Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: Plagued with arthritis and confined to a wheelchair in the last years of her life, she died aged 62 of a stroke in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was buried alongside her sisters in Corridor G-7 of the Sanctuary of Eternal Love, in the Abbey of the Psalms, of Hollywood Memorial Park, 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90038.

  Jessica Tandy

  Born June 7, 1909

  Died September 11, 1994

  The second oldest Oscar winner. Born in London, and educated at the Ben Greet Academy of Acting, Jessica Tandy’s career began on November 22, 1927, when she made her stage début as Sara Manderson in The Manderson Girls at Playroom Six. Her New York début came three years later and her first film role was two years after that, as a maid in The Indiscretions Of Eve (1932). She wouldn’t make another film for eight years and she was to make less than 40 films during her career, preferring the stage. In 1932 she married actor Jack Hawkins in Winchmore Hill, London. Their daughter, Susan, was born in 1934 and they were divorced in 1940. She found great happiness with her second husband, the actor Hume Cronyn, whom she married on September 27, 1942. They had two children: Christopher (b. 1946) and Tandy (b. 1947). Her films included: Murder In The Family (1938) as Ann Osborne, The Seventh Cross (1944) as Liesel Roeder, The Valley Of Decision as Louise Kane, Dragonwyck as Peggy O’Malley, Forever Amber (1947) as Nan Britton, September Affair (1950) as Catherine Lawrence, Desert Fox (1951) as Lucie Rommel, Hemingway’s Adventures Of A Young Man (1962) as Mrs Adams, The Birds (1963) as Lydia Brenner, Butley (1974) as Edna Shaft, Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) as Carol, Still Of The Night (1982) as Grace Rice, The World According To Garp (1982) as Mrs Fields, Cocoon (1985) as Alma Finley, *batteries not included (1987) as Faye Riley, The House On Carroll Street (1988) as Miss Venable, Cocoon: The Return (1988) reprising her role as Alma Finley and Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe (1991) as the eccentric Ninny Threadgoode, for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She lost out on the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, having been the first to play Blanche DuBois on stage, because Warner Bros thought that at 5́ 4˝ she was too short. The part went to Vivien Leigh. Tandy was to win three Tonys, an Emmy and an Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy (1989) in which she portrayed Daisy Werthan.

  CAUSE: She died of ovarian cancer in Easton, Connecticut. She was 85.

  Sharon Tate

  Born January 24, 1943

  Died August 9, 1969

  Texas belle. Sharon Marie Tate vies with Dorothy Stratten for suffering the most horrible death in Hollywood history. Born in Dallas, Texas, she was the daughter of Colonel Paul Tate of the US Army intelligence division and his wife, Dorothy. When she was just six months old, Sharon became Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas, winning the title of Miss Autorama in Richmond, Washington in 1959. In 1963 she began appearing as Janet Trego on the television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Attracted to dominant men, she started an affair with a French actor who once beat her up so badly she was hospitalised at UCLA Medical Center. In 1963 she met 5́ 6˝ sadomasochistic hairdresser and drug pusher Jay Sebring (b. Fairfield, Alabama, October 10, 1933, as Thomas John Kummer; married model Cami October 1960, separated August 1963, divorced March 1965) and their relationship lasted until she met her 5́ 4˝ future husband Roman Polanski in London in the summer of 1966. Sebring lived at 9820 Easton Drive, Beverly Hills, a house he had bought because of its ‘far out’ reputation. It was where Jean Harlow had lived with Paul Bern and where Bern died under mysterious circumstances in September 1932. Sebring and Sharon remained close friends to the end. In the meantime, she appeared in The Wheeler Dealers (1963), The Americanization Of Emily (1964), The Sandpiper (1965) and her first major role, as Odile, in Eye Of The Devil (1967) which was made in London. During filming she met Polanski and they were married at Chelsea Register Office in the King’s Road on January 20, 1968. Among the people attending the wedding reception at the Playboy Club were David Bailey, Warren Beatty, Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, Joan Collins, Sean Connery, Mia Farrow, Brian Jones, John Mills, Rudolf Nureyev, Keith Richard, Vidal Sassoon, Peter Sellers, Terence Stamp and Kenneth Tynan. Despite the marriage Polanski saw no reason to give up his womanising. Sharon was furious at his behaviour, but didn’t walk out of the marriage despite the urging of her friends. One, singer-turned-actress Michelle Phillips of The Mamas And The Papas and later the TV soap Knots Landing, who herself had an affair with Polanski behind her pal’s back, recalled: “Sharon had a sweetness about her that was rare. She just did not have any kind of mean-spiritedness in her. She was very open and genuine, not particularly intellectual, but people loved her because she was beautiful and because she made an effort to make everyone feel welcome and loved.” Sharon had appeared in Don’t Make Waves (1967) as Malibu, Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) as Sarah Shagal (he had taken semi-nude pictures of Sharon that appeared in the March 1967 edition of Playboy to promote the film), Valley Of The Dolls (1967) as breast cancer victim and actress Jennifer North, The Wrecking Crew as Freya Carlson and 12 Plus 1 as Pat. Sharon’s career never really took off. She was beautiful and thus probably not taken as seriously as she could have been. As her character Jennifer North commented in Valley Of The Dolls in the act of taking a drug overdose: “I have no talent. All I have is a body.” In 5́ 3˝ Sharon’s case, that wasn’t strictly true, but it might just as well have been. In early 1969 the Polanskis learned that a house at 10050 Cielo Drive, in a secluded cul-de-sac, then occupied by Doris Day’s son Terry Melcher, would be available to rent. On February 12, 1969, the couple signed a lease to rent the bungalow at $1,200 a month. They moved in three days later. Sharon was soon to discover she was pregnant and, despite Polanski’s constant philandering, she put her marriage and her baby first, leaving her career on the back burner. She had been a regular pot smoker, had tried LSD and had indulged in kinky sex before and after she met Polanski. All of it stopped with the pregnancy. Sharon didn’t tell Polanski she was pregnant until it was too late for her to have an abortion, but he was quickly enthused by the idea of becoming a father. (The novelty quickly wore off and he would return to constantly criticising his wife in front of others.) In April 1969 they moved to London. Sharon returned to America via the QE2, her pregnancy being too far advanced to fly. At Southampton, Polanski hugged his wife and began crying, telling her he would be with her as quickly as he could. However, once he left the ship he got into his Alfa Romeo, drove to London, rang his friend Victor Lownes and asked him to set him up with some girls. For the four months they were in London the Polanskis had leased the Cielo Drive house to his friend, 5́ 10˝ wannabe writer Wojiciech ‘Voytek’ Frykowski (b. Poland, 1936) and his girlfriend 5́ 5˝ coffee heiress and former volunteer social worker Abigail Anne ‘Gibby’ Folger (b. San Francisco, California, December 1943). They had moved in on April 1, 1969. During their tenancy they had operated an open house policy, with many people from the pornography industry and drug dealers dropping in. Sharon liked Gibby but hated Frykowski and suffered him only because he was a friend of Polanski. The losers and drop-outs continued to visit Cielo Drive, much to Sharon’s vexation. She rang Polanski, who claimed he was working on a script and couldn’t return to Bel Air just yet. To a friend he confined he couldn’t stand the sight of a pregnant Sharon and decided to wait until after the birth in the hope she would return to her old self. She was also annoyed that Polanski had asked Frykowski to stay at Cielo Drive and look after her. Then she learned of her husband’s affair with Michelle Phillips and considered divorce.

  CAUSE: August 1969 was much like any other summer month in California, hot and humid. On Friday August 8, the temperature reached 92°. The heat wave had lasted for three days and the residents of Los Angeles were worried. The heat did strange things to many people. Four years earlier in August 1965, the black area of Watts had erupted into violence during one such heat wave. In the hills above the city in the enclave called Bel Air the temperature was around 80°. The house at 10050 Cielo Drive was festooned with Ch
ristmas tree lights, put there by a previous resident, the actress Candice Bergen. Sharon Tate rose around 9am and went for a swim. She then rang her husband in London at 11.30am. He told her he would be home on the twelfth in time for his 36th birthday six days later. She leaned heavily for emotional support on Jay Sebring but was still unhappy about the presence of Folger and Frykowski. About 12.30pm actress Joanna Pettet and Sharon’s friend, Barbara Lewis, arrived for lunch, leaving three hours later. Around 6pm, 16-year-old Debbie Tate rang and asked her sister if she could visit but Sharon put her off and also cancelled a dinner party invitation she had for that night. Sebring later arrived to spend the evening with his friend. They went out to a Mexican restaurant, returning around 10.15pm. Folger went to her bedroom, took the stimulant MDA and began to read. Frykowski also took the drug and listened to music in the living room. At the opposite end of the house Sharon lay on her bed in a bikini chatting to Sebring. He drank beer and smoked a joint. Many people went to bed with their windows open during the warm weather and the windows were open at 10050 Cielo Drive that night. Outside the house preparing to butcher the occupants were four black clad members of 5́ 7˝ Charles Manson’s so-called Family of hippies and drop-outs. They were former topless dancer, bar hustler and practising satanist Susan Denise ‘Sadie’ Atkins (b. Milbrea, California, May 7, 1948), 6́ 2˝ Charles Denton ‘Tex’ Watson (b. Farmersville, Texas, December 2, 1945), former Sunday School teacher and insurance clerk Patricia Dianne ‘Katie’ Krenwinkel (b. December 3, 1947), and Linda Drouin Kasabian (b. 1949) who claimed she lost her nerve at the last minute and waited outside. She later became a prosecution witness. Believing the gate to be electrified, they scrambled onto the property over an embankment. Cutting the telephone lines, they first murdered 18-year-old Steven Parent, the caretaker. Watson levered open a window and climbed into the house letting his accomplices in via the front door. Watson shook awake Frykowski telling him: “I’m the devil. I’m here to do the devil’s business.” He then kicked Frykowski in the head. Atkins wandered around the house and saw Folger reading in bed. The coffee heiress looked up, smiled and waved. Atkins returned the greeting and then found Sharon’s room before she went back to report to Watson. He gave Atkins a rope and she tied up Frykowski and then went to fetch Folger, Sharon and Sebring. Watson took another rope, tied Sebring’s wrists and then put the rope around his neck before throwing the end over a ceiling beam. The other end he put around Sharon’s neck. The four were ordered to lie face down and Sharon began to weep. Sebring protested at the treatment of his former lover and was shot in the left armpit by Watson for his troubles. He then tied Folger’s hands with a length of the rope that bound Sharon’s neck. He tied it around Sebring’s neck and when he pulled it Sharon and Folger had to stand on their toes to avoid being strangled. When Sebring moaned, Watson rushed to him and began to stab and kick him until he made no more noise. Frykowski made a dash for freedom but was caught on the lawn where he was stabbed 51 times and shot twice. As he finished off Sebring, Folger also made a run for it but eventually surrendered to Watson’s mercies. He showed her none and she was stabbed 28 times, turning her nightie red. Her body was also discovered on the front lawn. Sharon pleaded for her life and that of her unborn baby. Susan Atkins screamed at her: “Look, bitch, I don’t care about you! I don’t care if you are going to have a baby! You had better be ready. You’re going to die and I don’t feel anything about it.” Then Sharon suggested they take her with them until she gave birth in around a fortnight and then kill her but allow her baby to live. At this point Tex Watson lost it and ordered Atkins to kill Sharon but Atkins, herself the mother of a 10-month-old boy named Zezo-ce Zadfrak (b. Spahn Movie Ranch, California, October 7, 1968), hesitated. Krenwinkel urged her on, saying, “Either do, or let her go, or just bring her with us and let her have her fucking baby.” The three argued while Sharon waited in silence. Then Watson slashed his knife towards Sharon’s face and Atkins began a stabbing frenzy. She took hold of Sharon’s limp body, cradled it in her arms, put her hand onto Sharon’s breast and then licked the blood from her fingers. The four left but then remembered one of Manson’s instructions. They drove back to the house and the word ‘Pig’ was daubed by Watson in Sharon’s blood on the front door. When ‘Coroner to the Stars’ Thomas Noguchi did the autopsy on Sharon he reported that she had died of multiple stab wounds of the chest and back, penetrating the heart, lungs and liver, causing a massive haemorrhage. She had been stabbed 16 times, five of which would have been fatal in themselves. Incredibly, each stabbing had missed the foetus and it was removed intact from her womb. Doctors estimated the boy, named Richard Paul on his gravestone, lived around 20 minutes after his mother’s murder. Around 8.30am the next morning the bodies were discovered by the Polanski housekeeper Winifred Chapman. The police were alerted at 9.14am. Rumours were rife about Sharon and Polanski, including suggestions that they had been involved in satanism, orgies and drug dealing and that the killings were a revenge for Polanski’s film Rosemary’s Baby (1968). All over the city celebrities flushed their stashes of drugs. “The entire Los Angeles sewer system is stoned,” said one actor, only half jokingly. The following night the four killers, plus Manson and Family member Leslie Sue Van Houten, set off to create more mayhem in Los Angeles. That evening they butchered wealthy supermarket boss Leno LaBianca (b. 1929) and his wife, Rosemary (b. 1931), at their home 3301 Waverley Drive, near Griffith Park. Despite writing ‘Death to Pigs’ in Mr LaBianca’s blood at the scene, police didn’t link the two sets of murders. They believed the Tate murders were related to the burgeoning drug culture and the LaBianca killings the result of copycats. In mid-August the Family ranch was raided by police and 26 arrests made, but all were released the next day. Manson believed a ranch hand had alerted the authorities to the presence of himself and his acolytes and the man paid for this belief with his life. A lucky break finally led to the capture of the Family and they began to talk about the murders while in custody. On December 1, 1969, Watson, Krenwinkel and Kasabian were charged with murder. Later Manson, Atkins and Van Houten were similarly charged. Their trial began in 1970 and they were all sentenced to death on April 19, 1971. Before the sentences could be carried out the State of California abolished the death penalty and the punishments were commuted to life imprisonment. The lives of Paul and Doris Tate were wrecked by the tragedy. He took early retirement from the army, becoming a private investigator, and she opened a beauty parlour. It took the devoutly Catholic Mrs Tate six months before she could visit her daughter’s grave. In 1982 she began to devote her life to ensuring that Sharon’s killers never walked free. That year Leslie Van Houten’s supporters arranged a petition containing 900 signatures demanding her release. Doris wrote a newspaper feature condemning the hearing and received 350,000 letters of support. She formed an organisation for victims’ rights and was instrumental in the passing of the Victims’ Rights Bill, which allows the family of those harmed to speak at the perpetrator’s sentencing and subsequent parole hearings. In this position Mrs Tate attended parole hearings for Tex Watson and Susan Atkins. Watson, who has fathered three children since being incarcerated, was denied parole in 1985. Atkins, like Watson, claimed to have found God but Mrs Tate told her: “You’re an excellent actress – the greatest since Sarah Bernhardt.” Application denied. In 1990 Watson again applied for parole and again Mrs Tate turned up. Amazingly, one of those supporting his application was the daughter of Rosemary LaBianca. Doris reminded the hearing of the words spoken by Watson as he entered her daughter’s home: “I’m the devil. I’m here to do the devil’s business.” “As far as I am concerned, Mr Watson,” she went on, “you are still in business. What mercy, sir, did you show my daughter when she was begging for her life? For twenty-one years I have wanted to ask this prisoner ‘Why?’ He did not know my daughter. How can an individual, without any feelings, slice up this woman, eight-and-a-half months pregnant? What about my family? When will Sharon come up for parole? When will I come up for parole? C
an you tell me that? Will the victims walk out of their graves if you get paroled?” Watson’s application was denied. On July 11, 1992, aged 67, Doris Tate lost her battle against a brain tumour. Her youngest daughter Patti has taken on her mother’s mantle and has successfully opposed parole applications from Atkins and Krenwinkel. Atkins wrote a self-serving book about her religious conversion, about which Patti commented: “I don’t hear the words of someone who is rehabilitated. I hear the desperation of someone trying to get out of prison. She does not deserve to walk the free streets … ever.”

  FURTHER READING: A Chronicle Of Death – J.D. Russell (Woodbridge: Apollo, 1971); Child of Satan, Child Of God – Susan Atkins with Bob Slosser (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978); Repulsion – Thomas Kiernan (London: New English Library, 1981); Helter Skelter – Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry (New York: Bantam, 1982); Roman by Polanski – Roman Polanski (London: William Heinemann, 1984); The Family – Ed Sanders (New York: Signet, 1989).

  Jacques Tati

  (JACQUES TATISCHEFF)

  Born October 9, 1908

  Died November 5, 1982

  Gallic comic. Born in Le Pecq, France, the son of an art restorer Tati joined the music hall as soon as he could and later moved into short films including L’Ecole Des Facteurs (1947), which was later developed into the classic Jour De Fête (1949). He directed just six films in his 60-year career and is probably best known for creating the bumbling Monsieur Hulot; he was nominated for an Oscar for writing Les Vacances De M. Hulot (1952). Tati went bankrupt in his native France and often asked to be paid in Italian lire. He also did not rate fellow Frenchman Marcel Marceau at all and was mightily offended when writer Barry Took mentioned the mime artist once when talking to Tati. He won an Oscar for Mon Oncle (1958) but much of his later work was disappointing.