Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders

by Greg King

  Sharon and Roman frequently entertained at their new house. Roman regularly brought friends back unannounced, but Sharon never seemed to mind. She enjoyed filling the role of housewife. She was a good cook, with her specialties including Virginia ham and upside-down cake, learned from her mother Doris. Sharon relished the domestic atmosphere; it was as close as she could come to getting a commitment out of Roman.11 She kept Patty Duke’s fifty-four-year-old maid Winifred Chapman, at a salary of $200 a week.12 She would later follow the couple when they moved to the house on Cielo Drive.

  “This was a happy, blameless period,” Roman would later recall. “There were lots of parties at people’s houses, on the beach or in the mountains, and often Sharon would make dinner, and there was this magnificent group of friends who would come to our house, and we would sit outside where it was warm, with the sky full of stars, and listen to music or talk for hours—films, sex, politics or whatever.”13

  In the months following work on Rosemary’s Baby and Valley of the Dolls, Sharon and Roman jetted between London and Los Angeles, dividing their time between the Eaton Mews flat and their house on Summit Ridge. They soon became among the most famous of celebrity couples in Hollywood. Photo journalist Peter Evans called them “The imperfect couple. They were the Douglas Fairbanks/Mary Pickford of our time.… Cool, nomadic, talented and nicely shocking. Their Pickfair (Sharome?) was a movable mansion, a roomy rebellion. Curious, unafraid, they helped demolish the ancient Hollywood image of what movie stardom was all about. They became part of the anti-Establishment Establishment. They became rich but never regal.”14

  Polanski’s influence over Sharon continued to grow, and not everyone welcomed the changes. Although Sharon seemed to be happy, there was a wilder streak in her which did not go unnoticed. Once, Hal Gefsky and Herb Browar were dining at a restaurant in Hollywood when they happened to spot Polanski across the room. Gefsky waved him over, and asked how Sharon was doing. “Oh, Hal,” Roman answered, “I’ve completely corrupted her!”15

  Indeed, their circle of friends largely encompassed those who fell somewhat beyond Hollywood’s older, more established society. Jay Sebring was an intimate friend, along with such notables as Steve McQueen; Warren Beatty; Jane and Peter Fonda; Dennis Hopper; Candice Bergen and her boyfriend, record producer Terry Melcher; Jim Morrison of the rock group The Doors; Janis Joplin; and the four members of the rock group The Mamas and the Papas—John and Michelle Phillips, Cass Eliott and Denny Doherty.

  Perhaps their closest friends during this period were Mia Farrow and Peter Sellers. Since her separation from Frank Sinatra, Mia had grown closer to Sharon, and often spent weekends with her and Roman. It was Roman who first introduced Mia to Sellers, whom he had met during the filming of Rosemary’s Baby. Polanski had taken an instant liking to the rather quiet and thoughtful man who, in private, was so different from his jovial public personality. Roman later remembered both Mia and Peter as being intoxicated with the late 1960s counterculture and all that went with it—Indian clothing, beaded chains and necklaces, meditation and astrology.16

  One weekend, Sharon and Roman and Mia and Peter went off to camp in the desert at Joshua Tree National Park near Palm Springs. They spent the weekend sitting around a fire, getting stoned and watching for UFOs in the night sky. Sharon and Roman, well aware of their friends’ susceptibility, taunted Mia and Peter by throwing rocks and stones into the vast desert behind their backs, then declaring that the noise must be a paranormal experience.17

  Recognizing Sellers’ loneliness, Sharon and Roman asked him to join them on a skiing holiday for Christmas, 1967. The group traveled to Cortina, where they spent their days on the slopes and their evenings huddled round a roaring fire in the lodge. For the holiday, Sellers insisted on dressing as Santa Claus. Sharon lent him one of her long, fox fur coats, which he coupled with a red ski cap worn atop his head and a white one tied round his chin as a fake beard. Thus attired, he handed round the presents.18

  The year ended with important career decisions by both Roman and Sharon. In Hollywood, Roman managed to buy himself out of Cadre Films’ three-picture contract with Martin Ransohoff’s Filmways, Inc., and instead signed up with the Ziegler Ross Agency. His new business manager and agent, William Tennant, quickly became a close friend, and he and his young wife Sandy frequently entertained Sharon and Roman at all of the fashionable Los Angeles nightspots.

  Under Polanski’s influence, Sharon had come to despise Ransohoff’s control, believing that he was deliberately stalling when it came to her career. The debacle over The Fearless Vampire Killers had proved the last straw. To please Roman, she was willing to sever her connection with Filmways. Despite the evidence to the contrary, as well as the massive amount of money he had poured into her success, Sharon felt her association with Ransohoff was responsible for her lack of success.

  With her career increasingly in question, she turned her thoughts to Roman, and to the idea of marriage. To this end, she apparently decided to quit the business. During a meeting with Ransohoff, Sharon told him that she wished to start a family with Polanski, and asked that she be let out of her contract’s remaining three years. Ransohoff agreed, conditioned on her intention to retire. The sacrifice of her career was a high price to pay, but, at last, Sharon was free to pursue her life as she wished.

  Chapter 13

  Marriage

  “I’ll give up acting the second I’m married,” sharon had declared in 1966.1 Now, having freed herself of her Filmways contract, her attention turned to Roman. They had been together for two years, and most of that had been spent living either in London or in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, Roman—who had the best of both worlds—was more than reluctant to consider marriage. There was no doubt that he loved her, but Roman feared the very idea, feeling it left him vulnerable. He knew that Sharon desperately wanted marriage and children. In spite of the fact that they had been living together for nearly two years, her deep-rooted Catholic sense of morality dictated that everything be made legal, in the eyes of not only the law but also of the Church.2

  “What does marriage mean, anyway?” Sharon once said. “Just a legal piece of paper and a lovely financial setup. Why would I want to ruin a perfect affair by turning it into a mediocre marriage for society’s sake?”3 But, while publicly declaring that she was not ready for marriage, this was, in fact, very much on her mind. In spite of Roman’s sometimes difficult nature and romantic adventures, she deeply loved him.

  The idea of marriage began to pepper their conversations with some frequency through the fall of 1967. While Sharon was certain that she wanted to be with Roman, she also worried that he would be unable to remain faithful once they had exchanged vows. She once complained to Harry Falk, former husband of her friend Patty Duke: “Roman wants to marry me. I don’t know what to do.” When Falk apparently warned her to consider Polanski’s past history as an indicator of future behavior, she said, “Thank you, I really appreciate it, you saved my life, I’m not going to throw away my life by marrying this little putz.”4

  Sharon’s ambivalence was real enough, but she was also aware that Roman was not likely to remain amenable to the idea of marriage for long. One night, over dinner in a restaurant, Roman raised the subject of marriage. The proposal, such as it was, was distinctly unromantic. “I’m sure you would like to get married,” he simply said to her. When Sharon quickly agreed, Roman declared, “We’ll get married, then.”5 With these words, whatever doubts either partner had were temporarily banished.

  The wedding was rather rushed; as a result, there were no invitations: Instead, Victor Lownes sent out telegrams to some fifty friends and acquaintances: “You are cordially invited to the Sharon Tate-Roman Polanski wedding reception at the Playboy Club this Saturday, 20 January, 1968, at noon. Informal brunch.” “It was all thrown together in a day or two,” Lownes recalls, “full of chaos and energy. But they seemed to live their lives that way, in a sort of spur-of-the-moment existence.”6

  Althou
gh her family were in California, Sharon agreed to Roman’s suggestion that they hold the actual ceremony in London, where they had a permanent residence, and where many of their friends lived. In her happiness, Sharon also agreed to forgo a traditional religious service; her wedding was to be a simple civil ceremony in a registry office. There was a bit of a last minute wrangle over Polanski’s divorce from Basia, and he had to produce the necessary legal documents from Poland before he could legally get the British Marriage Application and License forms. But, in the end, everything fell into place.

  The night before the wedding, Victor Lownes insisted on throwing Roman a stag party, much to Sharon’s annoyance. Attendees included the actors Michael Caine and Terrence Stamp, as well as a number of shapely beauties in various states of undress. By the following morning, Roman was bleary-eyed from too much alcohol and lack of sleep.7

  The ceremony took place at the Chelsea Registry Office in King’s Road, London, amid a crush of reporters and curious spectators. “There was a mob there,” says Lownes, “with cameras jostling, flashbulbs going off, people screaming when they recognized a face.”8 Just before eleven that Saturday morning, Sharon arrived with Roman from the Eaton Mews flat, and stepped into the chill January air. She had designed her wedding dress herself: a light cream-colored taffeta mini-dress. Sharon described it to reporters: “It’s Renaissance until you get below the knees,” she explained.9 The dress was a simple, traditional one above the waist, with puffed princess sleeves, a high neck, tight bodice and rows of small pearl buttons decorating the cuffs. One reporter noted that her skirt was “so mini it was almost minus. Her long, lovely legs were displayed in their entirety and she stopped traffic.”10 She wore sheer white hose and white pumps; instead of a veil, Sharon decorated her hair with sprigs of fresh flowers which matched her bouquet, and long ribbons, “like a cloud around her exquisite face,” as Joan Collins remembered.11 Except for the dress’s length, Sharon could have stepped from a Victorian afternoon tea. Roman was similarly attired, in an olive green Regency-style frock coat, bell-bottom trousers and wide cravat at his neck, at the suggestion of the owner of a Hollywood boutique, Jack Vernon.12 He looked, declared one witness, “like a cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and Ringo Starr.”13 Together, Sharon and Roman were very much the picture of fashionable, modern young couples of the late 1960s.

  A dozen photographers had crowded into the small registry office to record the event. Roman’s friend and business partner Gene Gutowski stood as best man, while Sharon selected her friend, actress Barbara Parkins, as her only bridesmaid. Parkins, too, was the picture of late-1960s fashion, attired in a long knit dress, and flowers in her hair. After the short ceremony, Sharon and Roman happily skipped down the staircase and into a sea of flashing cameras and shouted questions. “Sharon and I are very happy,” Roman announced to the reporters, a wide grin on his chubby face. Sharon was clearly beside herself. “I’m so happy you can’t believe it!” she declared, before running hand in hand with her new husband to a waiting car to be spirited away for the reception.14 “The bride and groom looked like reflections in a Disneyland funhouse mirror as they posed on the Registry steps with a gawking, gaping crowd jamming the street behind them,” one writer declared.15

  Victor Lownes had arranged for the closure of the Playboy Club so that he could host the wedding reception for his friends. The rich and famous flocked to the festivities: along with Gene Gutowski and his wife Judy, and Barbara Parkins, guests included Peter Sellers, Laurence Harvey, Michael Klinger, Rudolf Nureyev, Warren Beatty, Sean Connery, Kenneth Tunan, David Bailey, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Vidal Sassoon, Prince and Princess Radziwill, Leslie Caron, Christine Kaufman, Jacqueline Susann and Irving Mansfield, Michael Caine, Terrence Stamp, Mia Farrow, Candice Bergen, Joan Collins, Anthony Newley, John Mills and James Fox.16

  Lownes had invited a few reporters to the reception. The correspondent from The Times of London questioned Roman about his past with Sharon and their plans together. “Yeah, it’s true I photographed Sharon in the nude,” he declared. “Yeah, the pictures appeared in Playboy. But that’s all over now.” Sharon had previously expressed her desire to quit work and focus on her husband when she married, but Polanski had different ideas, a clear indication of the trouble which lay ahead: “No, that doesn’t mean she stops working,” he said. “I want a hippie, not a housewife.”17 When, at the conclusion of the brunch, the large, three-tiered wedding cake was wheeled in on a silver cart, it bore the joke inscription, “Happy Retirement, Hilda,” which drew howls of laughter from the crowd.18 On their way from the reception to return to their flat at Eaton Mews, Sharon, beaming at the gathered reporters, announced that it had all been “a very mod affair.”19 Even the staid Sunday Times declared that it had been “the ‘turned on’ wedding of the year.”20

  That evening, Sharon and Roman attended a concert by The Supremes at The Talk of the Town, before leaving for their honeymoon. As they departed, a reporter asked Sharon if she was looking forward to her time alone with Roman. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “We’ve been inseparable for two years and every day has been a honeymoon.”21

  The newlyweds first jetted across the Channel for a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps before venturing to Paris for the French premiere of Rosemary’s Baby. They took over several rooms at L’Hotel on the Left Bank in the St.-Germain-des-Pres quarter, and were soon joined by Peter Sellers and Mia Farrow. Sharon had broken her ankle in Switzerland and was limping in a plaster cast and on a cane, while her new husband sported a battered lip, from a fight when some Spaniards had tried to grab Sharon.22

  Sharon loved France, and Polanski had his new red Ferrari shipped over from Los Angeles so that they could explore the countryside. Together, the two couples visited old chateaux and the locations where Sharon had earlier filmed Eye of the Devil. They returned to France late that spring, driving to St.-Tropez then to Cannes, where Roman was to be a juror on the panel for the 1968 International Film Festival.

  Unfortunately, the visit coincided with the outbreak of riots in Paris, fueled when thirty thousand students had been locked out of the Sorbonne and taken to the street with rocks and sticks. The disturbance quickly spread to Cannes. Barriers were erected along the streets, and police in riot gear stood ready to protect the gathered celebrities. But the chaos in France politicized the proceedings. While directors such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard wanted to use the festival to protest, Roman only wished to enjoy his new-found status. “He just did not appreciate what was going on,” said Truffaut. “All he could visualize was Roman Polanski turning up to show everyone what a great guy he was.”23

  On 18 May, authorities canceled the film festival, and Sharon and Roman fled to Rome, driving his Ferrari across the mountains, followed by director Mike Sarne in his Rolls Royce. There was a slight hitch at the border; Roman had no Italian visa in his Polish passport. Sharon had her U.S. passport and managed to get through and Roman claimed to have lost his; Sarne eventually argued with the guards and managed to talk them through the border.24 At the end of their long holiday, husband and wife packed up their things and flew back to California, to settle down and begin their married life in the United States.

  Chapter 14

  A Troubled Marriage

  Nineteen-Sixty-Eight was a year of Violence in America. From the intensified escalation of the Vietnam conflict with the Tet Offensive to the protests in the streets from the antiwar crowds; the rise of the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King—the country seemed poised on the edge of an abyss. The violence and growing dissatisfaction were made all the more intense for millions of Americans who sat glued to their television sets as the horrors of the year were flashed before them in rapid succession.

  The world was falling apart. All of this stood in stark contrast to the previous year, the “Summer of Love,” as it had been proclaimed, when everyone gravitated towar
d San Francisco and Haight-Ashbury. The bohemian atmosphere in the streets quickly caught on elsewhere, and crowds of hippies, brightly attired in psychedelic robes and surrounded with a haze of marijuana smoke, were soon wandering up and down Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, attracting the curious attention of the rich and famous, who began to emulate their clothing, jewelry and concerns. The movement among the flower children was led by Timothy Leary, with his famous admonition to “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and by its musicians: The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and The Doors. From the brick walls of the Fillmore in San Francisco to the sea-side thunder of the Monterey Pop Festival, the music captured both the movement and its growing anger against the establishment.

  Sharon and Roman were not immune from the tenor of the times. On the evening of 3 June, they joined director John Frankenheimer for a dinner with Senator Robert Kennedy and his wife Ethel, on the eve of the California Presidential Primary. Sharon had taken an interest in the Senator’s presidential campaign, and was delighted to meet him for a few hours. The next day, having won the primary, he celebrated with a rally at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; later that night, bullets fired from Sirhan Sirhan’s gun ended the dream of another Kennedy in the White House. The mood of the country increasingly turned to violence, and the growing unease threatened to tear the country apart.