Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders

by Greg King

  For a time, life in London was an enchanted, psychedelic dream, and Sharon and Roman stood at its very apex. They were always in demand at parties and premiers, she attired in fashionable miniskirts and boots while he sported Regency finery. They moved in the “rich hippy” circles that included members of The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones and London film society. Hashish, LSD and pot flowed freely through this privileged world of Nehru jackets and love beads, spurring innovative music and a rush of creativity. “The bright young generation in London,” Sharon declared, “are a bunch of free-thinkers who are feeling their way through life and leaving an impression on the times.”17

  Sharon shone brightly in this world. “Wearing an abbreviated miniskirt,” declared one reporter, “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.”18

  With such intense publicity, Sharon worried that word of her affair with Roman would leak back to Jay. Eventually, she made up her mind and told Sebring that their relationship had come to an end. “Before Roman I guess I was in love with Jay,” she told a friend. “It was a fine relationship but the truth is I was no good for Jay. I’m not organized. I’m too flighty. Jay needs a wife and, at twenty-three, I’m not ready for wife-hood. I still have to live, and Roman is trying to show me how.”19

  To her friend Sheilah Wells back in Hollywood, Sharon declared in a letter: “I was very sad about breaking up with Jay but it just wasn’t fair to him, plus I knew it wasn’t the right romance. I didn’t want to hurt him and I tried to keep it going. I just couldn’t fool myself, so I thought it wiser to tell him.”20

  On hearing the news, Jay flew to London, hoping to talk Sharon out of her decision. He again asked her to marry him, but Sharon gently refused, telling him that she loved Roman, and that their previous relationship was over. Jay quizzed her at some length, as if to ensure himself that she was truly happy. “He wasn’t entirely convinced,” recalls a friend, “and so Sharon arranged for Jay to meet Roman, against the latter’s wishes.”21

  The following night, dining with Sharon at Alvaro’s, Roman was startled to see her waving across the room to her former lover, who had been sitting at a table in the shadows. At Sharon’s signal, Jay joined them, kissing her and shaking Roman’s hand.

  “I just wanted to meet you,” Jay told the director. Roman was distinctly uncomfortable, as Jay began to question him about his past, his feelings for Sharon and their future together.22 Finally, Sebring seemed satisfied, telling Roman, “I dig you, man, I dig you.”23

  From that moment on, although their former romance came to an end, Jay became an important part of Sharon and Roman’s intimate circle of friends. He took his replacement by Roman graciously, but many of his friends knew that he was still in love with Sharon. When he died, he was still wearing her high school ring.24

  Chapter 9

  Don t Make Waves

  After work was completed on The Fearless Vampire Killers, Martin Ransohoff contacted director Alexander Mackendrick, who was busy in Hollywood working on a new comedy, a spoof of the Southern California beach movies which had been all the rage for the last several years. The film, Don’t Make Waves, had a secondary part for a female skydiver called Malibu. Originally, Julie Newmar was cast in the role, but canceled after she found the physical requirements too demanding. Ransohoff instead decided to cast Sharon.

  Don’t Make Waves starred Tony Curtis, and was based on the Ira Wallach novel Muscle Beach. Curtis played tourist Carlo Cofield who, while visiting Malibu, unwittingly became embroiled with a stunning former actress named Laura (Claudia Cardinale) whose last movie, having been filmed in Aroma-Rama, had led to the end of her career. A series of romantic triangles ensued, between Curtis, Cardinale and Robert Webber, who played her boyfriend; between Cardinale, Webber and Joanna Barnes, who played Webber’s wife; and between Curtis, Sharon and David Draper, the former Mr. Universe who was cast in the role of Malibu’s body-builder boyfriend Harry.

  For most of the film, Sharon appeared in a bikini, and her physical attributes were certainly exploited to their fullest. Although she seemed not to mind, she did dislike the degree of intimacy the script required between her character Malibu and David Draper. One scene called for her to rub oil all over his back. “Treat him like a horse!” director Mackendrick told her. “Pat him just as you would an animal.” Sharon complied, but, when Mackendrick yelled “Cut!” she dropped the bottle of oil and muttered a very audible “Ugh!” in front of the crew.1

  Don’t Make Waves was also the most physically demanding role Sharon had yet played. In one scene, Curtis arranges for Malibu, who is also a skydiver, to make a jump into the swimming pool of a beach house as part of a publicity stunt. Although Sharon was doubled for the stunt, Mackendrick arranged for both her and Curtis, under the supervision of Leigh Hunt (the sky-diving expert), to don the appropriate gear and hang on the skids of the plane, high above the ground, while cameras rolled to capture the moment before the dive. For Sharon, who hated to fly and was scared of heights, this was an ordeal.

  She suffered further still from the film’s final scene. Mackendrick had rented the house of TV producer Eliott Lewis, perched high on a cliff overlooking the beach at Malibu. In the film’s climactic scene, a mudslide sweeps through the house, knocking it first on its side, then upside down, before finally cascading down the hill and into the ocean. Two interiors were constructed on an MGM soundstage: one mounted on rockers, to allow for the action of the slide; and the other built upside-down. In the mudslide scene, Sharon, Curtis, Cardinale and Draper all suffered severe bruising as they were thrown back and forth against the walls and furniture of the moving set.2

  “Sharon was such a beautiful young woman,” recalled Curtis. At the time, Curtis was lonely and depressed, in the midst of a divorce, and Sharon tried to be supportive throughout the filming process. “She reached out to me,” he remembered, “but she was not a verbal person and neither was I.”3

  Her status had improved somewhat since her first major role in Ransohoff’s production Eye of the Devil. Sharon now had her own trailer on the film set, and her name was used along with those of her two co-stars to promote the film on billboards and posters. Her role, too, had more screen time than any of her previous work. She was a natural on the California beach, in her element, beautiful in a polka-dot blouse, unbuttoned low throughout the film to reveal her generous cleavage. For her work on Don’t Make Waves, Sharon was paid a very respectable $750 a week.4

  She missed Roman terribly. In letter after letter to her lover in London, Sharon described the progress on her new film; her longing for Roman; and the smallest details of her daily life without him, including the proud boast that she had stopped biting her fingernails.5 She proudly told a reporter that she never socialized with men when away from Roman; when she went out to dinner, or to go see a film, it was always with a group of girlfriends, or with her maid. She spent most of her evenings quietly, walking along the Santa Monica beach at sunset, doing needlework, or reading The History of Philosophy by Will Durant.6

  The only bonus to being in California again, as far as Sharon was concerned, was being close to her family. Her father, having been stationed in Korea doing Army Intelligence work for the Vietnam War prosecution, had been reassigned to Fort Barry near San Francisco. Sharon was able to visit her parents and her two younger sisters, Debra and Patti, who provided a relative balance to the stresses of her career.

  Although she had been a formidable influence in helping Sharon pursue her career, Doris Tate constantly worried about her daughter. On one trip home, she greeted Sharon with, “Have you had your blood count recently, honey? You look so pale to me.…” Nevertheless—and in spite of her fears for Sharon’s well-being in Hollywood—Doris, when asked about the films and her daughter’s relationship w
ith Roman Polanski, declared, “You know, I don’t care—just as long as she’s happy.”7

  Director Alfred Hitchcock had turned down the opportunity to film Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby just before its publication early in 1967. Instead, William Castle quickly purchased the rights for a meager $150,000.8 Castle, a producer and director responsible for gimmicky, low-budget thrillers like Homicidal, Macabre and The Tingler, at first secured Paramount Picture’s agreement to both produce and direct. But Robert Evans, Paramount’s Vice-President in Charge of Production, realized that, for all of Castle’s success, Rosemary’s Baby would almost certainly fall into the same B-grade category as his other films simply by nature of Castle’s involvement if he went ahead with the existing deal. Castle himself could not be displaced; but, rather than producing and directing, Evans asked Castle to let him hire a new director. Roman Polanski was his choice.

  In the end, it was Castle’s decision. At first, he was reluctant to accept the off-beat Polish director as a replacement. But, eventually—and after several weeks of discussion—Castle agreed to Polanski as director. Roman telephoned Sharon’s agent at William Morris to negotiate the contract between Paramount Studios and Cadre Films. In addition to Rosemary’s Baby, Polanski agreed to direct at least two further films for Paramount. At the time, no one guessed how successful Rosemary’s Baby would become, and Polanski was given a flat fee of $150,000 to write and direct, with no residual payments on further profits.9

  The multi-picture deal meant that Sharon and Roman needed to have a permanent residence in Los Angeles. While Roman remained in London packing their things, Castle helped Sharon with the search. He thought he knew the perfect house. Located along Ocean Front Highway, at 1038 Palisades Beach Road, it had been built by architect Paul Crawley for silent screen star Norma Talmadge in the 1920s; later, it was occupied by actors Cary Grant and Randolph Scott during their romantic liaison; by Howard Hughes; Irving Berlin; and by Princess Grace of Monaco during her visits to Hollywood after her marriage.10 A large, Norman-style mansion, with its own walled garden and swimming pool, corner tower and steeply-sloped roof, the house overlooked the length of Santa Monica Beach and the Pacific Ocean beyond. A large spiral staircase swept up to the second floor, where the sloped-and-beamed-ceiling master bedroom—“the size of a small ballroom,” in the words of writer Roland Flamini—opened to a bathroom tiled in lotus flower Malibu Pottery tiles.11 When Grant had married heiress Barbara Hutton, she had installed a replica of the dining room at Maxim’s in Paris, complete with mirrored walls and leather banquettes.12 The atmosphere was, as Roman recalled, “Hollywood film set of the thirties.”13

  “Sharon,” Castle recalled, “loved the house and felt that it would be just right. Later that afternoon, Sharon Tate, barefoot, stood on the beach, gazing at the ocean. Sunlight filtering through her honey-blonde hair; her eyes danced with excitement. “It’s perfect … Roman and I will be so happy here.”14 She managed to convince Roman—who at first thought the place was too extravagant—to sign a lease with the owner, actor Brian Aherne.

  Having settled in, Roman soon faced an unavoidable obstacle: one day, Sharon’s parents—her father home from Korea—arrived at the Palisades Beach Road property unannounced to meet him. Polanski was beside himself with nerves, but both Paul and Doris Tate seemed to accept their daughter’s relationship with the famous Polish director and soon Roman was at ease, chatting happily in his broken English with Paul Tate. With them, they had brought a housewarming gift: a Yorkshire terrier puppy, to replace the one Sharon had had in London. Roman decided to name the new dog Dr. Saperstein, one of the principal characters in Rosemary’s Baby.15

  Polanski later described Sharon’s parents as “cordial, but rather boring. Her father I liked very, very much. Her mother was very warm toward me, and very sympathetic, but she was too much for Sharon and for me in a way, kind of peddling mysticism.… Her father was a lovely man. I think they loved me.”16

  Roman’s father and stepmother Wanda also came to visit the new house in Santa Monica. Roman was even more uncomfortable with this visit than he had been with Sharon’s parents. The Polish couple criticized the weather, the food and the luxurious lifestyle in which Roman seemed to have been caught up. Sharon, however, managed to save the day by hauling out a couple of marijuana joints and getting Polanski’s stepmother Wanda stoned.17

  Polanski spent several months writing the screenplay for the new film. He was so impressed by Levin’s novel that he stayed rather faithfully to the written text. Then, with the script completed, he turned his attentions to casting the picture.

  At first, Roman considered casting Sharon as Rosemary. But, after some thought, he felt it would be wrong of him, as director, to suggest his live-in girlfriend to Paramount; instead, he hoped that someone at Paramount would raise the possibility. Sharon fit Levin’s description of Rosemary well, and, among themselves, she and Roman went so far as to discuss how the role might be played. But no one at Paramount ever suggested Sharon Tate as the star of the film.18

  Instead, Sharon suggested her friend Tuesday Weld, best known at the time for her roles as Thalia on television’s Dobie Gillis, for Cincinnati Kid, Pretty Poison, and Lord Love A Duck. But Castle and Paramount began to actively promote young actress Mia Farrow, daughter of actress Maureen O’Sullivan and recent star of television’s popular soap opera “Peyton Place”. All Polanski knew of her was that she had recently married Frank Sinatra, a relationship which had been the subject of innumerable gossip headlines due to the differences in their ages. When Polanski met Mia, he was taken with her quiet vulnerability, and agreed to cast her at once.19

  Any number of actors—Laurence Harvey, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford—were considered for the part of Rosemary’s husband Guy.20 Eventually, and somewhat reluctantly, Polanski cast John Cassavetes. Neither Polanski nor Cassavetes had much liking or respect for the other, however, and frequent shouting matches between the temperamental pair erupted on the set of the film. “You just try to keep alive with Roman,” Cassavetes told Hollywood correspondent Jack Hamilton in an interview on the set, “or you go under. Ask him why he’s so obsessed by the bloody and the gruesome, behaving like some kid in a candystore.”21 Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer were cast as the wickedly dark-humored neighbors who are actually the leaders of the Satanic coven.

  Sharon and Roman spent much time discussing elements of the script, including the famous dream sequence during which Rosemary is raped by Satan. The scene was developed from bits and pieces of their own dreams, together with experiences they had had while under the influence of LSD.22 The end result was one of the film’s most chilling moments.

  This dream sequence caused numerous problems on the set, most notably with Mia Farrow. When Frank Sinatra heard about the nudity involved, he firmly refused to let her do it. The conflict was but one example of the increasingly tense marriage between the older Sinatra and the younger Farrow. Sharon and Roman joined the Sinatras at their Beverly Hills house for dinner on several occasions, and also accompanied them to Sinatra’s Palm Springs compound, where they spent the weekends discussing the film. It was obvious from these brief domestic glimpses that all was not well. Sinatra only seemed happy when he was alone with Roman, discussing women and his love life over a cocktail.23

  Rosemary’s Baby was, at the time, receiving a great deal of advance publicity, and Sinatra seemed jealous of the attention directed toward his young wife. He was waiting for Mia to finish shooting Rosemary’s Baby before beginning his own film, The Detective. When shooting on Rosemary’s Baby went over schedule, Sinatra demanded that Farrow simply walk off the set to join him. She refused during a screaming match on the set—one of the many battles waged by the couple before those on the Paramount sound-stages.24

  When Farrow, anticipating her character Rosemary, had her hair cut short by Vidal Sassoon—surrounded by hoards of newspaper and television reporters eager for the publicity—Sinatra was furious, exploding
in anger just as her on-screen husband Guy had been scripted to do when he saw his wife’s new hairstyle. Things finally reached bottom when, as Mia was preparing to shoot a party scene for the latter half of the film, Sinatra’s lawyers arrived at her trailer on the sound stage and delivered papers announcing that Sinatra had begun divorce proceedings against her.25

  Farrow was shattered; from that moment, both Sharon and Roman took the fragile, depressed Mia under their collective wings, and she quickly became one of their closest friends. “Like the princess in a fairy tale, Sharon was as sweet and good as she was beautiful,” Farrow recalled. “Generously they invited me into their lives, and since I now had none of my own, I gratefully spent my weekends with them.”26 She later called Sharon “as pure and sweet a human being as I have ever known.”27

  Roman was interviewed by Look magazine prior to the film’s American release. When asked about the violence in his previous films, he replied caustically, “It excites me to shock. I like to shock bourgeois audiences who cannot accept that other people may be different from them.”28 While Polanski admitted to a certain eccentricity in his favorite subject matter, he believed that it was all only a part of the creative process. “I’m nuts,” he declared. “And Mia, too. There are 127 varieties of nuts. She’s 116 of them. That may be the reason she’s so charming; I never have trouble with her.… Only nuts are the interesting people. There’s nothing more boring than normal men. Fortunately, show business is full of nut cases. Maybe there is the reason I so much enjoy working in the film industry.”29

  During one break in filming Mia heard Roman and John Cassavetes having a rather curious discussion. “Roman was discoursing about the impossibility of long-term monogamy given the brevity of a man’s sexual attraction for any one woman. An impassioned John Cassavetes responded that Roman knew nothing about women, or relationships, and that he, John, was more attracted than ever to his wife, Gena Rowlands. Roman stared at him and blinked a few times, and for once had no reply.”30