Natalie Wood - Teen Stardom

Teen Stardom

In the 1953-1954 television season, Wood played Ann Morrison, the teenage daughter in the ABC situation comedy, The Pride of the Family, with Paul Hartman cast as her father, Albie Morrison; Fay Wray, as her mother, Catherine; and Robert Hyatt, as her brother, Junior Morrison.

Wood successfully made the transition from child star to ingenue at age 16 when she co-starred with James Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Nicholas Ray's film about teenage rebellion. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She followed this with a small but crucial role in John Ford's western The Searchers (1956), which starred John Wayne and also featured Wood's sister, Lana, who played a younger version of her character in the film's earlier scenes.

Wood graduated in 1956 from Van Nuys High School.

Signed to Warner Brothers, Wood was kept busy during the remainder of the decade in many 'girlfriend' roles that she found unsatisfying. The studio cast her in two films opposite Tab Hunter, hoping to turn the duo into a box office draw that never materialized. Among the other films made at this time were 1958's Kings Go Forth and Marjorie Morningstar. As Marjorie Morningstar, Wood played the role of a young Jewish girl in New York City who has to deal with the social and religious expectations of her family, as she tries to forge her own path and separate identity.

However, she had her detractors. The film critic Pauline Kael referred to her as "clever little Natalie Wood" the "most machine-tooled of Hollywood ingenues.