Chapter Fourteen
“The Wrecking Crew”
The 8-track tape player in Sharon Tate’s black Porsche is playing Françoise Hardy’s first album in English, Loving. The track that’s coming out of the sports car’s stereo speakers is Hardy’s version of the Phil Ochs song There but for Fortune. Sharon loves this song, and as she sits behind the wheel of the Porsche, driving down Wilshire Boulevard on her way to Westwood Village, she sings along with it.
Show me the prison, show me the jail,
Show me the prisoner whose face is growing pale,
And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why,
And there but for fortune, may go you or I.
Tears run down her cheeks as she sings. The actress is out running a few errands. She picked up some dry-cleaning. Three short mod-ish dresses, whose hems reach down to Sharon’s upper thigh, and Roman’s blue double-breasted blazer hang on clothes hangers wrapped in clear plastic on a hook behind the passenger seat. She also picked up a pair of chunky-heeled platform shoes from a tiny shoe repair shop located on Little Santa Monica Boulevard. And now she’s off to run her final errand of the day. She ordered a first edition of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a present for Roman. And the sweet old man who runs the store called the house yesterday to tell her it had arrived. So, singing along with Mademoiselle Hardy, enjoying an anxiety-free cry, Sharon races toward Westwood Village.
She spots the young hippie girl standing on the side of the road with her thumb stuck out about a mile after she turns onto Wilshire from Santa Monica Boulevard. The waify hippie looks pleasant, and Sharon is in a pleasant mood, so she thinks, Why not?
A year later, the answer to that question would be: because that hitchhiker could murder you. But in February 1969, even people who have something to steal, like Sharon in her cool black Porsche, don’t feel that way.
She pulls up to the curb in front of the sweet-looking freckle-faced hippie, hits the button to lower the passenger-side window, and informs the hitchhiker, “I’m only going as far as Westwood Village.”
The young girl bends over with her butt stuck out to look through the window frame at the driver. This young girl may be a free spirit, but she’s not just going to climb into anybody’s car. But upon seeing the beautiful blonde behind the wheel, the hippie’s smile grows wider and she says, “Hey, beggars can’t be choosers.”
Sharon smiles back at her and tells her to climb in.
The two young women chat easily together during the thirteen minutes it takes for Sharon to get to Westwood Village and park her car. The hippie girl calls herself Cheyenne, and she’s hitching up to Big Sur to meet up with a bunch of friends. They’re going to attend an outdoor music festival where Crosby, Stills and Nash (but no Young) will perform, along with the James Gang, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the 1910 Fruitgum Company. Sharon thinks it sounds like a lot of fun. If it was two days later, after Roman left for London, she’d consider driving Cheyenne to Big Sur and joining her and her friends for the concert. She might not actually do it, but she would consider it. Sharon has always had an impulsive streak. Roman does not, and it’s one of the few things that make her cooler than her hip movie-director husband. As they drive the thirteen minutes together, they speak of Big Sur and Crosby, Stills and Nash, listen to Françoise Hardy, and eat sunflower seeds out of Cheyenne’s small leather pouch.
“Well, bye-bye, have fun at Big Sur,” are Sharon’s last words to Cheyenne as she hugs her farewell in the pay parking lot behind the Westwood Village Theatre, where a large six-sheet poster for Roman’s friend Michael Sarne’s film Joanna is fly-posted on the wall. Then, while Sharon strides into Westwood Village to complete her errands, heading west, the little hippie girl continues on her California adventure, heading north.
As Sharon’s white patent-leather go-go boots walk past head shops, coffeehouses, pizza parlors, and newspaper vending machines giving away the Los Angeles Free Press, she removes the big black bug sunglasses from her purse and puts them on to shield her eyes from the glare of the California sun. As she moves toward her destination, she notices her new movie, the Matt Helm secret-agent adventure film comedy, The Wrecking Crew, is playing at the Bruin Cinema, directly in front of her. The big marquee reads:
DEAN MARTIN AS MATT HELM
IN
THE WRECKING CREW
E. SOMMERS. TATEN. KWANT. LOUISE
Smiling as she crosses the street, she stops in front of the drawing of herself on the film’s poster. She looks down the poster to the credit block and finds her name. She reaches out with her finger and traces it. After enjoying seeing her name, looking at an artist’s rendering of her swinging on a wrecking ball by a cartoon Dean Martin, and appreciating that the movie is playing at one of the premier Westwood houses, she trots past the cinema to the bookstore, four shops away. In Arthur’s Rare Books for Sale, the sound of the Classics IV’s Stormy emanates from the radio behind the counter. The moment Sharon walks through the door and hears Dennis Yost’s lead vocal, her body relaxes in response. Along with Art Garfunkel, Dennis Yost of the Classics IV has the prettiest voice in current rock ’n’ roll, Sharon thinks. And she thinks David Clayton-Thomas of Blood, Sweat and Tears has the sexiest.
“What can I do for you, young lady?” asks Arthur.
As she removes the sunglasses from her face, she greets the old man behind the counter. “Yes, hello, I’m here to pick up a first edition you called me about?”
“What book?” he asks.
“Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I ordered it a couple of weeks ago.” Then she clarifies, “It’s under ‘Polanski.’”
“Whoa boy,” Arthur says, “now you’re talkin’ books, kiddo.”
She lights up. “I know, isn’t it wonderful? I’m getting it as a gift for my husband.”
“Well, your husband’s a lucky fella,” says Arthur. “One, I wish I could read Tess of the d’Urbervilles for the first time again. And two, I wish I was young enough to be married to a pretty little gal like you.”
Sharon smiles once more and reaches out across the counter to touch the old man’s spotted hand. He smiles too.
As the Classics IV continue to play in her head, Sharon exits Arthur’s store and walks back to her car. Her long coltish legs move her white miniskirt down the Westwood Boulevard sidewalk, approaching the cinema where her movie is playing. Sharon starts to move past the cinema and cross the street, but she doesn’t make the green light on the corner, forcing her to cool the black heels of her white go-go boots. With her back to the cinema, the rare first edition in her hand, staring at the red traffic light, something snags Sharon from behind. Something that keeps her from crossing the street when the light finally turns green. Almost like a trout caught on an invisible fishing line, she turns around and walks into the courtyard of the Bruin and examines the lobby-card display out in front of the cinema. One lobby card has Dean with Elke Sommer. The lobby card next to it is her and Dean peering over a wall, spying something intriguing. In the photo, Sharon’s dressed in the cute baby-blue outfit with the adorable blue cap with the fluffy ball on top, which she wore through the whole last forty-five minutes of the picture. The next lobby card is another one of her and Dean. It’s a photo of her first entrance in the movie. On the lobby card, she’s lying on her back in the middle of a hotel lobby in Denmark, having just performed a comedic pratfall, with Dean bending down to assist her. Boy, she remembers that day. She was so nervous. None of her other acting jobs had ever required her to be funny, let alone perform slapstick! This was a first. And being a klutzy bumbler was the entire conception of her character. It’s why she took the part. But that didn’t make her any less nervous the first time she was meant to fall on her ass for comic effect. Not only that, but she also had to do it in front of Dean Martin, who spent twenty years watching Jerry Lewis fall on his ass. So if she fucked it up, Dean was going to know it. Now, both Dean and director Phil said she did a good job with the prat
fall. And they should know, right? Still, both of them were such gentlemen, even if she had done a bad job, it’s not like they were going to tell her. Sharon isn’t insecure about the whole comedic performance. She does think she eventually got the hang of the slapstick. She’s just not so sure of that first tumble. Is she really funny or is she “sexy little me” trying to be funny? How’s a bombshell to know?
The audience, dingbat, she thinks. The audience either laughs at the gag or they don’t.
The sign on the box-office-booth window reads that the showtime is 3:30. She checks the thin gold watch on her slender wrist, and it reads 3:55. Well, that’s okay, that’s around when she enters the picture. Holy shit, really? Sharon thinks. Do I really have time to watch The Wrecking Crew in the middle of the late afternoon and still get ready for this Playboy After Dark horseshit I have to do tonight? Well, now, wait a minute, Sharon, just forty minutes ago you were pumping yourself up about how spontaneous you are when compared to Roman. If not for Roman you’d be driving to Big Sur right now with Cheyenne and dancing barefoot in the mud to Crosby, Stills and Nash. But you’re going to stand out on the sidewalk and have a debate with yourself for twelve minutes about whether or not you’re going to go see your own movie? Sharon, she thinks, you’re a goddamn hypocrite.
“One please,” she asks the cute curly-haired rubber-faced girl enclosed behind the glass cube in the box-office booth.
“Seventy-five cents,” she answers back through the metal vent in the middle of the glass box.
Sharon starts to dig in her purse to produce three quarters, then stops herself when a thought enters her mind. “Ummm . . . what . . . uh . . . if I’m in the movie?”
The curly-haired box-office girl’s forehead shows thinking lines. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean,” she explains, “I’m in the movie. I’m Sharon Tate. My name’s on your marquee—I’m ‘S. Tate.’”
The curly-haired box-office girl’s eyes raise. “You’re in this?” she asks slightly incredulously.
Sharon smiles and nods her head. “Yes,” then adds, “I play Miss Carlson, the klutz.”
She moves over to where the lobby cards are on display and points at the one with her and Dean peering over the wall. “That’s me.”
The box-office girl squints through the glass in the box-office booth at the lobby-card picture, then back up to the smiling blonde. “That’s you?”
Sharon nods her head. “Uh-huh.”
“But that’s the girl from Valley of the Dolls,” the curly-haired girl points out.
Sharon smiles again and shrugs her shoulders and says, “Well, that’s me, the girl from Valley of the Dolls.”
The curly-haired box-office girl is starting to see it, but she has one last issue. She points at the lobby card and says, “But you have red hair in that.”
“They dyed my hair,” Sharon tells her.
“Why?” the curly-haired box-office girl asks.
“The director wanted the character to have red hair,” she answers.
“Wow!” the curly-haired box-office girl exclaims. “You look prettier in real life.”
Now, for the record, if you’re ever walking down the street and you see an actress you recognize in real life, and you think she looks prettier than she does in movies or on television, fight the temptation to tell her so. Because it’s not something actresses like to hear. It makes them feel insecure. But Sharon knows how pretty she is, so while it bugs her a bit, at the end of the day she doesn’t really mind.
“Well,” giving the box-office girl an excuse, “I just got my hair done.”
The box-office girl yells out the open back door of the box-office booth at the day manager, Rubin, who’s standing in the Bruin lobby, “Hey, Rubin, come out here!”
Rubin steps outside into the Bruin courtyard, as the curly-haired box-office girl points her finger at Sharon and says, “This is the girl from Valley of the Dolls.”
Rubin stops and looks at Sharon and asks the box-office girl, “Patty Duke?”
She shakes her curly head and says, “No, the other one.”
“The girl from Peyton Place?” he asks.
She shakes her curly head again. “No, the other one.”
Sharon chimes in on the guessing game, “The one that ends up doing dirty movies.”
Rubin recognizes her. “Oh!”
“She’s in our movie,” the curly-haired girl tells him.
“Oh!” says Rubin again.
“She’s ‘S. Tate,’” says the curly-haired box-office girl.
“Sharon Tate,” the actress corrects, then corrects herself, “Sharon Polanski, actually.”
Now fully up to speed, Rubin turns into the gracious manager greeting a celebrity patron. “Welcome to the Bruin, Miss Tate. Thank you for coming to our theater. Would you like to come in and see the show?”
“Could I?” she graciously asks.
“By all means,” he says as he makes a sweeping gesture with his hand to the cinema’s open front door.
Sharon walks through the lobby and opens the door leading to the darkened auditorium. As she was dicking around with the curly-haired box-office girl in the glass booth, she prayed she hadn’t missed her entrance and her comedic pratfall. As she enters the auditorium, she can hear the rotation of the reels on the film projector in the booth above her and even the slight tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . of the 35mm film print running through the projector film gate. She loves that sound.
Back in Texas, when she went to movies at the theater on her dad’s Army base, or when she went to the local cinema in town, the Azteca, either with her girlfriends to see something like Splendor in the Grass, or when she was enlisted to take her little sister Debra to see the new Disney movie, or at the Starlight Drive-In with a boy to see the new Elvis or Beach Party movie (and invariably engage in a slight wrestling match as she tried to watch the movie and he tried to make out), Sharon never thought about movies as “film.” Or, frankly, movies as “art.” Movies weren’t art, not like the Thomas Hardy book in her hand. They were just a fun thing to do. They were entertainment. But being with Roman has convinced her film can be art. Roman’s Rosemary’s Baby isn’t art like Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles is art, but it’s still art, just a different kind. She’s read the book of Rosemary’s Baby and she’s seen Roman’s movie, and Roman’s movie is more artful. Nor had she ever realized that certain directors make their films with the same power that great authors do. Not all directors. Not most directors. None of the directors she’s ever worked with, except her husband. But some.
She remembers an incident that happened on the set of Rosemary’s Baby, which drove this point home. The cinematographer, Billy Fraker, had set up a shot; it was of Ruth Gordon’s character, Mrs. Castevet. She’s in Rosemary’s apartment and she asks to use the telephone in the other room. Rosemary tells her to go into the bedroom and make the phone call, so Mrs. Castevet sits on the bed and talks for a moment on the telephone. And the shot was Rosemary’s perspective of a quick glance of the old woman in her bedroom making the call. So Billy Fraker set up the camera in the hallway and lined up the camera to shoot Ruth Gordon through the doorway. And the way Fraker lined up the shot, you could clearly see Ruth Gordon framed between the two sides of the door. When Roman looked through the viewfinder, he didn’t like it, so he adjusted it. When they did what Roman wanted, Mrs. Castevet wasn’t clearly framed. She was obscured by the left side of the doorway. When Sharon looked through the camera viewfinder (she always looked at Roman’s shots through the viewfinder), she couldn’t understand why Roman changed it. If the shot was meant to be of Mrs. Castevet, it clearly wasn’t as good as the earlier one. She was cut in half.
The cinematographer couldn’t understand it either. But Roman was the director, so Fraker did what he was told. While Roman sat on an apple box, sipping coffee from a white styrofoam cup, as the camera crew readjusted the camera, Sharon asked him why he changed the shot.
Roman just gave her a knowing elfin grin and said, “You’ll see.” Then he got up and scooted away.
Whatever the hell that means? Sharon thought. Then she forgot about it till six months later. The two of them were together at the very first audience test screening, which was being held at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California. Roman and Sharon sat toward the back of the auditorium, holding hands. Roman, who usually liked to sit closer to the screen when he watched other people’s movies, liked to sit toward the back when he watched his own—because he was watching the audience even more than he was watching the movie.
The cinema was packed. The scene with Mrs. Castevet in Rosemary’s apartment came on. Ruth Gordon asks Mia Farrow if she can use the phone in the other room. Mia says yes and points her toward the bedroom.
Roman leaned closer to his wife and whispered to her, “You remember when you asked me why I changed the shot?”
She had forgotten it, but she remembered now. “Yes.”
“Watch this,” he said, and pointed, but he didn’t point at the screen. He pointed instead at the whole sea of heads that sat before them, about six hundred of them.
On-screen, Mia Farrow as Rosemary takes a glance at the old woman in her bedroom, and the movie cuts to what she sees. Which is the shot of Ruth Gordon as Mrs. Castevet sitting on the bed, talking on the telephone, partly obscured by the left-hand doorframe.
Then suddenly Sharon witnessed all six hundred heads in front of her lean slightly to the right in order to see around the doorframe. Sharon let out a small gasp at the sight. Of course they couldn’t see any better by moving their heads—the shot was the shot. Nor did they intellectually know they leaned to the right; they did it instinctively. So Roman had manipulated six hundred people, and soon that number would grow to millions all over the world, to do something they would never do if they were thinking. But they weren’t thinking. Roman was doing their thinking for them.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Page 19
