Madam, - I am a great admirer of Hugh Leonard and I would usually defer to him on the matter of Hollywood and its stars; but I think he is grossly unfair, not to say cruel, to Natalie Wood (Book Reviews, August 7th).
It is surely not true to say of Natalie Wood that she was a "lightweight" and certainly cruel to write "that nothing quite became her life like the leaving it".
Ms Wood was a star; and as David Thomson writes in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, "her work with Nicholas Ray and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, a masterpiece, was outstanding".
In 1961 she was a beautiful and touching Maria in West Side Story. One cannot imagine that film without her. - Yours, etc.,
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PATRICK O'BYRNE,
Shandon Crescent,
Dublin 7.