Sharon Tate: A Life

by Ed Sanders

  The beauty also found the attention of Jack Palance, who sought her out, bringing her to Rome for a screen test, where she was accompanied by Doris, who was ever her willing urger. She also went out for a dinner date with Palance, which her mother allowed. Nothing came of all this attention, except perhaps the steeling of resolve to make it in the movies.

  At the suggestion of Ernest Hemingway, Verona was set as the location in the summer of 1961 for The Adventures of a Young Man, a movie based on Hemingway’s Nick Adams short stories. Hemingway himself wrote the opening and closing narration, and was scheduled to deliver it, but he killed himself at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961. While on location in Verona, cast and crew received word of Hemingway’s suicide.

  Directed by Martin Ritt and written by Hemingway biographer A. E. Hotchner, the film traces the life-voyage of a young man from Middle America coming to manhood after a cross-country journey followed by military service in World War I. This film sequences ten of Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories into one complete whole, with the story sequence realized by various well-known actors and actresses. Richard Beymer starred as Nick Adams, with roles also taken by Dan Dailey, Arthur Kennedy, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Newman, Susan Strasberg, Jessica Tandy, Eli Wallach, and others. The latter portion of the film set in Italy is drawn from Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms.

  By happenstance, Sharon and a group of her friends, while on an outing, came upon the crew filming Adventures of a Young Man in Verona. Sharon and some of her pals obtained parts as film extras. After the shoot, the youngsters were mingling with the cast, some of them seeking autographs from the stars. Beymer spotted the attractive Tate, introduced himself, invited her to lunch with the cast, and then they began to date during the time the production crew was in Verona. They became close, and he won the trust of Paul and Doris both. Paul Tate was known to grill potential beaus. (Also noticing Sharon was Susan Strasberg, who encouraged Sharon to study with her father Lee at his influential Actor’s Studio in New York City. This encouragement led Sharon, later on in late 1963, briefly to journey to New York City to study with Strasberg.)

  Richard Beymer’s career was heating up around the time he began to date young Sharon Tate. He had a big role (as Tony) in West Side Story, which was released in October of that year. Leonard Bernstein’s film was well received by the public and critics as well, and became the second-highest money maker of the year in the United States. The film was distinguished as being the musical with the most Academy Award wins (ten wins), including Best Picture. The soundtrack album made more money than any other movie track before it.

  A few months after meeting Sharon, Beymer had a substantial role in The Longest Day, a World War II film based on the book by Cornelius Ryan that tells the story of the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, from both the Allied and German points of view. This was followed by playing Joanne Woodward’s youthful love interest in The Stripper.

  Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had a paragraph about Beymer in a piece published in late December in the Los Angeles Times, which mentioned Sharon. “It’s all over between Richard Beymer and French sexpot Dany Saval after he gave her a ring and other attractive baubles. She must have been too flamboyant for his conservative upbringing. He’s consoling himself in Verona, Italy, with 19 year old Sharon Tate who wants to be an actress.”

  As for film student Roman Polanski, that summer of 1961, he was filming his first feature, Knife in the Water, in the Polish lake country, paid for by the Polish Communist government.

  Meanwhile, at her graduation dinner from Vincenza High, Sharon told her parents she did not intend to go to college. Sharon said, “Richard said he’ll introduce me to his agent in California.” And how would she survive? her parents wanted to know. On what money? Sharon replied, “I’ll use my graduation money and savings bond.”

  Around that time her father received notice of a promotion and a transfer to San Pedro, California, south of Los Angeles. Sharon was persistent in her eagerness to get back to the States, so it was agreed that she would go to Los Angeles alone a few months ahead of her family, apparently on the ruse that she wanted to examine potential colleges. In fact, she had really two goals—to pursue work in films, and to continue her relationship with Richard Beymer, who had returned to Los Angeles after work on the Hemingway film was completed.

  Upon her arrival in Los Angeles, she stayed temporarily at a friend’s home in Nichols Canyon and looked up Richard Beymer. (Mr. Beymer refused an interview with the author in order to clear up the muddy time-track for Sharon during her time alone in Los Angeles in 1961.)

  The true past can be like quicksand.

  Her letters from Los Angeles back to her parents in Italy had disturbing mentions of her desires to become an actress, and thus precipitously to go her own path. Doris suffered great separation anxiety over Sharon’s living in Los Angeles without her family. An anxiety that was ever increasing. She saw several doctors, one of whom diagnosed Doris with “acute separation anxiety disorder.” Faced with her mother’s increasing agitation, Sharon reluctantly returned to Italy.

  One biographer of Sharon has written about Doris Tate’s mind-state during the family’s final months in Italy, pointing out that “she was using Sharon as a way to escape her life, as at that point her marriage was disintegrating and she was spiraling into depression and addiction as well. There was A LOT of tension in that house.” At the same time, the biographer noted that the mother was very afraid of losing control over her beautiful daughter.

  Things finally worked themselves out, and around February of 1962, the entire Tate family, including Sharon, sailed to the United States aboard the USS Independence. One account holds that Sharon befriended seventeen-year-old starlet Joey Heatherton on the cross-ocean voyage.

  Sharon’s father, now a major, was assigned to Fort MacArthur, a US Army installation in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California (now the port community of Los Angeles), named for General Arthur MacArthur Jr. (father of General Douglas MacArthur). During the early years of the Cold War, Fort MacArthur was a key part of the West Coast’s anti-aircraft defenses, becoming the home base of the 47th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade. A Nike surface-to-air missile battery was activated at the fort in 1954, remaining in service until the early 1970s. It is thought that Major Tate’s intelligence work involved the protecting of Nike missile sites.

  Sharon wasted no time in continuing her quest for triumph in the world of celluloid. Two or three weeks after returning to the United States, she called Richard Beymer’s agent, Hal Gefsky, who, as a favor to Beymer, agreed to meet with her.

  By now, Sharon Tate was fully evolved into what the nineteenth-century novelist Balzac called la torpille, a torpedo or stingray—a stunner who could astound someone or a group just with her entrance. Hal Gefsky was properly stunned by her beauty, and agreed to help get her work. Her parents provided some limited financial assistance. After all, they were not having to come up with college tuition.

  In an article titled “Sharon Tate Leaves You Breathless” and written several years later, writer Robert Musel quotes Sharon on these early searching days: “You must remember,” she said, tracing her breathless tale, “that I was shy and bashful when I reached Hollywood. My parents were very strict with me. I didn’t smoke or anything. I only had just enough money to get by and I hitchhiked a ride on a truck to the office of an agent whose name I had. That very first day he sent me to the cigarette commercial job. A girl showed me how it should be done, you know taking a deep, deep breath and look ecstatic.”

  “I tried to do as she said,” Miss Tate explained, “but the first breath filled my lungs with smoke and I landed on the floor. The commercial required many takes. Just when they were ready for the final one, I passed out from taking too many puffs on my first attempt at smoking. That ended my career in cigarette commercials.” She’d never before smoked anything, and began coughing nonstop.

  In the summer of 1962, she cut a commercial for Chevrolet
automobiles and one for Santa Fe cigars. Also she was employed as a wine hostess for Lipper Productions, serving Kelly / Kalani Wine.

  She continued her friendship with Richard Beymer, including a love affair. After a while she saved enough so that she could move into her own apartment on Fuller Street, in a building managed by Richard Beymer’s mother, Eunice.

  Meanwhile, it would have been around early 1962, perhaps in the spring, just after Sharon had returned to California, that Richard Beymer went on location to various sites in France for The Longest Day. (The movie was released on October 4, 1962.)

  Next for Beymer was a film initially titled Celebration. Columnist Hedda Hopper inserted another paragraph about Beymer on July 9, 1962, “Richard Beymer is smart. When he finishes Celebration, he’s giving up his house here, selling his car, and hopping to New York to study acting for three weeks before starting A Promise at Dawn with Ingrid Bergman. ‘Playing opposite Bergman is a wonderful opportunity, and I intend to be prepared,’ said Dick. When they start filming in England, he’ll be across the channel from Sharon Tate (daughter of an Army officer he dated while doing The Longest Day). As far as his romance with French actress Dany Saval, Beymer says it’s over: ‘She wasn’t about to leave Paris—and my career is here.’”

  William Inge, author of the hit Broadway plays Picnic, Bus Stop, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, won an Academy Award in 1961 for Splendor in the Grass (Best Writing, Story, and Screenplay—Written Directly for the Screen). He had a further Broadway play, A Loss of Roses (starring Warren Beatty, Carol Haney, and Betty Field), which became 1963’s The Stripper, with Richard Beymer taking on Warren Beatty’s part.

  Filming for The Stripper (with the working title of Celebration) occurred in 1962 in the small town of Chino, California, about thirty-five miles from downtown Los Angeles. In the film, Lila Green (Joanne Woodward) is an insecure and aging showgirl for Madame Olga’s stage shows. When her boyfriend, Rick, runs off with the show’s money, Madame Olga lets Lila go, and Lila goes to live with her old neighbors, Helen Baird and her teenage son Kenny (Richard Beymer). Lila decides to go out and get a regular job and try and live a normal life. Then Lila and Kenny have an affair.

  It’s not clear whether Sharon Tate was with Beymer during the filming of The Stripper.

  As for A Promise at Dawn, which gossiper Hedda Hopper wrote Beymer was so excited about, it met with the Fox axe. There was turmoil at Fox studios, and three pictures scheduled for production were cancelled. Among those given the zilch notice was A Promise at Dawn, starring Ingrid Bergman, based on Romain Gary’s book of memoirs, and Take Her, She’s Mine, with James Stewart.

  While Sharon was jumping up and down to get to Hollywood, in the spring of 1962, in an aged Mercedes convertible, Roman Polanski drove from Poland on the way to Paris, with his worldly possessions aboard, including a print of his first full-length motion picture, Knife in the Water. It had been released without much fanfare in Poland on March 9. Even so, he had managed to complete a complicated project. It was quite a feat. The formidable tasks of making a feature-length film—raising the money; creating the script; doing the casting, the directing, and the costumes; inspiring good performances; thousands of decisions on the lighting, the sets, and locations; finding a good crew; editing; sequencing; adding music; dubbing—were all difficult, sometimes maddeningly difficult. But, he had completed a feature-length, professionally directed and filmed work.

  At the 1962 Venice Film Festival, Knife in the Water received the Special Critic’s Award, and it was commercially distributed in Italy, in Scandinavia, and in France.

  While in Paris, Polanski was invited to the first New York Film Festival. A gigantic break! Knife in the Water was shown there on September 11, 1963, after which it was nominated for an Academy Award as the best foreign picture.

  Chapter 2

  Discovered by a Producer

  Around April of 1963, Sharon’s agent, Hal Gefsky, arranged for her to audition for a television series in preparation that was then called Whistle Stop but was soon to become Petticoat Junction and was produced by a company called Filmways for CBS-TV.

  Filmways was a very successful producer of both movies and television series. The series Whistle Stop was to be a spinoff of another triumphant series called The Beverly Hillbillies. Filmways was casting for three unknown young women to appear in Whistle Stop, and Herb Browar, Gefsky’s contact at Filmways, gave the go-ahead for Sharon Tate to come to the studio for an audition.

  Set in the rural town of Hooterville, the show followed the goings-on at the Shady Rest Hotel, of which Kate Bradley (Bea Benaderet) was the proprietor. Her lazy Uncle Joe Carson (Edgar Buchanan) helped her in the day-to-day running of the business, while she served as a mediator in the various minor crises that befell her three daughters: Betty Jo, Bobbie Jo, and Billie Jo. The petticoat of the title is an old-fashioned garment once worn under a woman’s skirt. The opening titles of the series featured a display of petticoats hanging on the side of a large railroad water tank where the three daughters are skinnydipping.

  Just as Hal Gefsky had been blown away by Tate’s stunningness, so too was Herb Browar. He was so stunned, he rang for Filmway’s head Martin Ransohoff, who was in the midst of a shoot, and urged him to come check out the beauty in his office.

  Ransohoff, then thirty-six, had been instrumental in developing the early careers of such screen stars as Ann-Margret and Tuesday Weld, and remained eager to “discover a beautiful girl who’s a nobody, and turn her into a star everybody wants. I’ll do it like Louis B. Mayer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer used to, only better. But once she’s successful, then I’ll lose interest.”

  Browar brought Sharon to Mr. Ransohoff, whose camera crew was still in place, and upon gazing at the stunning beauty, Ransohoff asked her to do an on-the-spot screen test. This she did.

  “Marty saw me there,” Miss Tate later recalled, “and he said ‘Baby’—you know how Marty talks—‘Baby, we’re going to make you a star.’ He took me to his legal department and he said, ‘Sign this girl.’” (Quotes from an article by Robert Musel in Stars and Stripes, 1965)

  “I thought he meant somebody else. I could not believe he was talking about me. I looked so awful. I was wearing an orange dress with big patch pockets and my hair was all over the place. I still can’t believe all this is happening to me. It seems like a dream,” she said.

  The next day Sharon had a meeting at Filmways and brought along her mother from Fort MacArthur. Ransohoff, Sharon, and Doris watched the results of Sharon’s screen test from the day before.

  Ransohoff and his partner John Calley then negotiated an exclusive seven-year contract between Sharon and Filmways. Hal Gefsky represented Sharon, and secured around $750 a month for her.

  “Up until then, I had been living on a tight allowance from my folks and what with my sheltered life and all I had never even driven a car. But when I signed with Marty the contract provided for a car and that was the first thing I got. That and a dog.”

  Sharon Tate was too timid and unskilled to take on a substantial role in Petticoat Junction. (On September 14, 1963, Petticoat Junction debuted at 9:00 p.m., following The Red Skelton Hour and just before The Jack Benny Show. Millions of viewers were introduced to the community of Hooterville for the first time. The show was an immediate hit.)

  Meanwhile, young Sharon Tate submitted to Ransohoff’s will, and immediately began various lessons, including working with a drama coach, singing lessons in Pasadena, and daily workouts at a gym. Ransohoff not only filled her days with classes in gymnastics and acting, but also she was coached on how to walk, dress, and even talk. He took care of even the smallest of details on eating, and eating techniques, and even the car she drove.

  She was just twenty years old.

  Sharon moved into the all-women Hollywood Studio Club, “a chaperoned dormitory,” which existed to house young women in the motion picture business. The Studio Club existed from 1916 to 1975, was operated by the YWCA, and was
located in downtown Hollywood. It was packed with karma; it had been the home at one time or another to Marilyn Monroe, Donna Reed, Kim Novak, Maureen O’Sullivan, Rita Moreno, Barbara Eden, and many others. The building was designed by California architect Julia Morgan, who also designed Hearst Castle.

  At the Hollywood Studio Club, her first roommate attempted to lure her into a lesbian relationship, so she prevailed on her agent Hal Gefsky, who helped her to change roommates, and thus she moved in with a young actress named Mary Winters.

  Leonard Lyons’s column, “The Lyons Den,” originating in the New York Post, was reprinted in newspapers all over the nation. Here’s one with a couple of paragraphs about Sharon, from April 25, 1963: “Four weeks ago Sharon Tate, a 20-year-old blonde beauty, left her home in Verona, where her father is a US Army intelligence officer. She was intent on a career as an actress. Her father gave her the passage from Italy to Hollywood, plus $42 cash. The money was for two weeks’ rent in Hollywood. He gave her the two weeks to launch her career.

  “It took Miss Tate four weeks. She managed the additional rent and food money by doing a TV commercial. Then she was seen, and tested, by Marty Ransohoff of Filmways. He just signed her to a seven-year contract. She’ll make her debut with Lee Remick and Jim Garner in The Wheeler Dealers.”

  This Leonard Lyons column tends to date the meeting of Ransohoff and Tate in the spring of 1963. The author spoke with Mr. Ransohoff during the writing of this book, and his memory was lacking as to the particulars of both his contract with Tate and the date of the contract.