MUSE - SHARON TATE HOLLYWOOD HAUTE HIPPIE
- Veronique Goguen
- Nov 2, 2020
- 36 min read
Updated: Mar 6, 2021
She’s Blowing Minds Forever - Swinging Sixties California It Girl Remembered for her tragic death that overshadows her charmed life and sensational style.
STAR PROFILE
Born: January 24, 1943
Death: August 9, 1969 (at 26-year-old & 8.5 months pregnant)
Astrology: Aquarius
Nationality: American
Residence: London / Los Angeles
Occupation: Actor, Model
Husband: Roman Polanski
Style Signature: bold false eyelashes and liner, mini dresses, blonde locks.
Famous for: being a beautiful blond Hollywood starlet, her chic California flower child fashion style, her marriage to controversial director Polanski, part of the glamorous swinging 60s scene, but mostly as the victim from terribly tragic Manson murder.
HOW SHE’S REMEMBERED
'"I always felt it was very unfair for her life to be remembered primarily for its final moments. Sharon had a magnificent life. "
"She traveled the world. She was talented. She became a film star. She met and married the man of her dreams. She experienced impending motherhood. She achieved so much in such a brief time, made a significant impact, and continues to fascinate and delight. It is important that her life be celebrated."
"Sharon was the sweetest, most gentle, most giving soul you could ever hope to meet—even more beautiful on the inside than she was on the outside. She had a special radiance, beyond the perfection of her features, that touched everyone she met. As her husband Roman Polanski said, “In those day, she was not just the love of my life, she was the love of everyone’s life.” And it’s true. "
Debra Tate - sister
“There was the perfection of her face, of course. And a radiance more usually found in children. There was a capacity for delight... There was a kindness at the core. She somehow made her friends feel necessary and they loved her.”
Mia Farrow - friend, actor
“Sharon was more than just stunning to look at... What had impressed me most about her, quite apart from her exceptional beauty, was the sort of radiance that springs from a kind and gentle nature; she had obvious hang-ups yet seemed completely liberated. I’d never met anyone like her before.”
Roman Polanski - husband, director
"Sharon Tate? Of course I knew her. I met her in France last year. Delicious and beguiling. Sharon had such style. I could tell she was splendid but, even more, intelligent. A rare girl, who read a lot. I wanted to meet her again in California." Truman Capote- author
"Ah, Sharon, it’s very hard to talk about her without getting a bit weepy. The word exquisite perfectly sums up this lady. Almost other-worldly, so beautiful and sensitive. But in no way wishy washy, she was smart and not taken in by the shallowness of the industry. Well grounded and natural, very much in tune with her life and very happy when I last saw her in London in 1969. A hideous tragedy her being killed and the grotesque speculation of the press. She was such an innocent and unspoilt by her success. I couldn’t recognize any of the Sharon I knew in the newspaper reports. An enormous loss. Too, too sad."
George Harrison – musician
“I met Sharon Tate in 1969 at the Malibu Colony cottage of Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim. Jane had phoned me while I was having a massage on the set of ‘Lions Love’ to tell me she had just seen Warhol’s 'Lonesome Cowboys’ and was a huge fan. This was the time when independent cinema was beginning to make a big impact in Hollywood.
She invited me and Michel Auder, whom I later married, to dinner. When we arrived everyone was already eating. The only other guests were Sharon and her husband, Roman Polanski. At the head of the table Jane was wearing a priest’s chasuble in green and gold, symbolizing hope and new growth. Sharon offered me a Coke out of the fridge and I took my place at the other end of the table. I marveled at the way the burning candles lit up the gold in Jane’s 'They Shoot Horses, Don’t They’ hairdo and the embroidery on the chasuble which glittered every time she made the slightest move. She was clearly the archbishop of the beach.
Sharon sat demurely to my left, hugely pregnant, breasts bursting from her decolletage, her skin luminously radiant, her eyes huge. She was extraordinarily beautiful, unearthly looking even—you just couldn’t take your eyes off her. She seemed happy singing along to Leonard Cohen’s 'Suzanne’ playing in the background."
Viva - Andy Warhol's superstar / actor
Quotes sourced from Debra Tate’s 2014 book called the "Sharon Tate Recollection." *view further book insight bellow
CAREER
Tate’s start in movies was, unsurprisingly, spawned by her striking looks.
HOLLYWOOD TRAJECTORY
Born in 1943 in Dallas, Texas as the daughter of a career military officer, Tate was destined for stardom, winning beauty contests before she was a year old which continued through her teens. After being noticed in the streets of Verona, Italy, she was cast in the epic film Barrabbas in 1961, as well as a Pat Boone television special. She was noticed by production staff in Italy for the filming of Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man (1962). Tate landed her first big acting role in 1963 as the bank secretary Janet Trego in the popular television series "The Beverly Hillbillies" (CBS 1963-1965). Tate was signed by Filmways and her first major starring role was in the 1966 occult classic Eye of the Devil.
Tate was then cast in director Roman Polanski’s film The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) where the two fell in love. They married in London in January 1968 in a wedding ceremony that included a star-studded after party at The Playboy Club with guests that included John and Juliet Mills, Joan Collins, Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, Terry Downes and more. Her other prominent roles included the comedy beach farce Don’t Make Waves (1967) and the spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1968) with Dean Martin and Elke Sommer.
Her most famous role and acclaimed performance came as Jennifer North in the 1967 cult classic film Valley of the Dolls, which earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best New Actress. Her final film role was in The 13 Chairs, also known as 12+1, which was released posthumously in 1969.
THE FILMS Eye of the Devil ( 1966)
Horror/Mystery
The All Eyes on Sharon Tate documentary, a promotional short film on an aspiring actress, Sharon Tate and her first film Eye of the Devil (1966)
The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Horror/Comedy
-accepted to do the film on one condition: she could wear a red wig.
-began dating Polanski in 1966 after meeting on the set of The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Dont Make Waves (1967)
Comedy/Romance
The film depicts a series of romantic triangles between different groupings of the principal cast and supporting players among several backdrops involving Southern California culture (swimming pools, bodybuilding, beach life, fantastic real estate, mudslides, metaphysical gurus, etc.).
Valley of the Dolls (1967)
Drama/Romance
-most notable and earned her a Golden Globe nomination in 1967.
-costume designs by Travilla : 134 costumes for the 4 leading actresses.
-cruise premiere
The Wrecking Crew (1968)
The Wrecking Crew was a loose collective of session musicians based in Los Angeles whose services were employed for thousands of studio recordings in the 1960s and 1970s, including several hundred Top 40 hits. The musicians were not publicly recognized in their era, but were viewed with reverence by industry insiders.
Tate practiced martial arts with Bruce Lee for a cute catfight scene
12+ 1 (1969) Comedy
STYLE
Shopping with Sharon "Some of my most cherished memories of Sharon are the days we would spend together shopping for clothes. Sharon ADORED clothes, had impeccable taste, and of course looked fantastic in everything—as Truman Capote once said, “Delicious and beguiling. Sharon had such style!”
The two of us loved to take our time walking and perusing the small boutiques on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. This was where all the super-hip, up-and-coming designers were at the time—Twisted Sister, Rudi Gernreich, Grandpa Takes a Trip, etc. Betsey Johnson’s store “Betsey Bunky Nini” was definitely the place to shop. Sharon particularly liked her knit dresses, pantsuits and A-line minis. Sharon also loved Christian Dior, Pucci, and Ossie Clark. Her favorite designer was Thea Porter, whose ethnic- inspired and richly embellished caftans and gypsy skirts made from silks, brocades, and velvets, were largely responsible for the late ’60s revival in New Romanticism and the birth of the term “Hippie Chic.”
During these shopping expeditions—the fruits of which can largely be seen in this auction—we would often venture into Beverly Hills to visit the trendy department store Jax, before making our way to Greenblatt’s deli on Sunset for a hot pastrami on rye. Such great times." Debra Tate- sister
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The Merve Grifit Show 1966
A Shopping tour of Carnaby Street and Kings Road in London with Sharon
Her Closet in Auction “very eclectic, very free-spirited, and a combination of sexy and child-like innocence.” Debra Tate referring to Sharon’s fashion sense.
Inside Edition news program interview with Debra Tate in 2008 where she discusses Sharon’s style and reveals her wardrobe for first time on camera.
Her closet may have been full of designer dresses, but Sharon Tate was a flower child all the way down to her toes. Most comfortable barefoot, she used to skirt the “shoes required” laws in snooty late ‘60s Beverly Hills by looping leather string around her toes and across the tops of her feet, and then tying the ends around her ankles. Voila: sandals.
Auction Review From New York Times
THE LOOKS
The Jumpsuit
The Red Carpet
Her Birthday Party / Rosemary's Baby Premiere in London 196-
The LBD
Cut Out Swimwear
Yellow Mello
The Jackets
Californian hippy-boheme
Hippy chic
SHOOTS WITH HER FAVOURITE PHOTOGRAPHER
MEDIA EXPOSURE
PRESS / INTERVIEWS
New York Sunday News - December 18, 1966
Reaching for Instant Stardom :Sharon Tate is on a Crash Program to get to the top
by Bob Lardine
It's difficult to imagine Sharon Tate as having ever been shy.
Wearing an abbreviated miniskirt, she seems to enjoy the commotion she causes wherever she goes. Sharon also affects thick, black, false eyelashes, brown eye shadow around her lips, and long ash-blonde hair that falls freely about her shoulders. Her presence in a crowd is as insignificant as a floodlight in a blackout.When he first glimpsed her in the reception room of his office, Ransohoff ordered that she be singed to a seven-year contract. Today, Sharon Tate is an actress. Some even label her a star though she has yet to be seen in a movie. Her first two MGM films--"13" and "The Vampire Killers"--won't be released for at least two months, and Sharon's latest movie "Don't Make Waves," isn't scheduled for screening until next summer. And so no one really knows whether Ransohoff's gamble to make an instant star with his crash program technique has succeeded. Sharon, naturally, is convinced that she has made the show business grade. "I'm sure the three years I spent in training to be an actress will pay off," she says.
For the time being, Sharon isn't giving movies a thought. She left recently for London to continue her romance with Poland's famed, shaggy-haired director, Roman Polanski. "I've known him for nine months," says Sharon. "We have a wonderful relationship. I don't know if I'll marry him. He hasn't asked me yet." If Sharon does wed, her film career and Ransohoff's half a million dollar investment in her will go down the drain. "I'll give up acting the second I'm married," says Sharon, which leads many observers to believe it won't happen for some time.
Source- Sensationsharontate Blog
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Photo Screen Magazine - June 1968
Sharon Tate - Venus on a Treadmill
By Johnny Columbus
She is the new Venus and she is trapped in a Dream Factory. She is the Princess of the World – yet it is a world she never made.
She is shimmering blonde over high-cheeked pale. She is a cascade of hair She is lakewater hazel eyes that sing of innocence.
She is Sharon Tate, “a name to remember,” a talent to be reckoned with,” “a goddess who’s got everything.”
She’s a cotton candy angel; a teddy bear’s sweetheart. She’s an aristocrat in mangy fox-skin, a muse in ermine.
She was 16 years old and the movie star came up to her and said something like “you oughta be in pitchers” and since she had always dreamed about Hollywood, she agreed.
And that's how a star is born...
She was 16 and a mess of blondeness and innocence and the hustler-producer took one look at her and said, “Put her under contract.”
And that's how a star is born...
Somebody told her to “stick out your boobs, Sharon” and she did. And somebody told her to take her clothes off for Playboy and she did that, too. And somebody told her to play “Jennifer” in Valley Of the Dolls.
And, suddenly, she didn't have to be born. She was a star!
It was all schemed, all planned to be so. But along the way something happened that wasn’t in the schedule-Sharon, the Success Machine, fell in love.
All of a sudden, it didn't seem so important to be a star anymore!
So she got married, to the trumpets of the stars, to the cheers of a world of her friends. And she went on a honeymoon to Paris and some wise guy grabbed her in the street. So her tiny, fragile husband defended her and the guy clobbered him but good and ran away.
And Sharon Tate realized the painful reality that she could never stop being a star!
Sharon Tate was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 24, 1943, the oldest daughter of U.S. Army Major Paul J. Tate. She lived the typical gypsy existence of an army brat for 16 years, moving from Dallas to Houston, El Paso, Tacoma, Washington, D.C., and Verona, Italy.
It was in Italy in 1959 that she met a handsome American actor named Richard Beymer who was making a film called Adventures of a Young Man.
“Richard told me ‘you oughta be in pictures’ and I believed in him,” says Sharon. “I always had Hollywood on my mind.”
Beymer introduced her to his agent and Major Tate paid her fare to Hollywood and gave her $ 42 to see her through two weeks rent. So Sharon flew home to the U.S.
Her perfect photogenic face, quite breathtaking body and total lack of experience made her a prime candidate for TV commercials.
A cigarette manufacturer hired her. She told them she didn’t smoke but they didn’t care. They were more interested in showing her firm and fully packed dimensions.
She was inexperienced. They shot and re-shot. She puffed and re-puffed. Finally, she fainted from smoke inhalation. “I passed out from taking too many puffs,” she remembers.
She tested for all kinds of dramatic roles. One producer said, quote: “Honey, this is for a girl who’s been around. You look like a baby!”
She tested for the role of Marlon Brando’s mistress. They said, quote: “Honey, you don’t look old enough to even think of going to bed with a man.”
She tested for a part in Petticoat Junction. Super-hustler Marty Ransohoff, head of Filmways, saw her there. “Put that girl under contract,” he exclaimed. No tests, no interviews. Just like that, Sharon was on her way.
There was a top-level conference in the producer’s office. Sharon Tate, the little girl from Dallas via Rome, was going into hiding. Sharon Tate, Movie Star, was going to be manufactured.
“They said they had a plan for me. They would train me and prepare me,” she remembers. “I was immediately put into training-like a racehorse.”
Dramatics with Lee Strasberg. Singing. Dancing. Body-building. Walking. Talking. Three years went by. Sharon was completely under wraps. “I had a job to stay the way I was,” says Sharon. “They told me ‘Cream your face, Sharon…put on more eyeliner, Sharon…stick out your boobs, Sharon.’”
She moved to New York, then back to the Coast, taking a pad with actress Wende Wagner in San Pedro, Calif. Eventually, she got a regular role on The Beverly Hillbillies – as Janet Trego. But you wouldn’t have known by the scorecard “Whenever I did a role on TV, I used another name and wore a black wig,” says Sharon.
She got a role in a David Niven-Deborah Kerr picture. Then another in Tony Curtis’ Don’t Make Waves. The plan was working perfectly: train her to act, move her up slowly. She was, as one magazine put it, “the invention of wheeler-dealer Marty Ransohoff.”
Then the wheels fell out from under Ransohoff’s “Streetcar Named Success.” Sharon was signed to make a movie called (after numerous retitlings) The Fearless Vampire Killers.
The director of that movie was little Roman Polanski. The elfin, knife-nosed pole had gained international fame for his first movie, Knife in the Water, a careful intellectual study of a Polish James Dean. Later he moved to France, making an important horror movie, Repulsion, with Catherine Deneuve. From there he went to England to make Cul de Sac with Catherine’s sister, the late Françoise Dorleac. (Recently, he directed Rosemary’s Baby, with Mia Farrow, in New York)
Polanski, who was born in 1933, was the darling of the highbrow movie set, an intellectual, a powerful creative spirit. He was definitely not a “looker” like most of Saron’s co‘stars. But his spiritedly charm and unconventional looks are judged as beautiful by his friends.
The upshot of it all was that Sharon fell in love with Roman Polanski. And they began their affair.
“Roman is strong, and so true, so honest,” she said. “I don’t like glamour boys."
“I’ve learned a lot about me from being with Roman. My definition of love is being full. Complete. It makes everything lighter. Beauty is something you see. Love is something you feel.”And Love met Roman. “He’s wise and wonderful and brilliant and he knows everything.”
And love didn’t necessarily mean marriage: “When I love, I love…I won’t marry for a long time…I’ll give up acting the second I’m married…I believe a wife must immerse herself completely in her husband and family and that’s what I intend to do. Few women can handle marriage and a career successfully at the same time.”
Her frankness shocked Hollywood: “I would never marry just to be respectable…It’s just a legal piece of paper and a lovely financial set-up I’ve learned great happiness from being with Roman that I didn’t have before. Why would I want to ruin a perfect affair by turning it into a mediocre marriage for society’s sake.”
Then Valley of the Dolls happened-and with it, the climax of Sharon’s misery. In the movie, Sharon played a Marilyn Monroe-type superstar whose tragedy-riddled life ends in suicide. “Jennifer North,” the character she played, was another of those magnificent “cuts of meat” who comes into Hollywood an innocent, fragile beauty – only to become a tortured, abused derelict.
Sharon had many things in common with Jennifer. Both were acutely conscious of the value their bodies held in the flesh commerce of Hollywood both were innocents both were involved with European “art” filmmakers.
“I am like Jennifer,” says Sharon, “because she is relatively simple, a victim of circumstances beyond her control. But I have more confidence in myself…”
“I’m so afraid of hurting other people’s feelings I don’t speak out when I should. I get into big messes that way,” she once said.
But beyond Jennifer, Sharon was also developing amazing similarities to Marilyn Monroe, the actress on whom the character of “Jennifer” is rumored to be based.
‘Both Marilyn and Jennifer were the “Beautiful Blondes” of their day. Both had astonishing figures. Both were treated very badly by those producers who exploited their sex appeal for the moviegoers. Both posed nude before they gained stardom. Both rejected their “dumb blonde” images to marry intellectuals.
“I will never be another Marilyn Monroe,” Sharon says now. “But I had to do what they wanted, at first.”
And they, meaning the money men, wanted her to be a well-trained sex symbol with a vacuum for a head. Sharon was tortured by their demeaning attitude towards her.
The facts are undeniable. She is 5’51/2”. She weighs 120 pounds. She measures 35-23-34. she has a face that is the most popular magazine cover decoration in Europe-where beauty abounds.
But that’s not enough for Sharon. “they see me as a dolly in a bikini, jumping up and down on a trampolin,” she said of her producers
“It’s not that I think I’m a sexpot …I don’t have voluptuous sips and I’m not heavy-chested,” she said.
She sought privacy and anonymity by the sea: “I love it on the beach-it gives me a kind of freedom. I don’t have to be a sex symbol or a movie star.
“Beauty is only a look. It has nothing to do with what I’m like inside…I won’t play any more dumb blondes,” she insisted
she began to pont up her physical flaws. She told friends about the scars on her face, especially the noticeable mark near her left eye. It was done by corrugated tin when she was very young. “I’m very proud of it, it’s me,” she said.
She began to speak out strongly, to display her mind: “All American men are neurotic. All they care about is having sex.” In Valley of the Dolls, she had been filmed while pretending to make love to a man in bed in a “dirty” foreign movie. “Why should I be ashamed?” she said. “You see people murdering each other every day on TV, but you never see them making love-and love is certainly more beautiful.”
During all this time, she was becoming a bigger and bigger star. Her pictures were being released one on top of the other. People were noticing her-and liking what they saw.
Meanwhile, Roman and Sharon continued on their silent, non-public ways. They hung out on beaches (away from the “Hollywood phoniness,” as Sharon puts it), in bars with “guys in jeans,” in Paris, and “London where “guys walk down King’s Road with cowboys hats and rhinestones.”
Just as Sharon was becoming deeply and inextricably a star, she was falling as deeply and inextricably in love.
“I can’t play games,” she said. “I have friends, older women, who tell me I’m foolish to let Roman know how deeply I care for him…Well, foolish I am!”
says Barbara Parkins: “I like Sharon and Roman… They do everything they want and don’t care what anybody says.”
An, all of a sudden, really not knowing why, Roman and Sharon decided to get married in London. They had a huge party and flew to Paris for their honeymoon.
Now she has to make the decision-and it really isn’t hers alone to make. She’s as much a part of the machinery of Hollywood now as she is Mrs. Roman Polanski. And all her pre-marital vows to quit the business when she married have to be reexamined.
If she needed a reminder that things were going to be different from now on in, she got a very unpleasant one in Paris during the honeymoon. A passerby made a grab for her mini-skirted little body and Roman threw his own into the breach. Result: the assailant got away and Roman’s face was bandaged for several days afterwards.
So that’s where Sharon Tate is today. A blonde Venus who has found both success and love…who really wants only the love but is committed to the success.
“Sometimes,” she says ruefully, “I think it would be better to be a sex symbol, because at least I would know where I was…But I’d lose my mind!”
She came to Hollywood wanting to be a “light comedienne like Carole Lombard.” That was all gaudy and fluffy. Today, she patterns herself around more unconventional women, like Greta Garbo and Faye Dunaway (”Dunaway! She’s a woman!”).
“I’d like to be an American Catherine Deneuve. She plays beautiful, sensitive, deep parts with a little bit of intelligence behind them,” she says.
Maybe that’s the happy medium. If Sharon can get off the Hollywood treadmill, if she and Roman can work together professionally to produce quality films, if she can prove to others what she has proved to herself-that there is a head above her body-then she will have achieved true happiness and satisfaction-without escaping from her responsibilities.
Sharon puts it very beautifully: “I still have this teddy bear I’ve had since I was three…and all my old boxes-valentine boxes, cigar boxes, all kinds of boxes. I just won’t give them up it’s like if I give them up, I’ve given in to being a movie star.”
full article/ or edit to extracts sourced - https://web.archive.org/web/20091023211133/http://geocities.com/cean2/photoscreen.htm
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Cine Revue Magazine - Brusels, 1968
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The New Cinema 1968 - directed by Gary short documentary about disruptiong Hollywood system. Including uncensored interviews with Roman Polanski, Andy Warhol, Dustin Hoffman, Francis Ford Coppola....
ROMANCE
Some Background Tate’s relationship with controversial director Roman Polanski was in the headlines long before tragedy struck, as the pair had a high profile relationship.
She then began dating Philippe Forquet in a tumultuous relationship, which included instances of domestic abuse which at one point sent Tate to the hospital in 1964.
After their relationship came to an end, she began to date celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring - who used to cut hair for the likes of Frank Sinatra.
She would also later star in her future husband Polanski’s film The Fearless Vampire Killers and Valley of the Dolls.
Tate and Polanski were introduced in the 1960s by producer Martin Ransohoff as Tate hoped the director would cast her in a film called The Fearless Vampire Killers.
At the time, she was still dating celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring - who would go on to die alongside her that fateful night in Cielo Drive.
Encouraged by Ransohoff however, she would later go on to date Polanski - however the biography Sharon Tate Recollection revealed their early foray into dating was a bit of a nightmare.
Polanski was silent on their first date. Their second date wasn’t much better as Polanski reportedly put on a Frankenstein mask to scare her, “storming” towards her.
Tate said via the Daily Mail, “I let out a bloodcurdling scream and while I was still crying from the scare, he was calling Ransohoff to tell him that the part in the film was mine.”
WORDS FROM HIM
She was kindness itself to everybody and everything around her-people, animals, everything. She just didn't have a bad bone in her body. She was a unique person. It's difficult to describe her character. She was just utterly good, the kindest human being I've ever met with an extreme patience.She never had a bad temper , she was never moody. She enjoyed being a wife. The press and the public knew of her lhysical beauty but she also had a beautiful soul and this is something only her friends knew about.
Roman Polanski in Playboy magazine DEC 1971
*get credit for photos
THE WEDDING
Tate and Polanski were the embodiment of the Swinging Sixties at their wedding; while Tate was dressed in the mini with an intricate coiled hairdo with scattered flowers and bows placed in her golden locks, Polanski wore a stylish Mod suit. The wedding ceremony was held at Chelsea Registry and followed by a star-studded after party at the Playboy Club with guests that included John and Juliet Mills, Laurence Harvey, Joan Collins, Anthony Newley, Barbara Parkins, Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, James Fox, and Terry Downes.
Her wedding dress was auctioned last year for $56,250.
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THE GOSSIP
*Add headlines
These claims about Polanski and Tate's wild sex lives have been made by Ed Sanders in his book published by Da Capo Press, "Sharon Tate: A Life".
Tate’s friends, Joanna Pettet, said “He told her how to dress; he told her what makeup he liked, what he didn’t like. He preferred her with nothing, no makeup.”
Tate’s friend, photographer Shahrokh Hatami, claimed “Sharon told me about Roman — about imposed sexual scenes on her,” Hatami said. “He was bringing other girls to have threesomes with Sharon, and Sharon didn’t like that he was picking up girls on the Sunset and bring them home to have sex with them.”
Tate allegedly told Hatami: "I told him that I'm expecting his child, he said that he doesn't want to father a child, and protested." She also reportedly told her husband: "You can't do anything, it's my child. I'm going to keep it."
From book Sharon Tate: A Life by Ed Sanders
THEIR RELATIONSHIP
The Times – Sunday News London – July 24, 2005
Suffering of the great seducer : He may have been an obsessive womaniser, but morality drove Polanski into a libel suit by Peter Evans
"Deep down I regard myself as a moral man,” the film director Roman Polanski once told me. “But morality is too boring unless you also have a capacity for recklessness in your makeup; morality is only bearable if people believe that it could fly out of the window at any moment. Perhaps that is why I always sleep with the windows open.”
It is this deliberate sense of provocation, this risqué, self-incriminating humour, that has got the diminutive 71-year-old into so much trouble down the years — and led him to the High Court in London last week to sue Vanity Fair, the glossy US magazine, for libel. In July 2002 it had printed a “quite monstrous” allegation about how he had attempted to seduce the Scandinavian model Beatte Telle on his way to the funeral of Sharon Tate, his eight-month-pregnant wife who was murdered by the Charles Manson “family” in 1969.
Tate wanted to know what I had written; I told her that she would have to wait until the book was published that December. Bailey had photographed them in a fond embrace, both naked to the waist. It was a daring picture for its time, and Polanski’s idea.
There was an honesty that was almost naive about them. Together they believed they were challenging the citadels of censorship and cant. From Poland — his mother had died in Auschwitz — Polanski was especially sensitive about a person’s right to freedom.
Tate wanted to be like him. “I wish I had the tolerance to let everybody have complete freedom,” she said. “To be able to take a man home and make love and enjoy it without some lurking puritanical guilt interrupting the pleasure . . . Mentally it’s what I want, but emotionally it is more difficult to take.”
If she was under her husband’s spell, it was where she wanted to be. It was also plain that Polanski was totally in love with his wife.
It is also true that he was, and would always be, as unfaithful to her as she would never be unfaithful to him. Yet it was a happy marriage. “We have a good arrangement,” Tate once told me solemnly. “Roman lies to me and I pretend to believe him.”
The truth was, Polanski loved seducing women — air stewardesses, actresses, models, pretty waitresses — but he loved Tate. He loved her beauty, her American style, her sense of fun and enthusiasm for life and her eagerness to follow his lead. His power over women was something others had noticed
There is no doubt that Polanski, a puckish-looking man with a quick smile and a quicker mind, has always known how to get a woman into bed — and never regretted doing so. It is a trait that many people condemn although their criticism never bothered him. “I do what I do, I don’t have time for what others think,” he said. “If my honesty upsets some people, that is their problem, not mine.”
Yet I was not surprised when he decided, against all apparent odds and all rational reason, to sue Vanity Fair for suggesting that he had tried to seduce a woman en route to Tate’s funeral. For according to his own curious code of honour, it was not his reputation that he was defending: it was the integrity of his memory of Tate.
In 1978, nine years after her death and at the peak of his success following the acclaim of Chinatown, he jumped bail and fled abroad from the charge of having seduced a 13-year-old girl. He has never returned. Now living in Paris and remarried, he won the right to give evidence via video link because of his fear that setting foot in London could result in extradition to the United States. They have not always been happy years or even successful ones. But it is hard to feel pity for a man who has no self-pity, a man who is as cynical and driven as Polanski.
And he did. “This law knows of no rules — only violations of civilised conduct which, it appears, can be readily excused,” Shields told the court. “As to whether Mr Polanski’s reputation is capable of being damaged, sadly, we would say, it is beyond repair.” Moreover, Polanski should not receive damages because his reputation had been ruined by his promiscuous past. It must have been painful even for Polanski to hear the truth about his promiscuous past expressed so brutally and frankly. But he did not flinch, at least not outwardly. For this, he knew, was the story of his life. A life he had always lived by his own rules.
He has won his case and he is walking away with £50,000, but the money was never the point. As he said in a statement after Friday’s verdict, “The memory of my late wife Sharon Tate was at the forefront of my mind in bringing this action.”
Cynics may doubt this. Those who know him know that he was speaking nothing but the truth.
Extracts from article in The Sunday Times
Also available on Sharon fan club blog - sensationalsharontate.blogspot.com
THE TRAGEDY
DESCRIBED BY DIDION
Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” Joan Didion has written. “Ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true.”
“I was sitting in the shallow end of my sister-in-law’s swimming pool in Beverly Hills when she received a telephone call from a friend who had just heard about the murders at Sharon Tate Polanski’s house on Cielo Drive. The phone rang many times during the next hour.”
"I remember all the day's misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not : I remember that no one was surprised. " Joan Didion, The White Album
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FRONT COVER NEWS
The Los Angeles Times - August 10, 1969
Ritualistic Slayings’: Sharon Tate, Four Others Murdered
By Dial Togerson
Film star Sharon Tate, another woman and three men were found slain Saturday, their bodies scattered around a Benedict Canyon estate in what police said resembled a ritualistic mass murder
The victims were shot, stabbed or throttled. On the front door of the home, written in blood, was one word: “Pig.”
Police arrested the only one left alive on the property — a 19-year-old houseboy. He was booked on suspicion of murder.
Killed were: — Miss Tate, 26, a star of “Valley of the Dolls” and wife of Roman Polanski, director of “Rosemary’s Baby.” She was eight months pregnant. He is in England.
— Abigail Folger, 26, heiress to the Folger’s Coffee family.
— Jay Sebring, 35, once Miss Tate’s fiance, a Hollywood hair stylist credited with launching the trend to hair styling for men.
— Voityck Frokowski, 37, who worked with Polanski in Polish films before they came to Hollywood.
— Steven Parent, 18, of El Monte, who left his home Friday morning after telling his family he was going to “go to Beverly Hills.”
A maid, Mrs. Winifred Chapman, went to the sprawling home at the end of Cielo Drive at 8:30 a.m. to begin her day’s work. What she found sent her running to a neighbor’s home in a state of shock:
Police Theory
At the scene of the crime Police Lt. Robert Madlock gave newsmen the reason:
“He was taken into custody because he was on the premises where five people were murdered.”
Madlock gave few other details. Among information police did release:
Exact causes of death were not immediately determined. Autopsies were pending.
Telephone lines into the home had been cut, apparently by the murderer. No weapon was found at the scene, although officers found pieces of what were believed to be a pistol grip inside the home.
No narcotics were found in the home. There were evidences of a struggle. There was apparently nothing missing. No motive could be immediately determined.
Identifies Four Bodies
William Tenant, Miss Tate’s agent, came to the home at noon — still wearing tennis clothes — and identified the bodies of Miss Tate, Miss Folger, Sebring and Frokowski.
He left, sobbing, without speaking to reporters waiting at the gate. Later he phoned Polanski at his apartment in London to inform him of Miss Tate’s death.
“He broke down and cried,” said a friend in London. “He made arrangements to catch the first available flight to Los Angeles.”
Miss Tate and Polanski were married at a London registry office in January, 1968. They had been separated frequently because of film commitments in various parts of the world and there had been rumors in Hollywood recently that the couple were having marital trouble.
The time of the killings wasn’t immediately determined. Police told a neighbor that Miss Tate had been dead too long when the bodies were discovered for anything to be done about saving the life of her unborn child.
Extracts from original article in Los Angeles Times
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The New York Times - August 10, 1969
Actress Is Among 5 Slain At Home at Beverly Hills; Sharon Tate, 2d Woman and 3 Men Victims -Suspect Is Seized
By Steven V. Roberts
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 9 — Five persons, including the actress Sharon Tate, were found this morning brutally murdered in a home in a secluded area of Beverly Hills
The home, perched on a wooded hillside overlooking the city of los Angeles was being rented by Miss Tate and her husband, roman Polanski, the movie director, who was in London at the time writing a script for a new movie.
The other victims were identified as Jay Sebring , a men’s hair stylist well known in Hollywood social circles; Voyteck Frykowski, a polish film director said to be a close friend of Mr. Polanski ; Mr. Frykowski girl friend, Abigail Folger, a member of the Folger coffee family, and a fifth man who remained unidentified. The police arrested William Garretson, a 19 year old care-taker, and charged him with suspected murder. Mr. Garretson was asleep in small cottage near the main house of the property when the police when the police arrived this morning.
The Los Angeles coroner, Thomas Noguchi, told a news conference that there was no evidence that a party had taken place or that narcotics had been used. He said that no murder was found. He also said that there were no firm evidence linking Mr. Garretson to the killings but that he was being held on because he was in the area.
The police were alerted by a call at about 9 am from Winifred chapman, a maid who had come to clean up the house.
When they arrived they found a scene that one policeman described as a “bloody mess.” The victims had been stabbed and possibly also shot. Mrs. Seymour Knott, a neighbour, said she had herd several shots at about midnight.
Miss Tate, who was 8 months pregnant, was found in the living room of the house with a lylon rope tied around her neck. The rope was also tied around Mr. Sebring ‘s neck and then looped over a beam “as if someone was going to hang them” the police said. Mr. Sebring wore a hood over his head.
Mr. Frykowski and Miss Folger, who had been house guest of the Polanski’s, were found sprawled on the lawn about 50 feet apart.
The word “pig” was scrawled in blood on the door of the main house. The police also found telephone lines to the house neatly cut by a pliers near a pole just outside the gate. Telephone repairmen suggested that anyone not familiar with electrical circuit could have easily electrocuted himself in cutting the connection.
The section of Beverly Hills in which the house is located contains the homes of many movie and television personalities.
Mr. Polanski was reported to be in London writing a screen play for the movie “Day of the dolphins “ for united artists. Officials of the company said he was due back in the country next week to deliver the script of the movie which he was also going to produce and direct.
Friends said that Miss Tate had been in London with Mr. Polanski several weeks ago and had retuned mainly to prepare for the birth of her baby.
Polanski breaks down
London Aug. 9 (AP) – Mr. Polanski “broke down and cried” when he heard about the slaying of his wife and four friends, close friends reported today. Mr. Polanski, 35 years old, has been here for 2 months on movie negotiations. A friend said “ I understand he’s going to catch the first available flight to Los Angeles tomorrow”
Extracts from original article New York Times
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The Daily News August 10, 1969 Sharon Tate and four others were killed in 1969 by Kay Gardella
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 9 - Beautiful, blonde actress Sharon Tate and four others, including coffee heiress Abigail Folger and three men in mod dress, were found slain today at the lavish, hilltop estate of Miss Tate and her Polish movie-disaster husband, Roman Polanski.
Police held a 19-year-old houseboy identified as William Garretson for questioning. He was charged with five counts of suspicion of murder.
The grisly scene, with overtones of a weird religious rite, was reminiscent of movies directed by Polanski, a master of the macabre who gave the world the witchcraft film "Rosemary's Baby." Polanski was in Europe working on a new movie, "A Day at the Beach."
She was dressed in a pink and white polka dot bikini nightgown and was lying on her left side. She had been stabbed and may have been shot. A white nylon rope was tied around her neck, tossed over a ceiling beam and tied to the neck of a man identified as Jay Sebring, a hairdresser who was engaged to Sharon before she met Polanski.Covered by White Hood
A white hood was over Sebring's head. He had been shot.
"It seemed kind of ritualistic," said one investigator.
"It didn't appear as if the two had been hanged," said Lt. James Shannon of the West Los Angeles Police Department.
Sharon's body was badly disfigured, and blood and hair were over her face.
The 26-year-old actress was eight months pregnant. Police said they were unable to save the baby.
Outside the two-story house, sprawled on the front lawn, were the bodies of Miss Folger, about 26, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Folger of Woodside, near Palo Alto, Calif., and a man tentatively identified as Voityck Frokowski, 37, a writer and photographer.
A police sergeant, who asked not to be identified said that he was convinced that more than one person was responsible for the slayings.
"You just have to take a look at the murder scene to know that one man alone couldn't do this," he said.
Terror was etched on the lifeless faces of the five victims, according to the police. They said that Miss Folger, Frokowski and the man found in the car apparently were trying to escape.
The telephone line had been cut at a pole outside the main gate. Whoever cut the wire had to climb at least 18 feet up the pole with clippers.
The macabre scene was discovered by a maid, Winifred Chapman, when she arrived for work at 9:15 a.m. She ran screaming to a neighbor in the remote section a block outside the luxurious Bel Air section in the Hollywood Hills.
She was engaged to Sebring when she met Polanski, who directed her in a movie called "The Vampire Killers." They were married on Jan. 20, 1968.
Polanski has been the subject of recent Hollywood gossip-column reports that he had been dating another girl in Europe, and that his marriage to Sharon might be on the rocks.
Of late, Sharon had been traveling in a Hollywood group of "rich hippies," and one of her close friends was Mia Farrow. They often sat around a table in seace-like sessions to meditate on Hindu philosophy. Sharon wore hippie clothes and spoke of "universal love" and "the cosmos." She liked sitar music.
Sharon was quoted in a Look magazine interview once as saying: "People look at me and all they see is a sex thing. I mean, people see sexy. When I was put under contract I thought, oh, how nice, but it was just another piece of merchandise. Nobody cared about me.
"People expect so much of an attractive person. I mean people are very critical of me. It makes me tense; even when I lie down I'm tense. I think sometimes people don't want me around. I don't like to be alone, though. When I'm alone my imagination gets all creepy."
Extracts from article The Daily News, New York 1969
Sunday Mirror
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Archival footage from the funeral of Sharon Tate, who was held on August 13, 1969. She, along with her unborn child was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City (California).
LOOKING BACK
Vanity Fair April, 2001 Murder most unforgettable by Dominick Dunne
Anyone who was living in Beverly Hills on August 9, 1969, or who was part of the motion-picture world, remembers vividly that Saturday morning, when the news began to filter out that there had been a murderous rampage on Cielo Drive at the home of the film director Roman Polanski. Telephones started to ring all over the community. My brother and sister-in-law the writers John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion recently reminded me that they had been at the home of my wife, Lenny, from whom I had recently separated, when she got the call from Natalie Wood about the brutal slaying of our friends Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring. Natalie always had the latest news ahead of everyone else, but this kind of news was out of the ordinary. The immediate interpretation, once the shock of the mass murder had set in, was that the huge party we had all been living was over. Suddenly everyone felt unsafe.
“We used to think, Drugs aren’t bad, life is great—but it all ended that day,” says George Hamilton on the telephone from Los Angeles. George was in Palm Springs when he heard. He was with Alana Collins, whom he would soon marry, and Peter Lawford. “Everyone felt personally involved,” he recalls, because so many people from all walks of life had passed though the house on Cielo Drive in the short time that Roman and Sharon lived there. “Roman brought a dark energy to the house,” George says. For the next four months, until the Manson family was arrested, there was fear in the air. Who was going to be next?
“We were all running around with guns in our purses,” Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas tells me. “We all suspected each other. It was the most bizarre period of my life. I didn’t trust anyone. It could have been anyone, as far as I was concerned. The last conversation I ever had with Sharon was about wallpaper for her nursery. Do you remember Peter Hurkos, the psychic? He put his hand on my stomach and said, ‘You have to carry a gun at all times, loaded and cocked.’ I carried one for three months. The police were questioning everyone. Everyone was flushing drugs down the toilet. For some reason, they suspected my husband, John Phillips. ‘Would your husband have any reason to have any animosity toward anyone in that house?’ they asked me. I told them I had had a night in London with Roman. I felt bad about that, because of Sharon.”
One day during the O. J. Simpson trial, Warren Beatty suggested that I write about the Sharon Tate murders, but for a long time I resisted the idea. As I reminded Warren, the prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi had covered the case thoroughly in his amazing book, Helter Skelter. Warren said, “Vince knew the bad guys,” meaning the Manson gang. “But you and Lenny knew the movie people. You knew the life they lived. It was the crowd from the Daisy that went in and out of the house on Cielo Drive.” He was right. We had known them all. The Daisy was the first of the private discotheques in the city, where the young and the rich twisted and boogied away the nights in a town famous for going to bed early. The skirts were short. The girls were beautiful. The guys were handsome. On any given night, if you managed to get in, which could be difficult, you were apt to see Joan Collins, Michael Caine, Ryan O’Neal, Mia Farrow, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, the Sinatra sisters, and maybe a Vegas figure or two. The Polanskis were often there. So was Jay Sebring. You could slip out to the garden in back for a snort or a toke. The smell of pot was often in the air. It sounds absurd to call the scene innocent, but it was. Everybody knew everybody. It was a nightly party, even though plenty of dramas took place there. Frank Sinatra, who had taken a dislike to me, once paid the Daisy’s maitre d’ 50 bucks to hit me. Back then 50 bucks was a lot of money. The place was owned by a glamorous couple named Jack and Sally Hansen, who were very much a part of the scene themselves. They also owned Jax, the wildly successful Beverly Hills shop that changed the cut of women’s slacks. One night after the murders, Michelle Phillips was waving a gun around at the bar. Sally Hansen said quietly, “Darling, put the gun away.”
At the time of the murders, I was in New York, executive-producing the film The Boys in the Band. Lenny phoned me with the news, and I flew back to Los Angeles for a few days. People were sending their children out of town for safety, and ours were going to my mother-in-law’s ranch outside San Diego. People were buying firearms and attack dogs for protection. Steve McQueen packed a gun at Jay Sebring’s funeral, where he gave one of the eulogies. The Tate murders marked the beginning of bodyguards for the famous, and elaborate alarm systems, and high walls and gates.
On a recent trip to Paris, I thought of looking up Roman to see if he would talk about the tragedy from his point of view. He was in a horrible position when he returned from England after the murders. There was probably no more photographed man in the world at that moment than Roman Polanski, returning to a home that was now a crime scene with yellow tape around it after his magnificent wife and their about-to-be-born child had both been slashed to death. His close pals, such as Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Evans, the glamorous head of Paramount Studios, rallied around him. Since there was no place Roman could go without being besieged by reporters, Evans took him in behind the gates of his French manor house off Coldwater Canyon. He also hung out in Beatty’s suite in the Beverly Wilshire hotel and in a place rigged up for him at Paramount Studios. Meanwhile, word spread that the kinds of movies he made, such as Rosemary’s Baby, had helped create the atmosphere for the catastrophe that had come down on him.
Although I passed his apartment in Paris, I didn’t make any attempt to see him. I knew Roman slightly, but we had never been friends. Sharon was the one who was my friend, and I had met her through Jay Sebring, one of the remarkable Hollywood figures at that time. He was the first celebrity barber, and he became part of the scene. He was also part of Warren Beatty’s composite character in the film Shampoo.
Jay was a wonderful guy. When he was in a good mood, he could be as funny as anyone I ever knew. I think he had a social hang-up about being a barber, feeling that it put him on a lower step than the crowd he palled around with. He craved acceptance. He lived in the house where Jean Harlow’s husband Paul Bern had committed suicide shortly after they were married, and where Hollywood lore has it that Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, and Howard Strickling, the chief of publicity, had destroyed his suicide note before the police arrived. Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were Jay’s special buddies. They all loved motorcycles. Jay used to get himself up in leather, and an expression of bliss would come over his face when he was gripping the handlebars of his motorcycle. He also drove a Porsche, in which the police found marijuana and cocaine the morning after the murders. The first time I dropped acid, I dropped it with Jay.
Jay was credited with launching the trend of hairstyling for men. He was called a hairstylist, never a barber. Practically every male movie star in town went to him.
I had a regular appointment every third week, and it was in that room that I met Sharon Tate. She would often be sitting there in a chair, just to be with Jay as he worked. She looked so young that I thought at first she was coming there after school. She wore her blond hair straight and long. She was quiet and friendly and smiled a lot at our conversations. Jay was so proud of her. He couldn’t stop looking at her. It was as if he couldn’t believe he had a girlfriend that beautiful. I’ve never seen a guy more madly in love than Jay was with Sharon.
Sharon wanted to be an actress in the worst way. God knows, she was pretty enough, and one day her big break came. She got a part in a picture called Eye of the Devil, starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr, in which she played a French country girl with the powers of a witch. Sharon was ecstatic, and Jay was ecstatic for her. The movie was being shot in England, and before Sharon left, we drank champagne in Jay’s private room and wished her well. What none of us knew that day was that we were seeing the end of Sharon and Jay. In England she met and fell in love with Roman Polanski, who directed her in The Fearless Vampire Killers and co-starred opposite her.
Since she had become Mrs. Polanski, I hadn’t seen her as much as I had when she was with Jay. We talked about old times at the barbershop and the marvelous turns her life had taken. I was smoking a joint, and she took a few tokes. Everybody smoked joints back then. It was no big deal. She was joyous about having the baby, and she had never looked more beautiful. She spoke with great affection about Jay, and told me that he had become a family friend to her and Roman. There were rumors that all was not well in her marriage, but no such thing came up in our conversation.
William Tennant, who was Sharon’s agent, had the horrible task of identifying the bodies. He was close to Roman and Sharon, and Jay cut his hair. He was playing tennis that Saturday morning when he heard about the murders. He got to Cielo Drive around noon, still wearing his tennis whites. After identifying Sharon, Jay, Abigail, and Voytek, he broke down and sobbed. Then he called Roman Polanski in London and broke the news to him
newspaper account of that terrible event, as told by Susan Atkins, who killed Sharon:
“Sharon was the last to die,” Susan said with a laugh as she described how Sharon was begging her, “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to have my baby. I want to have my baby.” Susan said she just looked Sharon straight in the eye and said, ‘“Look, bitch, I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you’re going to have a baby. You had better be ready. You’re going to die, and I don’t feel anything about it.’ In a few minutes I killed her and she was dead.”
Extracts - Source - Vanity Fair
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Karina Longworth - You Must Remember This “Charles Manson’s Hollywood.”
episode 50-54 *strongly recommend
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by Debra Tate and foreword by Roman Polanski
“I always felt it was very unfair for her life to be remembered primarily for its final moments. Sharon had a magnificent life." Debra Tate -sister
“Sharon was more than just stunning to look at. She wasn't naïve or stupid or a cliché starlet. What had impressed me most about her, quite apart from her exceptional beauty, was the sort of radiance that springs from a kind and gentle nature.”
“Even after so many years, I find myself unable to watch a spectacular sunset or visit a lovely old house or experience visual pleasure of any kind without instinctively telling myself how much she would have loved it all,” Polanski wrote. “In these ways I shall remain faithful to her till the day I die."
Roman Polanski - husband
book review on The Cut
Chaos : Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
By Tom O’Neil
Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders – 2001
by Greg King
Sharon Tate: A Life -2016
by Ed Sanders
Sharon Tate: A Life traces Sharon's path from beauty queen to budding young actress: her early love affairs, her romance with and marriage to director Roman Polanski, and the excitement of the glamorous life she had always sought -- all set against the background of the turbulent 1960s. This sympathetic account tells the powerful story of her determined rise through the ranks of Hollywood and to the brink of stardom before her name became forever linked with the shocking murder spree that took her life.
Sharon Tate takes readers on a sometimes joyous yet inevitably heart-wrenching tour of the '60s as seen through the eyes of someone who lived it, survived it, and remembers it all too well.
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“unfortunately she’s a woman who has been defined by the tragedy of her death” Tarantino
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