Like many, Natalie Wood's pie fight in "The Great Race" made me realize at a very young age that I was a wammer through and through. I thought I had seen all the various stills from the making of the seminal sequence, but I was surprised to find some photos I had never seen before. It actually seems like Natalie was having some fun during the shoot! Most reports say that she was unhappy during the filming.

Now if someone could only find some "behind the scenes" footage of the several-day pie shoot....

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Hubba hubba at that fourth one!

These are incredible!
I've only seen the fourth photo. Where did these come from?
Even though she was going through some tough times and wasn't going to enjoy filming this scene, Natalie was a great trooper. She had told her sister Lana that it wasn't easy to look good covered in pie, but I think we all know that she definitely looks great! Thanks so much for sharing!

Except for the first one, all of these are new to me.

I found them all on "The Natalie Wood Fansite". A wammer's search is never done....

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!
I LOVE these UMD members who come out of nowhere, like Zeppo here,
like ephemeral angels or virtual particles, and offer us a treat like this!

What's amazing is how time changes one's perceptions of things that one once thought was the "greatest" thing in the whole world - or, at least, the messiest.

Growing up as a kid in the pre-VCR era (1970s), I would try to catch every airing of "The Great Race" that I could. I imagined the pie fight to be the messiest scene POSSIBLE, not just ever, up to that point.

But, now when I look at the pie covering of Ms Wood, I think -
it's very good coverage, but not great. Not like what I have seen at piefightgirls.com or slapstickstuff.com or pievids.com

I don't know, Zoidberg. It looks like pretty good coverage to me...


When I was in Junior High School, I saw "West Side Story" for the first time. That weekend, local TV stations showed "Gypsy" and "The Great Race". Natalie Wood has held the key to my heart ever since.

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The very last pie that hits her -- the one that arcs perfectly through the air, lands with a very satisfying "spludge" and so thoroughly covers her face that we can't see any sign of eyes, nose or mouth -- is one of the very best pie hits ever, period, in my opinion.

Well, I certainly DO agree with that.

I wonder if they castrated the entire male cast for this scene before shooting.
I'd have needed it.

Natalie Wood, great with pies.....water,not so much.....

Wonderful pics! I would say those are new to me. I've seen the one where she is
pied by Blake Edwards. She looks great.

Thanks for posting these. I love Natalie Wood largely because of her central role in my early WAM fantasy life. I sometimes think of her in that context as the WAM version of Bette Page.

Yeah, that last wetlook session didn't really work out for her, did it?

Robert Wagner's foot on the back of her neck didn't help matters....

Yes,ladies and gentleman and gentleman posing as ladies, I've once again lowered the bar on UMD.

Thanks for the "new" photos.

Natalie Wood couldn't swim, which always made me wonder about the scene earlier in the Great Race where she appears to be swimming (in that same linjerie outfit) and comes out of the lake looking great. Shallow lake?

It's not that she couldn't swim, it's that she supposedly hit her head while drunk and fell into the ocean unconscious.

Great still shots, Zeppo! (I assume that you know that your profile pic is of Groucho?)

Long before VHS VCR's had "pause" and frame-by-frame advance, the Sony Betamax did. I got my first Betamax in 1980 and recorded "The Great Race" at the first opportunity. I watched the pie scene FRAME-BY-FRAME so many times that I almost burned out the motor. So I've seen all these stills (except the behind the scenes ones), via the movie. But I had not previously seen them as pics.

Great job finding them and thanks for posting them!

Norman

Wood is suppose to float.

Oh, nonsense. Wagner couldn't have had his foot on her neck because he was busy cornholing Christopher Walken in the cabin. Everybody knows that!

These are great pics, that b&w one is awesome!