Natasha by Suzanne Finstad Read Free Book Online

herself look like her character, an old woman, saying later it helped her “get into the mood of the part.”
    That summer, as school let out, Maria Gurdin’s moment announced itself in the
Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “Movie Stars to Arrive in S.R. Today
,” read the June 13, 1943, headline. By serendipity—this time there could be no calculation on Maria’s part—Irving Pichel, a Harvard-educated stage actor turned director, happened to see
Shadow
of a Doubt
, concluding that Santa Rosa was the perfect backdrop for his next picture. The film was called
Happy Land
, a Capra-esque piece of Americana starring Don Ameche as a small-town pharmacist who realizes the value of his life through the loss of his son in World War II. The story came from a best-selling novel excerpted in the
Saturday Evening Post
. Fifty-two-year-old Pichel, known for his patriotic, anti-Nazi themes, had already cast a few Santa Rosans in bit roles in
Happy Land
, including Mayor E. A. Eymann, who was asked to play the mayor of the mythical Midwest town of Hartfield in a commencement scene. Mayor Eymann, the paper reported, was officially welcoming Pichel and actor Don Ameche, providing a schedule of the film crew’s locations around Santa Rosa, with the advisory that some of the scenes would “use upwards of 300 extras.” To Maria, the article was tantamount to a golden oracle.
    Natasha stood perfectly still the next morning as her mother brushed her curly hair, instructing her how to create attention so the
Happy Land
director would notice her, coaching her on what to say so he would like her, reminding her to curtsy—repeating hypnotically the incantation that Natasha would someday be the most famous actress in the world. Natasha took her mother’s prophecy to heart, concentrating while Mud braided her gold-tipped hair into pigtails, observing herself in the mirror as she metamorphosed into a tiny Russian replica of Edna May Wonacott.
    Mother and daughter walked downtown in search of the film’s director, determined to create the fairy tale that had serendipitously occurred for Edna May. They spotted the
Happy Land
crew near the courthouse, surrounded by curious spectators. Maria, holding on to Natasha, asked whoever walked by, “How does this work? Which one’s the director?” When actors in army uniform began to assemble for a parade scene, Maria thrust four-year-old Natasha into the lineup. As Natalie would later describe it, “My mother made me go march with the soldiers. I really didn’t want to do all this. I was kind of scared…. Mother, of course, wanted me to attract attention.”
    After a few days, Irving Pichel began to notice a “quaintly pretty little child” with an “absorbed expression” who kept following the
Happy Land
company from location to location, watching them closely. The toddler seemed to be leading the wandering crowd. Natasha made such an impression on the director, he mentioned the tiny Santa Rosa girlwith the “winsome smile” a few years later as a tragic example of children being pushed into movies.
    Pichel would have been chagrined to learn that what he observed was merely the prelude to Maria Gurdin’s plan to get Natasha a part in
Happy Land
. By the second week, when the film crew moved to the high school auditorium for the mayor’s scene, Maria had gleaned what she needed to know. “When she figured out that Irving Pichel was the director,” Natalie would later recall, “she said to me, ‘Natasha, go over there and sit on that man’s lap and sing him your songs.’ ” Pichel would remember the waif he had been feeling sorry for coming up to him one noon. “Mr. Pichel, can I be in the movies?” she asked plaintively. “You don’t want to be in the movies,” the grandfatherly-looking director advised. Natasha, unprepared for this reaction, reflected for a moment, according to Pichel. The moment was profound. If she had been capable of free will, Natasha’s response to Irving