
"She found not only a way to put life into her art, but art into her life," McDowell said of the three-time Oscar nominee. "She has given us a slice of life and serenity."
After the eulogies, the pallbearers dropped flowers onto the casket, and Wagner -- the man she married, divorced and remarried -- began plucking flowers from it and distributing them to her daughters. At one point, he bent and kissed the casket.
Wagner had been under a doctor's care as he grieved over his wife's death that friends said he still seemed still unable to accept.
"I think it will take a little time before it hits him," said Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd, a family friend. "It's like he thinks someone made a horrible mistake and Wood will just come walking in the door anytime."
