by Greg King
Gefsky and John Calley worked out the contractual details. According to its terms, Sharon received around $750 a month, a considerable sum for a twenty-year-old woman in 1963.41 Sharon would later come to regret the contract, and the enthusiastic haste with which she signed it. “When I was put under contract, I thought, ‘Oh, how nice, but’—I was just a piece of merchandise. No one cared about me, Sharon.”42 She seemed lost in the immense tangle of legal rights. First came parental waivers, along with lawyers awards, which officially made Sharon a ward of the courts until the age of twenty-one, thus allowing her to work unhindered in both New York and Los Angeles.
“My whole life changed from then on,” Sharon went on. “I had never even driven a car, but when I signed with Marty the contract provided for one, and that was the first thing I got. That and a dog. These little things count, you know.”43
At first, there was talk of testing Sharon with Al Simon for a role in Whistle Stop. Created by Paul Henning, the man responsible for The Beverly Hillbillies, Whistle Stop would tell the story of Pearl Bodine, cousin of the Hillbillies’ Jed Clampett, her three daughters, and their lives in the small town of Hooterville. Henning had based the idea on a hotel run by his wife’s grandparents in rural Missouri. Henning and Simon had already cast actress Bea Benaderet as Cousin Pearl, replicating her role in The Beverly Hillbillies. But both men wanted unknown actresses for the roles of her daughters. Sharon seemed to fit the bill and, along with Pat Woodall and series creator’s daughter Linda Kaye Henning, was tentatively cast in the production.
Sharon was thrilled. Against all the odds, she had finally succeeded, landing not only her first television role, but also a major, recurring part in a weekly series. Although panned by the critics, The Beverly Hillbillies was a commercial success, making genuine stars of its cast, and there was every expectation that the same would prove true for those involved with Whistle Stop.
But, for Sharon, the series was not to be. She was extremely nervous, and could barely deliver lines on cue. Her fumbling performance, not surprising in view of her lack of experience, convinced Simon and Henning that any casting would be rushed. She was eventually pulled from the production. In the end, Jeannine Riley was cast in the role, and the show went on the air in 1963 as Petticoat Junction.44
Ransohoff had never intended to cast Sharon in the program. He did not want to launch his new protege until he had an opportunity to cultivate her acting abilities and voice projection. This was a completely new world for Sharon, and she responded with single-mindedness. Rather than give in to the pressures, she became even more determined in her pursuit. Acting had always meant an opportunity to break free of her life and of her dependency on others. Sharon never complained to Ransohoff about the path he had marked out for her; she was both too shy and too uncertain of herself to force her career. She accepted Ransohoff’s pronouncements as gospel, never arguing with his cautious approach. “She wouldn’t even eat a hamburger if he told her not to,” one of her friends would later say.45 All Sharon could do was wait.
Chapter 3
Forquet
It was in 1963, while Sharon was having lunch with Hal Gefsky, that Lee Wallace from Twentieth Century Fox walked up to their table, accompanied by a tall, handsome young man. He introduced him as Philippe Forquet. Forquet, twenty-three, was shooting a picture for Fox called Take Her, She’s Mine, starring James Stewart and Sandra Dee, in which he played the romantic lead.
“We were very attracted to each other,” Forquet recalls of his first meeting with Sharon. The pair spoke at length, and Sharon and Forquet agreed to a dinner date. “She was absolutely stunning, perfectly genuine,” says Forquet.1 For her part, Sharon was attracted to Forquet’s maturity, charm and self-assurance. In addition, Forquet was blessed with a beauty which nearly rivaled that of Sharon. “My God, they were a beautiful couple together,” says Gefsky. “They got on very well together, and both turned heads wherever they went.”2 Soon, Sharon transferred whatever feelings remained for Beymer to Forquet. “With us,” Forquet remembers, “things became very intense, and very quickly.”3 They began to spend all of their time together. Sharon’s days were still consumed with acting classes, photo shoots and the occasional walk-on part, while Forquet was kept at Twentieth Century Fox working on his new film. But in the evenings, the pair dined together at fashionable restaurants and danced in the nightclubs scattered along the Sunset Strip.
On weekends, the young lovers escaped the city, often visiting nearby Palm Springs. “At that time, it was impossible to get a hotel room if you weren’t married,” Forquet remembers. “If we wanted to share, we had to pretend to be man and wife, and we always made up false names to sign the registers.”4
Sharon made no secret of her burgeoning relationship with Forquet, and soon, he faced the formidable ordeal of meeting her parents. “I thought her father was a very nice man. He was a sort of typical army man, rather quiet, reserved, but I think a very straightforward kind of person who seemed to like me. I can’t say that I liked her mother very much. She seemed to be more concerned about Sharon’s career than Sharon herself.”5
By this time, Sharon’s parents fully supported her career. Doris Tate’s early worries that Sharon would fall victim to the Hollywood system seem to have evaporated under Ransohoff’s careful protection. Doris remained strict, however, and was constantly on guard. “I know I was horrible at times, I really was,” she said. “I really kept a tight rein on, I had to.… I felt fine about Sharon being a star, as long as I was close by.”6
Forquet’s introduction into Sharon’s life seems to have greatly worried her parents. “They were very concerned about their daughter’s career,” Forquet recalls. “They wanted her to become a movie star, and I think there was a lot of resentment against me, and feeling that I was somehow going to stand in Sharon’s way.”7
But Sharon’s career was scarcely on hold. In the fall of 1963, Ransohoff asked Al Simon to cast Sharon in a small, walk-on role on CBS-TV’s Mister Ed. On the appointed day, Sharon duly reported for work at the General Service Studios in Hollywood, filled with excitement. Star Alan Young later recalled her great beauty, and the tragic aura which her participation lent to the show.8
Sharon filmed two episodes of Mister Ed. The first, airing on Sunday, 13 October, 1963, was a Columbus Day special titled “Ed Discovers America.” In the episode, Ed, the talking horse, instructs his owner Wilbur on the true history of Columbus’s voyage. The majority of the episode was a costume fantasy sequence, and Sharon, dressed in a dark wig and medieval costume, was scarcely recognizable.9
A few weeks later, Sharon returned to film a second episode, this one titled “Love Thy New Neighbor.” Airing on 15 December, 1963, it dealt with Ed’s increasing loneliness since his owner Wilbur befriended a new neighbor. Sharon played a telephone operator, called by the horse who is desperate for conversation. In the end, she hung up on him. In both episodes, Sharon was unbilled.10
The parts were negligible, but Ransohoff was satisfied with Sharon’s performance. He agreed to give her a small role in Paul Henning’s The Beverly Hillbillies, again insisting that she appear unbilled, and in a black wig. Her first appearance, as one of the students at a private boarding school invaded by Jed Clampett’s daughter Elly May (Donna Douglas), proved something less than a success. “When we first got her she couldn’t even walk through the door convincingly,” said Associate Producer Joe Depew. “She was very amateurish. It was hard for her to read a line.”11
“They got to work on me,” Sharon recalled. “Make-up people, acting coaches, vocal coaches, dancing coaches, dialogue coaches, exercise coaches, riding instructors and more.”12 This was scarcely the glamorous life she had envisioned. Each morning, she attended a speech class in Hollywood, before heading to Pasadena for singing lessons. This was followed by exercise and body-building at a Beverly Hills gym, and dance instruction at a private studio in Los Angeles. Afternoons were given over to acting classes. Five days a week, for ten hours
a day, she submitted to this regime. At night, she read plays, learned her lines for the following day’s drama class, or studied scripts.13 Over the course of three years, Ransohoff was believed to have invested over $100,000 in lessons, photo shoots and publicity to promote Sharon as the next big Hollywood star.14
One of her acting teachers, Charles Conrad, later said, “Such a beautiful girl, you would have thought she would have all the confidence in the world. But she had none.”15 It was a belief Sharon had long struggled against. “People,” she said, “expect so much of an attractive person. I mean people are very critical of me. It makes me tense.”16
Another drama coach, Jeff Corey, called her “an incredibly beautiful girl, but a fragmented personality.” He remembered spending long hours trying to break through Sharon’s seemingly impenetrable reserve. Once, he handed her a stick and bellowed, “Hit me! Do something! Show emotion! … If you can’t tap into who you are, you can never act!”17
Sharon, however, was not lacking in confidence so much as experience. She clearly recognized the need for the latter, and made determined efforts to improve her abilities. A drive to act had not brought her to Hollywood; it had been her stunning looks, and desire to create a new reality, which drove her pursuit. Her astute realization that beauty was not enough to propel her career only made Sharon throw herself deeper into training and lessons.
“It was hard work,” Sharon later declared, “and I can’t say that I didn’t get discouraged at times. Often I’d work for long periods thinking I wasn’t getting anywhere, then all of a sudden I’d feel that I had made a tremendous advance. So, it was more of a series of big jumps than a collection of small steps.”18
It was an intense time for Sharon, but she seemed to relish the experience, and remain good-natured throughout. Mike Mindlin remembers that she was “very, very friendly, very outgoing, and very playful. A lot of actresses aren’t, but she was, and she seemed bubbly and full of life. We used to joke a lot round the studio. Sharon was smart, reasonably sophisticated, and had a great sense of humor, which made her very fun to be around.”19 And Herb Browar says: “Sharon was a very sincere, nice person, genuine and very pleasant to be around. She always had a smile for everyone, but I think she was basically a rather serious person, and she treated her career that way. She always did what we asked of her, and was always on time to shoots. She seemed to have complete control of herself, but she was flexible enough to take things as they came. She had a good sense of humor, but she wasn’t a giddy young woman. Her maturity and self-control definitely distinguished her from the starlets we always saw in Hollywood.”20
The lessons began to pay off. Sharon grew in confidence, and, when she returned to the set of The Beverly Hillbillies, Joe Depew noted that “She learned a lot. She was a very pleasant girl and extremely beautiful.”21 Her hard work was rewarded when she was cast as Janet Trego, a member of the secretarial pool working at the series’ fictional Beverly Hills Bank of Commerce. Although she was still forced to wear a dark wig, for the first time, she was listed in the credits as “Sharon Tate.” Altogether, she appeared as Janet Trego in thirteen episodes, spread over the telelvision show’s 1963–1965 seasons. She also had two smaller roles, including one as a guest at a party given by the Clampetts in their mansion.
The Beverly Hillbillies gave Sharon valuable experience. Shooting took place at the General Service Studios in Hollywood, where she had filmed her episodes of Mister Ed. Although she shared a few scenes with stars Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Max Baer and Donna Douglas, most of Sharon’s work called for her to act with either Raymond Bailey, who played banker Milton Drysdale, or Nancy Kulp, who had the role of Drysdale’s secretary Jane Hathaway. On set and off, Bailey was apparently very much like his difficult character, and Sharon had to learn how to avoid his angry outbursts. “He wasn’t happy anywhere he was,” recalled Paul Henning. “He complained a lot, but he played the part perfectly.”22 “Sharon was a lovely young woman,” recalled Nancy Kulp. “She always seemed a bit cautious when she was on set, as if she was still getting her footing. She was very sweet, and seemed eager to learn, though I think she was perhaps a bit intimidated as well. I can’t say that she mixed with the rest of the cast. I do remember her laughter, though, which rang across the studio.”23
Ransohoff was careful to control her exposure, waiting for what he felt was just the right moment to launch her upon the public. “One of the rules Marty laid down when he signed me was no publicity and no professional acting until I was ready,” she later said. “So in order to give me some experience before the cameras, he put a black wig on me so no one would recognize me and I played a stupid secretary in another of his television series, The Beverly Hillbillies. That was a great thing for me because I could see myself changing for the better week by week.”24
At the same time, however, the relationship with Forquet was growing increasingly troubled. “It started as a beautiful affair,” says Forquet, “with tenderness and romance. After a while, though, I began to understand lots of things people were doing. Sharon had a lot of people round her, exploiting her, trying to achieve their own ends through her. We had lots of big rows about it, and things became tense. I wanted to pull away, but she kept after me, and she always managed to get me back.”25
In the fall of 1963, Ransohoff arranged for Sharon to take lessons under Lee Strasberg at the Actors’ Studio in New York. Forquet accompanied her, and the pair took an apartment together on Lexington and 78th Street. Sharon was so intimidated at the school, however, and so overwhelmed by the expected level of intensity, that she stayed for only a few weeks before bolting under the pressure. Even so, she made a lasting impression on the famous Mr. Strasberg. “She was only with me a few weeks,” he later said, “but I remember her. She was a beautiful girl.”26
Sharon joined Forquet on his walks to Carnegie Hall each day, where he continued to take classes. She spent her afternoons visiting museums or shopping. Inevitably, the boredom of her situation began to overwhelm her, and she was desperate for a change.
It came one night, while she and Forquet were having dinner.
“I asked Sharon to marry me,” he remembers, “and she said yes. She seemed very happy, and very in love.” Indeed, for a time, all was well. But after a few weeks, Sharon and Forquet returned to Los Angeles, where they broke the news to both Sharon’s parents and to Ransohoff. Neither the Tates nor the head of Filmways, Inc., however, seemed to be very happy about this latest development. “Ransohoff,” remembers Forquet, “came in and told Sharon that he was opposed to her marriage and wanted her to stop seeing me. He threatened to drop her contract if she didn’t break things off. And her parents got involved, too. They were worried that I was standing in the way of Sharon becoming a big star. I remember her mother talked about money, money, money—all the money Sharon would lose if she quit acting.”27
Sharon was caught in the middle. While she pondered what to do, word of the engagement leaked to the press. On 27 May, 1964, Harrison Carroll reported in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. “Just before he took off for New York, young French actor Philippe Forquet became engaged to Sharon Tate, who at the time was expected to marry Dick Beymer. Philippe has made a number of French pictures and played the romantic lead opposite Sandra Dee in Take Her, She’s Mine. He promised Sharon that he will be back with the ring in a couple of weeks. They expect to set the marriage date at that time. Sharon, a spectacular beauty under contract to Marty Ransohoff at MGM, is the daughter of Captain Paul James Tate.”28
The pressures on the relationship began to take their toll. Sharon grew nervous, uncertain, while Forquet was increasingly frustrated. “I became very unhappy,” he says, “and I flew off the handle at times.” The volatile nature of their relationship erupted into shouting matches which frequently turned into violent confrontations. Both Sharon and Forquet struck out at each other, not just with words, but with fists, shoes, plates and glasses as well. “It was very traumatic,” Forquet admits. “The w
hole time is a very bad memory for me. Once, Sharon cut me on the chest with a broken wine bottle. Another time, she stabbed me in the leg with a pair of toenail clippers.”29
Inevitably, Forquet, larger and stronger, came out of these confrontations less battered than did Sharon. Forquet had a temper, and in the heat of their arguments, his frustrations got the better of him. Once, he allegedly struck and kicked her so severely that Sharon had to be rushed to the UCLA Medical Center, where she was admitted for emergency treatment.30
It says volumes about her lack of self-esteem and need to be accepted that, even after being released from the hospital, Sharon returned to her fiancé. As determined and strong-willed as she might have been when it came to her career, Sharon was often ruled by her good-natured outlook and positive approach to life. Her response to trouble, whether in her career or with Forquet, was never to walk away, but to try to work through the situation and repair whatever damage had been done.
Sharon’s parents attempted to intervene in the situation, counseling their daughter to abandon the relationship. But Sharon could not, or would not, break free of Forquet. “Our relationship agonized for almost a year,” Forquet recalls. “It was like I was hypnotized. I couldn’t move or react.” After several uncomfortable confrontations with Sharon’s parents, Forquet fled to New York and, finally, back to France.31
Sharon was traumatized by the situation. In later years, she would mention the romance in interviews, but never disclosed the abuse which had characterized it.32 For his part, Forquet was equally shattered. “It took me ten years to recover from being with Sharon,” he says. “I wouldn’t allow myself to fall in love again.”33