Sharon Tate: A Life

by Ed Sanders

  Because of Polanski’s curriculum vitae, featuring films about satanic covens, mahemic murder, neck-slurp, and general weirdness, Polanski received a flow of scripts and book galleys from what could be termed the Poe Zone. He must have been comfortable with the P.Z. since he began creating, in early 1969, a project on the life of Paganini with Italian writer Ennio de Concini, a prolific screenwriter (and poet too) who had co-won an Academy Award in 1963 for Divorce, Italian Style. In addition, Polanski met English writer Ivan Moffat, who had an idea for a film on the Donner Party. And so the two, Paganini and Donner Pass, crept to life. Moffat had legs, having shared an Academy Award nomination for the screen adaptation of Edna Ferber’s novel Giant in 1956. He had also served as associate producer of George Stevens’s popular films Shane, in 1951, and A Place in the Sun, in 1953.

  The Donner Party was a group of eighty-seven humans who trekked from Illinois in 1846 toward California along a dangerous and untested route through eastern Utah. They were trapped by snow, and a subgroup of seventeen set forth to try to bring help from California, while the remaining seventy stayed behind, starving and resorting to cannibalism to survive. A perfect flick for Polanski.

  As for composer Niccolo Paganini, 1782–1840, he was reputed to have been the finest violinist in the history of Western civilization. He was a compulsive gambler, and would sometimes pawn his Stradivarius to pay off his debts. What was the hook for Polanski? Well, perhaps it was the belief, commonly held during Paganini’s lifetime, that his music was so difficult to perform that he had entered upon a pact with the Devil to accomplish it.

  His partner in Cadre Films, Gene Gutowski (in an interview in the 1990s) recalled the Paganini project: “We were going to do the story of Paganini. Roman was farting about instead of having a meeting; he was distracted in other directions. The writer finally delivered the screenplay which was to go to Paramount. It was way too long. Our lawyer Wally Wolfe was just afraid to take it to Paramount because it was just unprofessional. So we hired a writer to make it acceptable for delivery. So it was one of the pictures that never happened. But we did get paid.”

  A Possible Progression of Films

  Murder

  Knife in the Water

  Repulsion

  Cul-de-Sac

  Rosemary’s Baby

  Paganini

  Donner Pass

  A. H. Weiler of the New York Times wrote an article published on February 9, 1969: “Having bewitched moviegoers with Rosemary’s Baby, director Roman Polanski is now entranced by ‘real, equally fascinating people of the 19th century.’ Stopping over in New York last week en route from England to Hollywood, the diminutive Pole said he is preparing both a biography of Paganini and a film called Donner Pass, the tragic story of Western pioneers who were forced into cannibalism when they became snowbound in the Sierras. Paramount will release both films.”

  Polanski noted that “Paganini has been an obsession with me for almost 15 years.” Polanski looked shaggy-coifed and was dressed mod like a “King’s Road hippie.”

  “We’ll stress Paganini’s amazing character,” said Polanski, “so full of contradictions. There have been films about him before, but none of them caught the devilishness and virtuosity which guided the bow of the great violinist—his constant conflict with society, the church, kings, fellow artists, and the many women who fell in love with this physically ugly man.”

  Shooting was planned for Italy, France, and Austria for later in 1969. Meanwhile, Polanski remarked that Ivan Moffat was finishing the script of Donner Pass, noting, “It will tell the story of a group of educated people facing the ultimate test of character. What interests me is showing how far such people can go before they break.”

  On February 19, 1969, Polanski sent a précis of Donner Pass to Los Angeles Times entertainment critic Charles Champlin. In it he described how in 1847, starving, members of the marooned Donner Party, “cut out the heart and liver, and severed the arms and legs of (Mrs. Fosdick’s) husband. . . . She saw an immigrant thrust the heart through with a stick, and hold it in the fire to roast. . . . and the children were sitting upon a log, with their faces stained with blood, devouring the half-roasted liver of their father.”

  In early March he was still working with Ivan Moffat on the Donner project. In an interview with Joseph Gelmis around that time, Polanski described the Donner Pass: “The film is the story of people going from Illinois to California. At that time, there were only seven hundred Americans in California. So these travelers were going to this paradise and they were stranded in the snow in the Sierras in very early winter. Most of them died. The few that survived were accused afterwards of cannibalism.”

  “Cannibalism?” the interviewer asked, as if in surprise.

  “Yes, yes, I know, I know. But it has nothing to do with any of my earlier pictures. What makes you think I am obsessed by the bizarre?”

  Another interview with Michel Delahaye and Jean Narboni in early 1969 hints at an additional project, based on a science fiction book:

  Q: Do you have any projects in mind right now?

  A: I have two projects with Paramount but I don’t know which one I’ll do first. One of them is a Western which Ivan Moffat is working on. It takes place in 1846 and is a slice of American history that hasn’t ever been filmed but about which there’s a lot of literature. The other is a science-fiction book that the author is writing at the moment and which I’ve read only half of. I’m waiting impatiently for the second half. I won’t tell you the name of the author because I’m not committed yet.”

  An Allegation Regarding Films, Early 1969

  Speaking of films, there are reports of strange home movies done at the Polanski residence, such as alleged in Thomas Kiernan’s The Roman Polanski Story (a book much deprecated by Polanski as being full of untruths; Kiernan, a former editor of the Philosophical Library, also wrote biographies of John Steinbeck, Laurence Olivier, Rupert Murdoch, Jane Fonda, among others): “She (Sharon) went along with him in some of his more bizarre sexual practices—allowing him, for instance, to videotape the two of them making love and then sitting by quietly while he screened the tapes for friends at parties. But these were not the only tapes Polanski made. One of Sharon’s closest friends recalls traveling to San Francisco with her early in 1969 to visit her family for a few days. Polanski remained behind at the Beverly Hills house. When they returned a day before having planned to, Polanski was not at the house. ‘Sharon went into the bedroom to put her case away and found some tapes that she hadn’t seen before. We put them on the machine, and they turned out to be of Roman making love to someone else on their bed. Sharon turned white, and then got madder than hell. The marriage almost ended there. It probably would have, except she had just found out she was pregnant.’” The friend recounted Sharon later having an affair in Rome, out of vengeance.

  Sharon apparently confided much personal information to her friend, the photographer Shahrokh Hatami (who the reader will recall had filmed a documentary on the making of Rosemary’s Baby, and who took pictures and films of Sharon in the new house on Cielo Drive in early 1969). In an interview with the author on March 11, 2010, Hatami said, “They did a documentary on the last days of Sharon Tate in Paris by a production company called Sunset Press; Sunset Press sent a reporter and producer-director to New York when I was living in New York in 2005. She interviewed me, and she took a lot of film footage of me, showing my photos of Sharon Tate in the back of the interview scene, and. . . . they censored a lot of what I said to her.”

  “Why?” I asked. He replied, “Because I think they didn’t want to be too menacing to Roman Polanski. Because, Roman was—what I said that Sharon told me about Roman—about imposed sexual scenes on her.”

  I asked him to explain what he meant. Hatami answered, “He was bringing other girls to have threesomes with Sharon, and Sharon didn’t like it that he was picking up girls on the Sunset and bringing them home to have sex with them.” This was prior, Hatami said, to early 1969
. It was something I heard talked about among reporters covering the Manson trial back in 1970. Mr. Hatami, of course was a prominent photographer, taking very early pictures of the Beatles, and would go on to photograph world events such as the Israel/Egypt peace talks of 1977–1978, and the Iranian revolution in 1979. A collection of photos by Hatami covering the Iranian revolution is owned by the US Library of Congress.

  At a later occasion, the author had another opportunity to query Mr. Hatami about the above allegations. He was sure he heard about Roman picking up girls on the Strip from both Jay Sebring and longtime Polanski friend, Simon Hesera, whom Polanski had met while finishing Repulsion, and who was in Los Angeles, seeking to work in the film business, and staying at the Chateau Marmont at the same time as Roman and Sharon. (In 1969 Hesera directed a film, Day at the Beach, based on a screenplay by Polanski.) Hatami also claimed he was told about it by Sharon, saying, “I know about this because Sharon told me herself.”

  He further commented, “I wasn’t fond of that, let’s say, decadent Polanski’s relationship with the woman I loved, I mean I cherished her, I really cared about her, I got to know her before she met Polanski. I almost launched her in Europe as an American movie star, before she got known in the United States. That’s why I got the Life magazine assignment [in 1964].”

  “Sharon didn’t belong to any religion or anything?” I further queried.

  “No. She was very much a flower child.”

  Finally, I asked, “She wasn’t into the occult, let’s put it that way.”

  Hatami: “No. I don’t think so. I never knew anything in that picture of Sharon Tate.”

  Regarding threesomes and erotic filming, it was a revolutionary and experimental era, the 1960s, and a good number of young people—women as well as men—took part in activities that they later regretted or vowed not to repeat. Sharon Tate, raised a Catholic and imbued with monogamous values, would have been in those categories, and during her pregnancy, from all accounts, she lived a calm, pot-free, and normal life awaiting the birth of her baby.

  After Sharon Became Pregnant

  In a further interview with the author, Shahrokh Hatami brought up what Sharon had confided in him about her pregnancy. “Polanski didn’t want to father that child,” he recalled her confiding in him. I mentioned to Hatami what famous photographer and confidant of Sharon, Walter Chappell, had told me when I was researching the Manson group in 1971, about Roman not wanting to have the baby. (Chappell had told me back then that Hatami was making films of Barbara Bouchet, Ann Ford, and Sharon Tate. Ann Ford told Chappell that Roman Polanski had wanted Sharon Tate, when she became pregnant, late 1968-early 1969, to get an abortion.)

  Hatami informed the author: “Sharon told me the reason he went back to live in London was a protest—Sharon was telling me all her secrets, what was going on in her life. ‘I told him that I’m expecting his child, he’s said that he doesn’t want to father a child, and protested.’ But Sharon told him, ‘You can’t do anything, it’s my child. I’m going to keep it.’”

  Even with his poor estimation of Polanski “as a person,” Hatami told me he admires Polanski as a filmmaker. In fact, he stated in an interview with me, “Whenever I’m in Sacramento, I’d like to go see the governor, and to petition the governor to pardon him. If he does that, Roman could be free to come back to the United States, and being the great filmmaker that he is, to work in this country. Even though I don’t like Roman as a person, I think he is a great filmmaker.” (Polanski has been in exile from the United States since fleeing in 1978 a conviction for various charges involving the statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old girl.)

  Meanwhile, The Wrecking Crew opened in New York City on February 5, 1969, and while it did not make an everlasting impression in the annals of time, it revealed Sharon’s skills as a film comedienne. Dean Martin reportedly remarked that he wanted to make another “Matt Helm” flick, and he was eager to have Sharon Tate in her same role.

  Whatever the reviews, Sharon had already signed on to do a lead role in a movie that also featured Orson Welles.

  Melcher and Bergen Move from Cielo Drive: January 1969

  Over the holidays, Candy Bergen and her mate, Terry Melcher, started to move their belongings from the house at 10050 Cielo Drive. In January they settled into his mother, Doris Day’s beach house on Malibu Beach Road. Bergen wasn’t sure why they moved, as she recounted in her autobiography: “He decided abruptly to leave the house on the hill, announcing on a Monday that we were moving that Friday to his mother’s weekend house at the Beach. I was stunned; he gave no explanation, saying only that it was all arranged.” She recalled that Terry Melcher was consumed in lengthy meetings attempting to sort out the messy finances left by his stepfather, Martin Melcher, who had passed away the previous year. Candice Bergen: “He never arrived at the beach house before ten o’clock at night after the debilitating days of meetings.”

  While the house on Cielo Drive was empty, Gregg Jakobson, a production assistant and talent scout for Melcher, arranged for Manson associate Dean Morehouse to stay there briefly. Morehouse was the father of a sixteen-year-old Manson follower nicknamed Ouish. Tex Watson visited Morehouse a number of times while he was at Cielo Drive.

  Real Estate Agent Helps Find House on Cielo Drive

  Real estate agent Elaine Young helped locate the property at 10050 Cielo Drive for Sharon and Roman. Young was also close to Jay Sebring. “I was his best friend!” she exclaimed years later to a writer of a piece on Sebring. She had been married to actor Gig Young, and would accompany him to Sebring’s salon when Gig had his hair cut, for the chance to hang out with the stars and hear all the gossip. “Jay was very good-looking,” Elaine Young recounted. “He was crazy about Sharon. The biggest mistake he ever made was not marrying her.”

  Sharon tossed a coin into the wishing well by the gate opening to the flagstone walkway leading to the house, and said, “We’ll take it.”

  On February 12, Roman and Sharon signed a lease with Rudy Altobelli, the owner of the three-and-a-half acre estate at 10050 Cielo Drive. Altobelli was the well-known showbiz manager whom Melcher and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson had tried to interest in the project to make Charlie Manson a star. Altobelli had managed a number of stars over the years, including Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, and at that time included the rising actor Christopher Jones, who had starred in the 1968 Wild in the Streets. In the future Mr. Altobelli would be coproducer of the hit CBS series Rhoda, starring his client Valerie Harper. Altobelli would live on the property in a smaller “caretaker’s” house located about 150 feet away from the main residence.

  On February 15, they moved into the house. The rent for the year’s lease was $1,200 a month, which seemed to be a bit of a rip-off, especially since the house had only three bedrooms, although it was well lit by night and fully serviced by landscapers and groundskeepers.

  There was an elegant loneliness of the location, high in Benedict Canyon, hidden in the wooded hillside. There was also a swimming pool and that huge two-story living room with an overhanging loft edged by a white railing. Roman Polanski was planning to put his offices in the apartment above the garage.

  Sharon’s friend Shahrokh Hatami has a somewhat variant memory of Sharon locating the house on Cielo Drive. In an interview Hatami told the author, “Sharon went to Europe for filming, and told me to find her a house. I was househunting for her and I found Cielo Drive.”

  “Through a real estate broker?” I asked. He replied, “The real estate broker was a woman, who showed me, and knows all about me being involved with the hunting of the house, and I got her to go see that villa. When Sharon got back and saw it, and said well, she was very happy, that’s the house where I’ll give birth to my baby. She was congratulating me; she was showing her happiness, by me finding that house, by just saying, Hatami, this is my dream house to give birth to my baby.”

  According to one account, Sharon’s sister Patti recalled Sharon and Roman had moved into Cielo Dr
ive on Valentine’s Day. On February 28, they were still unpacking. Across the ravine was the back end of the Doris Duke estate, looking a bit like a castle. On the front side of it was a plaque reading “Falcon’s Lair.” Sharon had apparently mentioned Falcon’s Lair when she described a nearby haunted house. (Looking at a map of Cielo Drive, I note that the property lines for 1436 Bella Drive, home of Doris Duke, and 10050 Cielo Drive are contiguous, to the north, so it is possible that Falcon’s Lair, built in the 1920s for silent film star Rudolph Valentino, was accessible from Sharon’s new house.)

  Around the time of Sharon’s move-in, her young sister, while visiting, wandered forth and somehow reached the driveway of Falcon’s Lair, then slipped and scraped her knee. At that moment a limousine bearing the reclusive multi-multi-millionaire heiress Doris Duke came up the driveway, and Ms. Duke, spotting the child, invited her into the mansion for cookies and tea.

  Sharon was called, and she arrived, saying “Miss Duke, I’m terribly sorry for the intrusion.”

  “Nonsense,’ replied Duke, ‘We’re having tea. Please join us.” Later Doris Duke sent baby clothes when Sharon returned from Europe to give birth to her child.

  Once moved into Cielo Drive, Sharon was at last ready to tell Roman she was pregnant. Around the same time there was a fundraising party in San Francisco for Jay Sebring’s hair salon, where Jay let slip to Colonel Tate that Sharon was pregnant.

  Around February, 1969, Sharon called photographer Walter Chappell who had photographed her in Big Sur in 1964, for producer Martin Ransohoff. She asked him to take some more pictures of her, which he did. As a friend, Sharon also divulged personal information on her pregnancy to Chappell. During those years, 1968–1969, Walter Chappell shot pictures of Harrison Ford and Dennis Hopper (while Hopper was editing Easy Rider). Chappell was a follower of Gurdjieff. He would soon make a movie about the American Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay beginning in 1969. (In an interview back in 1971, Chappell told the author that Roman, upon learning of her pregnancy, had urged Sharon to have an abortion.)