Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders

by Greg King

  For both Sharon and Roman the move to Cielo Drive marked a new chapter in their lives. Busy decorating her new home, Sharon finally began to return to her former carefree self, convinced that things between her and Roman were certain to improve. On their first night at 10050 Cielo Drive, Sharon and Roman camped out, celebrating their new home and toasting the beginning of a new future. In her radiant contentment and happiness, Sharon christened 10050 Cielo Drive her “love house.”12

  Chapter 16

  Pregnancy

  At the beginning of 1969, Sharon’s fifth major picture, The Wrecking Crew, was finally released. Although by no means a critical or commercial success, it did garner very good personal reviews for Sharon. While her talents as a dramatic actress might be in dispute, her sense of timing, delivery and deft physical ability marked her as a comedic actress of some potential. “Light comedy,” says Herb Browar, “is difficult as hell to do. But Sharon had the facility to do it, and do it well. I thought she was brilliant in The Wrecking Crew. There were scenes in that movie that really pointed out where she might have gone.”1 And Hal Gefsky confirms that Dean Martin was so pleased with Sharon’s performance that he wanted to do another Matt Helm film with her.2

  The role of Freya Carlson was a fairly high profile one, which must have had something to do with her decision to take it, but it is also clear that, given the terrible reception for Valley of the Dolls, Sharon had made a conscious decision to return to comedic terrain. She was not disappointed; Sharon’s performance was considered by many reviewers to be the movie’s highlight. The Hollywood Reporter declared: “In a role which paraphrases Stella Stevens in The Silencers, Sharon Tate reveals a pleasant affinity to scatterbrain comedy and comes as close to walking away with this picture as she did in a radically different role in Valley of the Dolls.”3 Although she would film one more picture before her death, The Wrecking Crew stands as perhaps Sharon’s most impressive on-screen work, a brief glimpse of what may have been had she followed a comedic path.

  At the beginning of 1969, Sharon was offered a script for an Italian-French production, Thirteen Chairs, to be filmed on location in her beloved Italy. With five major film roles under her belt, Sharon had become something of a recognizable commodity in Hollywood. Her great beauty ensured that people would notice and remember her, long after talk about how bad her films might be had fallen silent. She was considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, and producers and directors were anxious to exploit her fame in their newest motion pictures. In the fall of 1968, Sharon was both stunned and excited to learn of the results of a poll of movie exhibitors taken by the industry trade journal Motion Picture Herald. In this magazine, she had been named first runner-up, among theatre owners, to actress Lynn Redgrave as the top “Star of Tomorrow.”4 With this honor, Sharon had some additional clout in the industry and, when she eventually signed on to do a sixth film, she was able to command a very substantial $125,000 salary—nearly as much money as her husband had received for directing and scripting his multi-million dollar blockbuster Rosemary’s Baby.

  The poll results, as well as the disintegration of her marriage to Roman, certainly had something to do with Sharon’s eventual decision to seek a new film role. Before marrying Roman, she had declared with conviction that, once married, she would give up her acting career and devote herself to her role as wife. She had naively hoped and believed that married life would change Roman’s pattern of infidelities. When it became apparent that this was not going to happen, she decided to once again pursue her career as an actress.

  She was not, at the time, interested in another dramatic role. Having made a conscious decision to continue her career, Sharon decided to continue exclusively in two types of roles, which had proved so successful in the past: either sexy parts which allowed her to showcase her physical charms, or comedic roles, allowing her to further develop her growing reputation as a serious contender in the genre. Her decision reflected both her dissatisfaction with Valley of the Dolls and a growing realization that, no matter how hard she tried, Sharon would not score many points in the tough-to-crack dramatic market if people could see no further than her face and figure. Prior to Valley of the Dolls, she had desperately wanted to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress, feeling that it was necessary to prove herself in the serious roles in order to gain respect in the industry.

  Her change of focus, however was, on the surface, a wise move. Sharon did not entirely abandon the idea of making a name for herself as a dramatic actress in the future, but, in order to gain the leverage she thought necessary to secure such parts, she decided to first achieve some success in other roles, allowing her more freedom of choice when the time came if she wanted to switch her energies.

  The role marked for Sharon in Thirteen Chairs was that of female lead, a zany, comic, would-be conspirator trying to locate a fortune in stolen jewels. It was in no way a stretch for Sharon, similar to her previous role as Freya Carlson in The Wrecking Crew. Written into the script, however, were several semi-nude scenes, to briefly display Sharon’s breasts. The intended nude footage was to be included primarily for European distribution, and Sharon was somewhat reluctant to agree to the scenes themselves until she learned that they would not appear in the eventual American cut. However, it was the prospect of working with the rest of the cast that finally convinced Sharon to take on the part. Several big Hollywood names were slated to do the picture, including Orson Welles and Vittorio de Sica.

  She had few illusions as to the over-all quality of the script but, aside from her future co-stars, there was another factor which may have influenced Sharon to accept the otherwise mediocre film: it was to be shot on location in Italy, with post-production work in London, and this fact would allow her some time apart from Roman, give her back a measure of her independence and provide several months for her to consider her future, both as an actress and, more importantly, as Mrs. Roman Polanski.

  Just as Sharon made a conscious decision to pursue her career again, the unexpected happened: she became pregnant. She had made no secret of the fact that she wanted a baby, but Roman, reluctant even to commit to marriage, was hardly in the mood to consider starting a family. He had previously told Sharon, according to one source, that he would never have a child, remembering his own tragic youth in war-torn Poland, and declaring, “I would never inflict the possibility of that on another human being.”5

  Sharon had been using an IUD, installed in France a year earlier. Her doctor was mystified as to how the pregnancy occured.6 Although she knew of the pregnancy by the middle of February, Sharon did not tell Roman. Their marriage, just a year old, was already in deep trouble, an unsettling mixture of happiness and strained arguments. Uncertain about her own future, she still clung to the belief that fatherhood might change Roman’s philandering ways. Yet she was also aware of his opposition to a baby. Throughout the three years of their relationship, Sharon had always acquiesced to Roman’s wishes, and he had never shown himself to be particularly sensitive to her own desires. Sharon was also aware of her own weaknesses. In the past, Roman had easily managed to influence her in matters professional and personal. She had always wanted a strong, committed marriage, and it is a measure of his power over her that Sharon had begun to parrot Roman’s views about an open relationship, even though she herself was opposed to such an arrangement. Now, she apparently feared he might coerce her into having an abortion, and friends later insisted that she deliberately kept the news from her husband until such an option was too late.7

  That Sharon made a conscious decision to hide her pregnancy was later confirmed by her mother. Rather than tell Roman, Sharon instead confided the news to Jay Sebring. It was Sebring, still on very friendly with Sharon’s parents, who inadvertently became the first person to tell Paul and Doris Tate that they were soon to become grandparents.

  Sharon’s ability to temporarily hide her pregnancy from Roman also indicates that their physical intimacy must have been infrequent after Febr
uary of 1969, further suggesting a serious strain to the marriage. “By their first wedding anniversary,” confirms a friend, “a lot of us believed that things were over between Sharon and Roman. Nobody really believed that they had married in the first place, and I don’t think anyone expected that it would last. But we all knew that Roman was wildly unfaithful, and Sharon had begun to learn of more incidents. She seemed to be pulling away, quietly. And then she became pregnant, and managed to convince herself that it would change Roman.”8

  A month after moving in to 10050 Cielo Drive on 15 February, the Polanskis threw a large housewarming party for a hundred friends. “The party was one of those everyone-is-here-tonight affairs,” recalled John Phillips, one of the numerous guests. The evening was warm, the swimming pool glowed “like a giant turquoise stone set in the soft lawn,” the “elaborate array of lights along the rail fence” glowed, as did the lights of the city behind. The evening air was scented with “pines and cherry blossoms.”9 Other guests included Warren Beatty, Peter Fonda, Tony Curtis and Danny Kaye. Midway through the festivities of the evening, an altercation erupted between Roman’s agent Willian Tennant and three uninvited guests, Harrison “Pic” Dawson, Tom Harrigan and Billy Doyle—acquaintances of both singer Cass Elliot and Roman’s boyhood friend Voyteck Frykowski. The three men, who had arrived with invited guest Ben Carruthers, soon became drunk and Doyle got into a shoving match with Tennant after stepping on his foot. Angrily, Roman Polanski threw them out of the house.10 With the tense atmosphere, John Phillips and his wife Michelle decided to leave early, at the invitation of fellow guests film director Roger Vadim and his wife Jane Fonda. From 10050 Cielo Drive, the two couples went to Vadim’s Malibu beach house, where, joined by Warren Beatty, they carried on a small, private party until dawn.11

  The day after the housewarming party, 16 March, Sharon drove Roman to Los Angeles International Airport where he caught a flight to Rio de Janeiro to attend the film festival there. Sharon remained behind, packing her things for her own trip to Europe to shoot Thirteen Chairs. She anticipated joining Roman in London before filming began in Rome. The Polanskis—just a month after signing the lease on 10050 Cielo Drive—therefore decided to sublet the property. One of Roman’s friends, English director Michael Sarne, who had recently completed Myra Breckenridge, agreed to rent the house until the middle of the summer, when Sharon was due to return. But, before he was to move in, Sarne discovered a house on the beach in Malibu more to his taste and declined the Polanski house.12

  Instead, Roman’s friend Voyteck Frykowski volunteered to stay at 10050 Cielo Drive until summer. With him, he brought his live-in girlfriend, coffee heiress Abigail Folger. Roman had previously asked Warren Beatty if he would like to sublet the property. “I went up to look at the house,” Beatty recalled, “and thought, Yeah, I’ll stay here for a while, because I wanted to get out of the hotel, but then Abigail and Voyteck walked out from another part of the house, and said that Roman had told them to take the house. They said, ‘There’s plenty of room for everybody,’ but I thought, No, I don’t want to be in a house with other people.”13

  In late March, Voyteck and Abigail began to transfer their things from their house on Woodstock Road into the Cielo Drive property, in preparation of their move at the beginning of April. At the same time, Sharon herself was busy packing for her trip to Rome. She was scheduled to fly out of Los Angeles for Europe on March 24, along with Rudi Altobelli, who had business to attend to on the continent. The day before she left, Sunday, March 23, Sharon spent the afternoon posing for a dozen new publicity stills, taken by her personal photographer and close friend Shahrokh Hatami, a native of Iran. In the late afternoon, Jay Sebring, along with Voyteck and Abigail, arrived to have a farewell dinner with Sharon. While the four friends were chatting, Hatami noticed a strange man walking across the front lawn. He seemed unsure of where he was going, but something in his manner seemed smug to the Iranian photographer.

  Irritated, Hatami walked out onto the front porch to confront the man. “I wasn’t happy that he was coming on the property, and looking at people he doesn’t know,” he later explained. Standing in the shade of the porch was a short, casually dressed, long-haired man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties. The man said he was looking for someone—a name Hatami could not later recall, perhaps Terry Melcher. Hatami, in a loud and angry voice, told the stranger, “This is the Polanski residence. This is not the place. Maybe the people you want is back there,” he said, pointing toward the guest house at the far end of the estate. “Take the back alley.” Hatami indicated the dirt path on the other side of the split-rail fence which led from the paved parking area to the guest house. Just as the man was about to say something, Sharon popped her head round the door and walked out onto the front porch. “Who is it, Hatami?” she asked, stopping at the side of her friend. Hatami explained that the man was looking for someone else. Sharon watched as the stranger walked back across the lawn and down the dirt path to the guest house before she returned to the dinner party inside. A few minutes later Hatami saw the man walk back along the path and up the driveway toward the gate.14

  The next day, on board the airplane to Rome, Sharon asked Rudi Altobelli, who had been in the guesthouse the previous evening, “Did that creepy-looking guy come back there yesterday?”15 The stranger Sharon had watched walk across the front lawn of her house that Sunday evening was the same man who, just four months later, would order her death, Charles Manson.

  Chapter 17

  The Hippie Messiah

  Charles Manson was born on 12 November, 1934, the illegitimate son of a sixteen-year old runaway, Kathleen Maddox. Manson never knew his father, although he was believed to be a man known by the name of Colonel Scott. In 1936, Kathleen filed a suit for child support against a Colonel Scott of Ashland, Kentucky, and was awarded a judgment of $25, plus $5 a month until young Charles reached the age of eighteen. Scott apparently never paid, and is believed to have died in 1954.1 The surname Manson came from William Manson, a man to whom his mother was at one time briefly married.2

  From the moment of his birth, Manson was unwanted. His mother was an alcoholic, young and unstable; when money was tight, she occasionally turned to prostitution to survive, leaving her son in the care of relatives.3 When he was four years old, Kathleen and her brother were arrested after robbing a service station and sent to prison in West Virginia.4 For a few weeks, Manson lived with his grandparents, a rather strict, religious couple who made no secret of the fact that they thoroughly disapproved of both Kathleen and her bastard child. After a few weeks, Manson was sent to McMechen, West Virginia, to live with his mother’s sister Joanne and her husband Bill.

  For Manson, home was now a large, Victorian-style house, whose wide, curved front porch looked over the town and down to the river. Although he appears to have been treated well, the boy never entirely fit in.5 “He had just about anything he wanted,” recalls childhood friend Delores Longwell. “His aunt and uncle and grandmother took him to church. He didn’t like going. The only thing he really liked was the singing. Charles liked to sing.”6

  Kathleen was paroled in 1942, and returned to McMechen. “She was very, very motherly looking,” Longwell remembers, “she was as motherly looking as my mother was.”7 Manson, aged eight, was returned to her custody, and Kathleen embarked upon a nomadic existence, alcoholism and abusive lovers, sharing rooms with Charles in shabby, run-down hotels and boarding houses. On several occasions, she tried to place him in temporary foster care, claiming that she was unable to care for him; when this failed, Manson was sent to Gibault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana.8 “The only thing,” Manson would later declare, “my mother taught me was that everything she said was a lie. And I learned never to believe anyone about anything.”9

  Twelve-year-old Charles, according to the school reports from his time at Gibault, although on some occasions pleasant, also had “a tendency toward moodiness and a persecution complex.…”10 This was scarcely surprisin
g, considering that, by his own account, young Manson was regularly beaten and raped. He ran away shortly after his arrival to return to his mother, only to find that she did not want him. He managed to rob several stores before being apprehended and sent to Father Flanagan’s Boy’s Town.

  “A dead-end kid who has lived in an emotional blind alley is happy today—he’s going to Boy’s Town,” declared an article in the Indianapolis News. A large photograph of a smiling young Manson, accompanied the story.11 His stay at the legendary school, however, was brief; four days after Manson’s arrival, he and another boy stole a car and drove to Illinois, committing two armed robberies along the way. They stayed for a time with the other boy’s uncle, stealing from local businesses at his direction. When finally caught, thirteen-year old Charles was sent to the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield.

  During his three year term, he ran away eighteen times, hating the violence and harsh discipline. In 1951, he and several other sixteen-year-old boys stole a car and headed for California, robbing gas stations along the way. In Utah, they were finally caught. Driving a stolen car across state lines was a federal offense, and young Manson was sent to the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C., where he was to remain until his eighteenth birthday.