Lana Wood

Her daughter Evan passed away from heart failure at age 42. [July 2017]

Attended the Motor City Comic Con in Novi, Michigan. [May 2009]

In July 2007, she was a guest at the Western Film Fair in Charlotte, North Carolina along with Betty Lynn, Jacqueline Scott, Lynn Borden, Joyce Meadows, Brett Halsey, Rick Lenz and Robert Dix.

Later years included behind-the-camera work as a producer, which included co-producing the ABC-TV special The Mystery of Natalie Wood (2004). She also had her own casting company at one point. After an extended absence, Lana was seen again on the screen into the millennium.

In the mid-'80s she appeared for a time on the daytime soap opera Capitol (1982) but made a decision to move away from the acting arena after this period.

Following the tragic drowning death of sister Natalie in 1981, Lana penned the controversial tell-all book "Natalie, A Memoir by Her Sister". What was meant as a candid, caring and cathartic expose on Lana's part was denounced by both critics and family alike as self-serving and hurtful.

Six marriages would come and go before 1980.

She later married producer Allan Balter after meeting him during the filming of Captain America (1979).

They produced her only child, daughter Evan, in 1974.

Following all this sexy publicity, Lana somehow nabbed an unexpected role in the Disney romp Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1972).

In April 1971, Lana posed for Playboy in an attempt to gain added exposure. It worked. A major career boost presented itself in the form of producer Albert R.

Broccoli (nicknamed "Cubby"), who caught the spread and offered her the role of Bondian femme fatale "Plenty O'Toole" in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) opposite Sean Connery.

Although she stayed fairly active throughout the next decade or so with such TV movies as Black Water Gold (1970), QB VII (1974) and Nightmare in Badham County (1976), and the films Grayeagle (1977) and Demon Rage (1982), her star began to diminish.

Marriages during the 1970s included a union with actor/co-star Richard Smedley, whom she met on the set of A Place Called Today (1972).

She and sister Natalie Wood have played the love interest of Richard Beymer: she as Karen opposite Richard's Dean in Scream Free! (1969) (aka Free Grass), and Natalie as Maria opposite Richard's Tony in West Side Story (1961).

Better yet was her 1966 breakthrough role as hash-slinging waitress "Sandy Webber" on the original prime-time soap opera smash Peyton Place (1964), which she played for two seasons. Unlike the glamorous and refined Natalie, Lana developed an earthier "bad girl" persona. Her character femmes bore typical hard-luck stories--tarnished girls from the wrong side of the tracks who were often more trouble than they were worth.

In 1965 she earned a contract at Twentieth Century-Fox and was cast in her first television series, The Long, Hot Summer (1965), playing the Southern belle role Lee Remick had played in the 1958 film (The Long, Hot Summer (1958)).

She kept her name alive on TV as well, making the guest rounds on The Wild Wild West (1965), Bonanza (1959), The Felony Squad (1966) and Laugh-In (1967).

Off-screen, she married Peyton Place (1964) co-star Steve Oliver, who played her abusive husband and jailbird "Lee Webber. " The marriage lasted approximately one month.

After Peyton Place (1964), Lana continued to exude sex appeal in such films as For Singles Only (1968) and Scream Free! (1969), a drug tale that reunited Natalie's West Side Story (1961) co-stars Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn.

She and her late sister Natalie Wood both had abortions. Lana had an abortion in 1963, by her own admission, and Natalie allegedly had an abortion in 1977, according to informed sources. Their mother Maria claimed to have had several abortions during the 1920s as well as a miscarriage in 1932.

Kildare (1961) and The Fugitive (1963), while continuing her minor appearances in such films as Marjorie Morningstar (1958) (again with Natalie), Five Finger Exercise (1962) and the The Girls on the Beach (1965).

Her first screen credit actually came with the John Ford classic The Searchers (1956) as a younger version of Natalie's character, and she was off and running.

In an effort to break away from her sister's looming shadow and find her own place in Hollywood, Lana set out to secure TV roles and did quite well on such popular programs as Days Of Wine & Roses - Cliff Robertson & Piper Laurie, "Playhouse 90" Original TV Version (1956), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Dr.

She made her "debut" as a baby in Natalie's "B" film Driftwood (1947) only to have her cute bit cut from the picture.

Provocative and ever the temptress in her prime, the dark-maned, gorgeous Lana Wood was born Svetlana Gurdin on March 1, 1946, in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of Nick Gurdin (née Nikolai Zacharenko) and Maria Gurdin (known by countless aliases, usually Mary Zudilova), émigrés of Ukrainian and Russian descent. Both her parents' families fled their Russian homeland following the Communist takeover and the couple met and married in San Francisco.

Young Natalia (renamed Natalie Wood, out of respect to director Sam Wood) became a child star in the late 1940s, with such classics as Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and younger sis Lana would inevitably be drawn into films as a result of Natalie's overwhelming success.

She and Natalie had a maternal-half sister, Olga Viripaeff (1928-2015), who was born in Harbin, China as Ovsanna Tatuloff. Olga lived her entire adulthood in northern California and was completely removed from the Hollywood scene.

Lana's more famous acting sister was christened Natalia eight years earlier and the eldest girl in the family was an Armenian half-sister named Olga Tatuloff, their mother's child from a 1920s marriage.