I can't wait to work with you again

Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis made three films together, i.e. the WWII drama Kings Go Forth (1958) and the two comedies Sex and the Single Girl (1964) and The Great Race (1965). Curtis later said that he and Wood became great friends and claimed in his autobiography American Prince (2008) that they were also romantically involved during production of The Great Race*. In her book Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, published several years prior to Curtis' book (in 2001), Suzanne Finstad said that the two actors were not on the best of terms while shooting their last film. According to Finstad's sources, Curtis' ex-wife Janet Leigh and producer Martin Jurow, Curtis and Wood had become "estranged" some time between the end of Sex and the Single Girl and the start of The Great Race. Jurow said that during the shoot of The Great Race Curtis' behaviour towards Wood was "very juvenile" ("like little boys in the playground pick on certain little girls ...") and at one point they even stopped speaking to each other. Wood biographer Gavin Lambert (Natalie Wood: A Life, 2004) never mentioned a friendship or estrangement between the two but stated that from their first film on Wood had found Curtis "agressively self-important".

*While Curtis liked to boast about his affairs with famous actresses, I'm always inclined to take his stories with a pinch of salt, especially when the women involved were no longer alive to confirm or deny his claims, like Natalie Wood or Marilyn Monroe.

Well, whatever the relationship between them, Wood wrote Curtis this sweet (undated) note after her first day at work on either Sex and the Single Girl or The Great Race. She thanked Curtis for his flowers and also told him that she was looking forward to working with him again. (Obviously I don't know whether she was being truthful or not.)

Source: Julien's Auctions

Transcript:

Dear Tony — 

Just wanted to thank you again for the marvelous flowers that greeted me on my first day. It was most thoughtful + made me feel so good most of the butterflies went away. Well almost. Anyway I can't wait to work with you again. You're terrific!

Love,

Natalie

Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis in The Great Race, a Warner Bros. film directed by Blake Edwards. Wood was emotionally fragile at the time, following her divorce from Robert Wagner and also because she was unhappy with her career. She hated her role in The Great Race and didn't want to do it. Studio boss Jack Warner asked Curtis if he would give a percentage of his film earnings to Wood to make her accept but Curtis refused ("I couldn't give her anything to make her want to do the movie"). Only after Warner had promised to cast Wood in Inside Daisy Clover (1965), a film she really wanted to do, she accepted the role.