In the original dustsheet. Red binding with black title on the spine.

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In this moving memoir, Robert J. Wagner opens his heart to share the romances, the drama and the humor of an incredible life. Under the mentorship of stars like Spencer Tracy, he became a salaried actor in Hollywood’s studio system among other hot actors of the moment such as his friends Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis. Wagner began to appear in a number of films alongside the most beautiful starlets. As his career blossomed 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 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.

Despite his new found 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. 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.

Review: This is an above average movie auto-biography, written in collaboration with or is that by someone else. I felt that it read this as if it was written by two people, and told two tales. The first tale is of the good looking young movie star who is chased by women from an early age and beds some seriously well known names, Joan Crawford & Elizabeth Taylor to name but two. He easily found willing female companions being very good looking, moderately talented and of course bursting with youth. The parts related to the movie world read as if our star was sitting in a chair giving snippets to his ghost writer, and they don’t really flow – but if you are a movie buff you will enjoy the name dropping and dirty little secrets of the stars.

The second tale is a love story about his relationship with Nathalie Wood, these read as if written directly by Robert Wagner they are raw and emotional and nothing is left out. He recounts their romance and subsequent divorce, his intense jealousy all the time she was with other men, his feelings when he met her in hospital, new baby in arms fathered by someone else, her tragic death and his up and down emotional road to recovery and lastly his thoughts on old age. For me these were the best parts, they include his somewhat broken relationship with his father as well as his broken heart and I thought they were thoroughly honest, exposing his feelings and failings. It’s not great literature, it’s not groundbreaking but I read it cover to cover one day on the beach and for the emotional highs and lows, the fact he doesn’t take himself seriously at all, for the insight in the old world of movie glamour and, for all the colorful characters that spin around him, a good read for all movie buffs.

Robert John Wagner Jr. (born February 10, 1930) is an American actor of stage, screen, and television. He is known for starring in the television shows It Takes a Thief (1968–1970), Switch (1975–1978), and Hart to Hart (1979–1984). He later had a recurring role as Teddy Leopold in the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men (2007–2008) and made twelve guest appearances (2010–2019) as Anthony DiNozzo Sr. in the police procedural NCIS.

In films, Wagner is known for his role as Number 2 in the Austin Powers trilogy of films (1997, 1999, 2002), as well as for Prince Valiant (1954), A Kiss Before Dying (1956), The Pink Panther (1963), Harper (1966), The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Concorde … Airport ’79 (1979).