The shimmering lights of a Palm Springs tribute dinner were supposed to illuminate a career of glamour, Bond girls, and Hollywood reinvention. Instead, they became the backdrop for a decades-old feud to explode in public, as Lana Wood, the sister of the late screen icon Natalie Wood, crashed the event honoring Jill St. John.
The year was 2016, and the air was thick with the kind of unresolved grief that turns into a vendetta. Lana wasn’t there to celebrate; she was there to accuse, turning a night of accolades into a spectacle of raw, familial fury that no one in attendance would ever forget.
The target of her wrath was not just the honoree, but the man seated beside her: Robert Wagner, the man who had been married to Natalie at the time of her tragic death in 1981. For decades, whispers had followed Wagner, but Lana’s public outburst at the event dedicated to St. John brought those whispers to a deafening roar.
She stood before the cameras and the stunned crowd, demanding accountability for her sister’s drowning, using Jill’s spotlight as a weapon against the couple. It was a moment that crystallized the strange, tangled web of love, loss, and rivalry that has defined the lives of these Hollywood legends for over half a century.
To understand the venom of that night, one must rewind to the beginning of Jill St. John’s story, a tale that started far from the scandal sheets. Born Jill Arlene Oppenheim on August 19, 1940, she was not a typical child star in the making.
While other girls played with dolls, young Jill was fascinated by the mechanical clatter of a cash register, a precocious sign of the sharp business acumen that would later define her. Yet, she also possessed an artistic soul, excelling at her local dance school. It was there, in those formative years, that she crossed paths with two other ambitious young women who would become inextricably linked to her destiny: Natalie Wood and Stefanie Powers.
The three girls shared dreams of stardom, but their futures would collide in ways none of them could have predicted, all revolving around one magnetic man. Before that fateful intersection, however, Jill had to build her career. She was a working actress from a tender age, landing the role of Missy Cratchit in a live television broadcast of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
She balanced her burgeoning career with her education, graduating from Hollywood Professional School at just fourteen years old. Her intellect was staggering, with an IQ reported at 162, which allowed her to enroll at UCLA the following year. But brilliance in the classroom did not translate to wisdom in matters of the heart, a lesson she would learn repeatedly.
At sixteen, Jill fell head over heels for Neil Dubin, an heir to a linen fortune. Her infatuation was so intense that she agreed to a secret elopement in Yuma, Arizona. The union was a recipe for disaster, a teenage fantasy that crumbled within a year.
It was a pattern that would repeat itself; her romantic life was a series of impulsive decisions that often ended in public humiliation. Yet, professionally, the doors of Hollywood were opening. Universal Pictures recognized her potential and signed her to a seven-year contract at $200 a week, casting her opposite John Saxon in the musical “Summer Love.”
But Jill was ambitious and impatient, and after just two years, she jumped ship to 20th Century Fox, a studio seemingly more committed to manufacturing her into a major star.
The Fox years were a mixed bag of frustration and near-misses. She was typecast in what she later called “ingénue roles,” always the daughter, the niece, or the girlfriend. Her first major film for the studio, “Holiday for Lovers,” was a critical and commercial dud, despite the opportunity to film in Brazil with actor Nico Minardos.
The studio was struggling to find the right formula for her, and her personal life continued to be a source of turmoil. In 1960, she married again, this time to Lance Reventlow, the son of the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. It was a toxic match; Reventlow reportedly belittled her intelligence in public and encouraged her to take dangerous risks.
The marriage lasted a mere three years, another casualty of her search for stability.
Undeterred, Jill focused on her craft, loaning herself out to different studios to escape the Fox mold. She appeared in “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone,” starring alongside Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty, though the production was moved from Italy to England to save money, another disappointment.
She followed this with “The Thrill of It All,” where she played a young starlet seducing a man away from his wife, a role she beat out Jane Fonda to secure. It was a turning point; the film finally garnered positive reviews, and her performance in “Come Blow Your Horn” opposite Frank Sinatra earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She was beginning to shed the “starlet” label and embrace the persona of a sophisticated, comedic leading lady.
Her collaboration with comedy legend Jerry Lewis in “Who’s Minding the Store?” in 1963, however, was a bitter pill. She had idolized Lewis, but the reality of working with him was a profound letdown.
She described the experience as unhappy and deeply disappointing, a lesson in never meeting one’s heroes. She found more playful success in 1966 with a two-episode arc on the original “Batman” series, playing a henchwoman to Frank Gorshin’s Riddler, and notably becoming the first character to die on the show. It was during this period that she first worked with Robert Wagner on the TV movie “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” but the romantic sparks were not yet ready to ignite.
She would first endure a third marriage, this time to “Love Boat” theme song singer Jack Jones, which lasted just over two years.
With three failed marriages behind her, Jill was poised for the role that would define her legacy. The producers of the James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever” were looking to break tradition by casting an American as the lead Bond girl. They auditioned a who’s who of 1970s beauties—Jane Fonda, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway—but none fit the bill.
Jill had originally been cast in the smaller role of Plenty O’Toole, but when the bigger names fell through, she was promoted to the coveted role of Tiffany Case. To emphasize her American roots, the character was written as brash, loud, and impulsive. It was a career-defining moment, but it also sowed the seeds of a lifelong enmity.
On the set of “Diamonds Are Forever,” Jill began a casual relationship with Sean Connery, the man playing James Bond himself. The problem? Connery was also dating her co-star, Lana Wood.
The two women were competing for the same man’s attention, and the rivalry was immediate and intense. What started as a professional jealousy over a handsome actor quickly curdled into a full-blown feud. The irony was thick: Lana Wood was the sister of Natalie Wood, the very woman who was married to Robert Wagner, the man Jill had worked with years earlier and would eventually marry.
The dance school trio had now become a love triangle of catastrophic proportions.
The public reception to Jill’s Bond girl was respectable, if not universally adored. She ranked in the middle of various “best Bond girls” lists, a solid but not spectacular debut. The real question was whether she could leverage this iconic role into a sustained career.
After filming “Diamonds Are Forever” back-to-back with the British film “Fear Is the Key,” she was exhausted and took a break. When she returned, she made a strange choice: she didn’t pursue big-screen blockbusters. Instead, she focused on television, hoping to star in an adaptation of the comic strip “Brenda Starr.”
The pilot was made, but the series never materialized. Throughout the 1970s, she made the rounds on popular shows like “The Love Boat,” “Magnum, P. I.
,” and “Fantasy Island,” but her career lacked the momentum of a true A-list star.
Feeling the burnout of Hollywood, Jill made a radical decision in the early 1970s. She packed her bags and moved to Aspen, Colorado, trading the red carpet for a quiet mountain life. She stepped away from acting entirely, focusing on her other passions: cooking and fashion.
She became a gourmet chef and even launched a line of angora sweaters. She called herself a “mountain girl,” and for nearly a decade, she lived a life far removed from the glitz of Tinseltown. But the pull of Hollywood was too strong.
She admitted to being bored, and despite not needing the money, she decided to return to the screen. Her comeback, however, was anything but triumphant. Two television pilots she starred in were rejected by networks, a humbling reminder that the industry had moved on without her.
In a bold attempt to reinvent herself, she took on the role of a sadistic prison warden in the 1982 women-in-prison film “The Concrete Jungle.” It was a stark departure from her glamorous image, and the film was a critical disaster, scoring a dismal 14% on Rotten Tomatoes. More failures followed, including the short-lived series “Emerald Point N.
A. S.” and a role cut from the pilot of “Lime Street.”
Her professional life was in a slump, but her personal life was about to take a dramatic turn that would overshadow everything else. The tragic death of Natalie Wood in November 1981, under mysterious circumstances on a boat with her husband Robert Wagner, sent shockwaves through Hollywood. While the official ruling was accidental drowning, suspicion lingered around Wagner.
Just three months after Natalie’s death, Wagner began dating Jill St. John. To the public, it seemed indecently fast.
To Lana Wood, it was a betrayal of the highest order. Lana had always harbored deep suspicions that Wagner was responsible for her sister’s death, and seeing him move on with a woman she already despised was too much to bear. The feud between Lana and Jill, born on the set of a Bond film over Sean Connery, now had a new, darker fuel.
Lana’s grief transformed into a crusade against the couple. In 1989, Jill and Wagner co-starred in the miniseries “Around the World in 80 Days,” and in 1990, they made their relationship official, marrying in a quiet ceremony. Their union was a direct challenge to Lana’s animosity.
The simmering hatred boiled over in 1999 when Vanity Fair organized a photo shoot reuniting Bond girls. Both Jill and Lana were invited. When asked to pose together, Jill flatly refused, a public snub that reignited the gossip columns.
Yet, a photograph later surfaced from the set of “Diamonds Are Forever” showing the two women laughing together like old friends. Lana, however, claimed the photo was a fake, refusing to acknowledge any moment of camaraderie. The bitterness was so deep that even photographic evidence of a pleasant moment was dismissed as a forgery.
Lana’s hatred was not just about the past; it was a living, breathing thing that she nurtured.
Lana’s motivations were complex. She had legitimate grievances: the affair with Connery, the swift marriage to her sister’s widower, and her firm belief that Wagner had gotten away with murder. She also claimed that Wagner had blacklisted her in the industry and smeared her reputation in the press.
For Jill and Wagner, the scandal was an unwelcome shadow over their marriage, but they seemed to weather it, continuing to work together on projects, many of which were critical and commercial failures. Their film “Something to Believe In” was a disaster that couldn’t even secure a U. S.
distributor. They turned to the stage, performing “Love Letters” across the country, where their real-life controversy likely drew curious audiences.
They continued to make forgettable movies together, like the alien abduction film “Out There” and the lesbian romance “The Trip,” neither of which made a dent in the cultural landscape. Jill’s career had effectively stalled, and she retreated from acting for over a decade. In 2014, they returned for a Hallmark Christmas movie, “North Pole,” playing Santa and Mrs.
Claus. It was a wholesome, safe project, a stark contrast to the drama swirling around their personal lives. But the drama was never far away.
In 2016, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office amended Natalie Wood’s death certificate, changing the cause from “accidental drowning” to “drowning and other undetermined factors.” This was the ammunition Lana Wood needed.
When she learned that Jill St. John was being honored at a Palm Springs event, Lana saw her opportunity. She crashed the event, not to cause a scene for its own sake, but to use the platform to accuse Robert Wagner of murdering her sister.
She shouted her accusations to the photographers and the stunned audience, turning Jill’s night of honor into a public tribunal for her sister’s death. The image of Lana’s fury against the backdrop of Jill’s celebration was a stark illustration of a wound that had never healed. It was a public relations nightmare for the couple, but they remained silent, refusing to engage with Lana’s outburst.
Despite the decades of drama, the accusations, and the public humiliation, the marriage of Jill St. John and Robert Wagner has endured. It has lasted longer than all of their previous marriages combined, a testament to a bond forged in the crucible of scandal.
For Jill, who had once been known for her high-profile romances with Frank Sinatra, Jack Nicholson, Henry Kissinger, and even Adam West, she finally found stability with Wagner. The feud with Lana Wood may never be resolved, a permanent scar on the legacy of all involved. But as the years pass, Jill St.
John’s story is no longer just about being a Bond girl or a Hollywood wife; it is about survival, resilience, and the strange, often cruel, arithmetic of fate that binds people together in the most unexpected ways.
