“The red Ferrari.”
Once Helder put out the call on the missing car, it was time to go home, something I’d been dreading since the LAPD called. The scene I was about to leave was almost as unbearable as the one I’d face at home.
Patti
Our solitude lasted for about an hour. Once the police released Sharon’s name, the phone rang nonstop. While I watched over Mom, Debbie answered the calls. Although waiting to hear from Dad, the press became so persistent, she took the receiver off the hook.
Soon enough, the television vans invaded our subdivision. Neighbors gathered on the street curiously watching the press members knock on our door or peer through the windows. In a matter of hours, the media transformed us from an average middle-class family to the hottest news story on the airwaves.
We huddled in Mom’s bedroom.
The time that had passed since Bill Tennant’s call was the loneliest of my life. The only sounds within our home were the faint voices from the street outside. Mom said Sharon was dead, but I didn’t believe it. I kept hoping that Sharon would call, and all that had happened would evaporate.
I knew Dad was home before he pulled in the driveway. From the car, he yelled obscenities at the reporters. When he came through the door, I was there, looking at him with the false hope that there had been a misunderstanding. When I saw his eyes, I knew. His hand cupped my cheek. “Where’s your mama, Sugar?”
I pointed toward the bedroom. He took my hand, and I followed him down the hall.
Next to Mom on the bed, he took a sighing breath before telling us that Sharon, Jay, Woytek, and Gibbie were gone. We held hands, all of us crying, except Dad as he relayed the details. By the time he finished, he’d answered the question that I’d held inside all day. We were now only a family of four.
As the daylight hours retreated, Mom remained inconsolable despite numbing sedatives.
I lay in bed, listening to my mother’s sobs from behind her closed door. Sheltered by a blanket tented around me, I cried as well. Huggles rested on my belly. My heart flared with guilt—I should have given him to Sharon sooner.
To prepare for the long night that was surely ahead, I kept a flashlight in one hand and a picture of Sharon in the other.
Nighttime and the darkness it brought have always been scary. Tonight, I imagined, it would be more frightening than ever.
2
FRAGILE
I guess I kind of live in a fairy-tale world. . . . We have a good arrangement; Roman lies, and I pretend to believe him.
—SHARON TATE
Patti
Sharon took me to Malibu beach. While she filmed her scenes for the movie Don’t Make Waves, I built a sand castle made of tightly packed walls and towers. Castle construction turned into a group effort when the film crew helped me with the details. The special effects man dug a moat. Tony Curtis placed a small crab in the center, and then crowned him king of the fortress. As a final touch, the prop man placed miniature flags on the highest towers.
I’d carefully chosen an area that was far enough from the water to avoid the high tide that eventually would come. I imagined that my castle would last forever, with people from all over the beach visiting it for years to come. But with the high tide came an unexpected storm. From the cover of a nearby dock, I watched the water increasingly rise until, reaching for my castle, a crashing wave washed it away.
Through the days and nights following Sharon’s murder, I thought a lot about that sand castle as my entire outlook changed. Life was fragile. I’d lost more than my sister; her murder was the wave that swept away my faith. My faith in good conquering evil, and love conquering hatred. My faith that anyone could protect me. My faith in God. Why didn’t He protect Sharon? Why was He ignoring my mother’s pain?
Mom fluctuated between denial and panic by the hour, sometimes by the second. Frown lines burrowed from the corners of her mouth downward, reflecting her deflated spirit. When I spoke to her, she looked at me, yet through me as if I was a puff of her cigarette smoke. I overheard her confess to Dad that she wanted to die. Before the murders, it never occurred to me that any of my loved ones would die; after, I fixated on who would be next.
I believe that homes have a personality. Overnight, ours lost its cheerful character. Drawn curtains shadowed every room to keep the media from peering in. Silence replaced the usual background chatter of the television or radio, both shut down to avoid the constantly airing stories of the murders. The smell of stale, thawing dinners replaced the aroma of Mom’s cooking. Family discussions around the dinner table were awkward; the past, present, and future were too painful to discuss.
For days, only the deliverymen bringing cards, telegrams, and flowers broke our seclusion. It was odd; Sharon’s friends wanted to let us know they cared by sending a remembrance, yet few called, and none visited, as if murder were a disease they might catch if they got too close.
We hadn’t even seen Roman since he’d returned from London. But he and his friend Victor Lownes did call to talk with Dad about Sharon’s burial. They chose Wednesday, August 13, for the funeral. There was only one problem—Sharon might not be in attendance.
The medical examiner, Thomas Noguchi, had completed Sharon’s autopsy days ago; nevertheless, late Tuesday afternoon, his office refused to release Sharon’s remains to the mortuary. Dad spent hours speaking with one county coroner employee after another; none had an explanation for the delay. When reasoning didn’t work he resorted to threats, until finally, at 5:00 P.M., Noguchi signed the release papers. The mortuary called. Sharon would be ready for viewing at 6 A.M.
P.J.
The room was a hodgepodge of manipulation with accents of warm colors, a hint of Pachelbel’s Canon in D, sprays of golden roses, and a plush chair that seemed it could absorb the heaviest of burdens. Each of the adornments complemented the next, except for the grossly out-of-place coffin. The funeral director, stiffer than a five-star general, lifted the coffin lid, eyeballing me as if he were about to reveal a long-lost Rembrandt. What he actually revealed branded my heart.
Sharon was in her favorite blue and white flowered dress. The studio artist who had done her makeup and hair created the illusion of sleeping life. I caressed her cheek, tracing a half-inch scar that she had acquired as a six-year-old. Everyone involved in guiding her acting career wanted her to have it removed. She wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s part of me,” she insisted, “it’s who I am.”
Below the scar, I felt a rough edge. When I smudged away the makeup, I uncovered a slash wound that shattered the illusion of her sleeping. Now my eyes scrutinized, searching for more signs of violence, settling on her noticeably smaller belly. My jaw tightened over Noguchi’s pointless decision to separate child from mother.
Sharon’s murderer stole something more precious to her than her own life; he’d denied her the breathtaking moment just after birth of seeing her baby, touching his silky skin, or smelling his newborn hair as she kissed the top of his head for the first time.
Though Sharon claimed her pregnancy was accidental, I didn’t believe her. She had dreamed of starting a family even before her marriage. Later, the men ruling her professional and personal life banned the consideration. Since beginning her acting career, her life had been gradually molded into an existence of insecure complaisance—all set into motion by producer Martin Ransohoff.
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Martin Ransohoff was a fast-talking, gum-chewing, two-pack-a-day smoker with an adrenaline level that sent many scrambling for cover. The Saturday Evening Post quoted him as saying, “I have a dream where I’ll discover a beautiful girl who’s a nobody and turn her into a star everybody wants. I’ll do it like L. B. Mayer used to, only better.”
As fate would have it, that girl turned out to be Sharon. Five minutes into their first meeting he impulsively called in his assistant. “Draw up a contract. Get her mother in here. Get my lawyer. I’m going to make this girl a star.”
Sharon was only nineteen, so Ran
sohoff convinced her to become a ward of the court, essentially giving him control of her career without interference.
A seven-year contract with Ransohoff—four of those years as options—made Sharon a commodity in which he invested thousands of dollars. She was as big a gamble as the stock market, but he stacked the odds in his favor by overseeing every aspect of her life. He filled her days with classes: acting, dancing, singing, and gymnastics. There were doctors to help her lose weight, and a variety of coaches to alter how she walked, talked, looked, and dressed. He decided who she lived with and where. He dictated even the smallest details of what she could eat and how she should eat it, what kind of car she drove, and boldly enough, whom she dated—which in most cases was no one. “I can’t fart unless Marty says it’s okay,” Sharon joked.
As the months rolled into a year, the joke turned increasingly sad as Ransohoff chiseled away at Sharon’s self-confidence to mold what he thought would be the ideal statuesque star.
Ransohoff moved Sharon into the Studio Club, an MGM-owned apartment building with female-only tenants and an 11:30 P.M. curfew. Her first Saturday night there, she joined a group of girls and headed to the Sunset Strip.
In the early sixties, nightclubs, restaurants, rock bands, movie stars, and teenagers packed the stretch of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood between Doheny and Laurel Canyon. It was the up-and-coming place to see and be seen. Stripped of social barriers, everyone fit in, and everyone partied until the wee hours of the morning.
A reporter for the Los Angeles Herald roamed the strip, randomly interviewing this new generation of stars and wannabes. When he came across Sharon’s group, he questioned them briefly, snapped a couple of photos, and was on his way.
Early Monday morning, before the alarm had a chance to go off, the phone stirred Sharon. On the other end was the curt voice of Ransohoff’s secretary. “He wants you in his office, pronto.”
“You doing your own publicity now, kid?” Ransohoff roared as he slammed a copy of the Herald on his desk.
Unnerved by his anger, Sharon reached for the paper. A small picture from Saturday night was in the entertainment section with the caption, “Are these lovelies the next generation of Hollywood bombshells?”
“I’m sorry, Marty, I didn’t know—”
“Save it, baby. You listen carefully. There are a million beautiful girls out there, but ninety-nine percent of them won’t make it to a movie screen because there’s nothing special about them. Within a year, they’ll pack their bags and crawl back to nowhere. If I so much as sniff your name near any publication, you’ll be doing the same. Steer clear of the press, and make damn sure you’re not photographed again unless I say so.”
Bit by bit, Ransohoff eroded Sharon’s identity. She was usually hidden under the guise of a black wig and pseudonym in the few small acting roles he permitted her to take. Behind his back, she cynically introduced herself as “Miss Anonymous.”
She did other things behind Ransohoff’s back, too, but the biggest infringement was starting a relationship with Jay Sebring.
Jay was not only the leading men’s hairstylist in Hollywood, but he carried a good amount of clout with friends and clients like Henry Fonda, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and Frank Sinatra. At any point, he could have used one of his friendships to coerce Ransohoff out of his no-dating policy with Sharon, but for her sake, he played along.
Ransohoff either saw Jay as an obstacle, a threat, or both. When McQueen called the producer of his next film on Sharon’s behalf to request that she be given a screen test, the producer—who happened to be Martin Ransohoff—wasn’t amused. Ransohoff did ultimately give Sharon a screen test for The Cincinnati Kid, but Sharon remained convinced that he had talked the director, Norman Jewison, into giving the part to Tuesday Weld to remind Sharon of who was in control.
Seemingly, Ransohoff’s response to her relationship with Jay was to sign her up for weekend classes and a seven-day workweek. Between both of their schedules, it was difficult to find time together, but when they did, they made the most of it by having dinners out, going to parties, or taking short trips to Vegas for drinks with Sammy Davis or Frank Sinatra before their shows. But Sharon would have traded it all for a single film role.
Two years after signing her contract, and with less than a dozen bit parts added to her résumé, Sharon restlessly hounded Ransohoff. “Marty, when is this going to end? All I do is go to class, eat dinner, and go to sleep. I barely even get to see Jay.”
His answer was always the same, “You’re not star material yet—and you shouldn’t be dating a barber.” That was, until the day that Sharon announced Jay had asked her to marry him.
Then he simply said, “I give it a month.”
Finally, by the summer of 1965, Ransohoff cast Sharon opposite David Niven and Kim Novak in the film 13 (released as Eye of the Devil). The plot centered on the famous grape harvests of France, but with a twist; an ancient Wicca sect requires a blood sacrifice to save the harvest.
Sharon left for London three weeks before filming began to join rehearsals and to prepare for her role as the cult’s high priestess. She spent mornings with a European dialect coach, and afternoons with technical advisors who taught her the customs of black magic.
Considering there were thirty thousand practicing witches in England, it was easy for the producers to find and hire their king and queen, Alex Sanders and his wife, Maxine Norris. During the initial rehearsal, the couple and their process intimidated Sharon, but David Niven broke the ice when he said, “I don’t know why we had to hire these two [witches]—for years I worked with many of them on Hollywood soundstages!”
Intent on delivering an intricate performance, Sharon absorbed everything Sanders and Norris shared with her—until they offered to teach her to fly on a broomstick. All she had to do was undress, and then apply a special centuries-old lotion. “No thanks,” she deadpanned. “I’ll stick to Pan-American.”
Beginning her film career in a movie with an unlucky number as its title didn’t bother Sharon. It was a different story for Ransohoff, however, as he quickly found himself producing a film riddled with problems. The project went through three directors, Sidney Furie, Arthur Hiller, and Michael Anderson before Ransohoff finally brought in J. Lee Thompson to complete it.
Kim Novak was the next of the film’s casualties. Except for a few awkward moments when Sharon would catch Novak staring at her, the two women got along on the set. But behind the scenes, Novak was less passive and routinely delayed the shooting schedule by arguing with Ransohoff. No one knew for sure what the problem was but as the crew eavesdropped at Novak’s dressing room door they could hear Sharon’s name mixed into her tirades.
Whether it was a curse or a blessing, Novak ultimately dropped out of the role after sustaining an injury in a horseback-riding accident. With eighty-five percent of the film already completed, Deborah Kerr replaced Novak, and new writers were called in to revise the script, shaving the Novak/Kerr role and enhancing Sharon’s part in the process.
During the chilly winter months, the film crew returned to the Château d’Hautefort in France to reshoot the necessary scenes.
Following 13, Ransohoff was set to produce director Roman Polanski’s upcoming film Dance of the Vampires. Though Roman had his current girlfriend, Jill St. John, in mind for the female lead of the film, Ransohoff pressured him to cast Sharon instead. Reluctantly, Roman agreed to have dinner with Sharon to discuss the role.
Their first meeting was “a case of instant hate,” as Sharon told the story. Intent on hiring St. John, Roman did everything he could to scare Sharon away—and it worked. After an hour-long dinner of listening to Roman’s bluntly cruel comments about how she didn’t fit the part, he walked her home. A block from her apartment, he changed tactics by making a disastrous move to kiss her. Trying to maneuver in front of her, his foot caught hers, and down they went. Untangled from his grasp, she smacked him on the back of the head and then ran to her apartment. Before t
urning the key, she looked back to make sure he hadn’t followed. He remained right where she’d left him on the ground, laughing. Inside, and straight away, she called Ransohoff. “That’s the craziest nut I ever met. I will never work with him!”
Neither Sharon nor Roman’s opinion mattered much though, because Ransohoff wasn’t the sort to take “no” for an answer. Forced to work together, production began on Vampires in February 1966 with Sharon playing Sarah, the innkeeper’s daughter who was targeted by the vampires as their next victim. In addition to directing, Roman acted in the role of Alfred, one of the vampire killers who tries to save Sarah. The rumored tension between Sharon and Roman fueled the film crew’s gossip tank, and they took bets on how many days she would last.
After working with Lee Thompson, who was such a gentleman, Sharon’s first weeks on the set with Roman were a culture shock. His temper and impatience seemed never-ending and at times tyrannical. He acted like a petulant child as he yelled outrageous comments at Sharon and demanded take after take. Though unnerved by his behavior, Sharon pushed forward, determined to prove herself as a professional actress.
Eventually impressed by her commitment to give him the performance he wanted, Roman became less antagonistic. Within weeks, their preconceived notions of each other evaporated. As Roman warmed up to her, Sharon took notice of the complexity within his personality. He was a confident director who took charge of every aspect of the film. When acting, he countered that strength by exposing his vulnerable side to create the role of the innocent, lovesick hero Alfred.
Sharon’s perception of Roman soon shifted from aversion to intriguing infatuation. When their working relationship extended into an after-hours friendship, it was his flair for living life without limitations that really seduced her.
By the time Sharon had to film her first nude scene, she completely trusted Roman as her director. Still, she arrived on set modestly bundled in a robe. When Roman saw her, he pulled her aside. “The more you try to cover up and act embarrassed, the more everyone around you will be embarrassed. You’re beautiful. Be proud of your body, it’s the purest thing a woman can do. Just let go, and no one will notice a thing.”
Restless Souls Page 3