EXCLUSIVE: How Roman Polanski forced wife Sharon Tate to have threesomes and make home sex videos for his friends but refused to sleep with her once she got pregnant and wanted her to get an abortion
- Sharon Tate was a flower child caught up in Roman Polanski's world of decadence and drugs
- An Army brat, she confided to Polanski that she was date-raped at 17 by a soldier in Italy, a new book about the actress reveals
- '[Polanski] told her how to dress; he told her what make-up he liked, what he didn't like,' reveals Tate's friend
- He was even pointedly cruel to her in front of others at times, calling her 'a dumb hag'
- Sharon got caught up in Polanski's sexual decadence and drug taking
- When Tate refused an abortion, Polanksi went back to London and had an affair with Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas
- The author suspects that Charles Manson was paid $25,000 by a British satanic cult to target Tate
Sharon Tate had a fatal attraction to dominant men - none more so than famed film director Roman Polanski.
Polanski
had the professional and personal power Sharon craved and thus she was
drawn into a world of frequent humiliations, subjected to his sexual
proclivities that included drugs, affairs, orgies and home sex videos he
shared with friends.
Polanski
ruled Sharon's entire life from the time she met him until her violent
death at the hands of Charles Manson's gang of evil, writes author Ed
Sanders in his provocative, well-researched book, Sharon Tate: A Life,
published by Da Capo Press.
Tate's father Paul was an army captain who was frequently absent. To occupy herself, her mother, Doris entered her beautiful little daughter in beauty contests.
Tate's father Paul was an army captain who was frequently absent. To occupy herself, her mother, Doris entered her beautiful little daughter in beauty contests.
Validation
from beauty pageants and recognition of her looks, combined with strong
direction from men became an imperative for the tragic actress.
Sexy starlet: Roman Polanski trolled
Sunset Boulevard and the boulevard's clubs for girls he brought home for
threesomes with Sharon Tate, a new book reveals
When she was crowned Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas in the summer of 1943 at six months old it marked the beginning of what became a lifelong pursuit: to be in front of the camera.
She won global beauty contests in Europe and then back in the US with the frequently changing residences of an army child.
But
life was not all crowns and pretty clothes. The author reveals that
Sharon was raped when she was 17 while on a date with a soldier in
Italy. It was a secret she kept, and only later confided to Polanski. He
said that 'it hadn't left her emotionally scarred'.
Commercials followed and she caught the bug: she wanted to be an actress, a star, the 'new Marilyn of American cinema'.
Introduced
to hot-shot producer Martin Ransohoff in 1963, she signed a seven-year
contract and at age 20 she was earning $750 a month. But she desperately
needed acting lessons to further her career.
Ransohoff sent her to New York to the famed Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio but Sharon didn't connect with Strasberg's technique.
She did connect with French actor Philippe Forquet.
Their
love affair progressed to a marriage proposal and engagement along with
rumors of beatings and claims by Forquet that Sharon cut him in the
chest with a broken wine bottle.
Ransohoff
demanded that his starlet terminate the relationship or he would
dissolve her Filmways contract. Tate quit Forquet but not her fatal
attraction to dominant men.
She
hooked up with actor Steve McQueen, became engaged to Jay Sebring, a
kinky, dungeon-loving hairdresser to the stars, and then began her last
love affair with uber-dominant director Roman Polanski.
Powerful connection: Tate was engaged
to a successful (and kinky) hairdresser to the stars, when she took acid
with Polanski and made love with him at dawn. The pair moved in
together in Easter 1966
Dominance: 'He told her how to dress;
he told her what makeup he liked, what he didn't like. He preferred her
with nothing, no makeup. But he ruled her entire life from the time she
met him,' reveals new book
The couple initially connected when they were living around the corner from each other in London.
Tate
was engaged to Sebring at the time but after sharing a cube of acid
with Polanski and making love at dawn, the engagement became past tense
and Polanski and Tate moved in together around Easter,1966.
Sharon got the starring role in front of the camera but it was in Polanski's home sex videos he shared with friends.
Polanski
filmed orgies at their house and showed the videos at parties, later
reported to be sadomasochistic porno movies with many recognizable
Hollywood faces.
He trolled Sunset Boulevard and its clubs for girls he brought home for threesomes.
Sharon was totally intimidated by him.
'When she was out in public with Roman, she never felt adequate enough to open her mouth,' writes the author.
'She
could only talk to him alone. Her problem was that she had always been
beautiful, and people were forever losing themselves in fantasy over her
– electing her a beauty queen, imagining her as a wife, dreaming of a
caress.
'Most people had fantasies. But a few people, like Polanski, took charge.
'He
told her how to dress; he told her what makeup he liked, what he didn't
like. He preferred her with nothing, no makeup. But he ruled her entire
life from the time she met him,' Tate's friend Joanna Pettet told the
author.
Ransohoff urged Polanski to test Sharon for a role in The Fearless Vampire Killers, a period comedy he was making in London.
She
got the role but Polanski confessed that he sometimes required as many
as seventy takes for the inexperienced actress to get her part right.
Sharon's
first big film role came in 1965 in Eye of the Devil, a movie about
human sacrifice. She got the role after Kim Novak fell from a horse and
the film had to be reshot without Novak.
Filmed in London, English magician Alex Saunders, known as 'King of the Witches', was hired as technical adviser.
Saunders
later claimed that he befriended Tate on the set and initiated her into
witchcraft. He said he had photos showing her inside a consecrated
magic circle.
Sharon
realized that she wasn't going to get a film role in a big movie
playing at the time like Sound of Music or Tarzan and the Valley of
Gold. Her acting wasn't good enough.
'I don't fool myself. I can't see myself doing Shakespeare,' she said.
She wanted to play light comedic roles and confessed in an interview to being influenced by Faye Dunaway and Catherine Deneuve.
'I'd
like to be an American Catherine Deneuve. She plays beautiful,
sensitive, deep parts with a little bit of intelligence behind them.'
Sharon
rented a house in Los Angeles and continued trying for bigger film
roles while getting panned by critics for the two films she had made.
Polanski stayed in Europe filming and revealed that his wife acquired her first vibrator at that time, says the author.
Back
in each other's arms, Sharon introduced Roman to the America she knew –
junk food, drive-ins, popcorn and the California coast at Big Sur and
Topanga Canyon, where friends of her lived.
It
was 1967, the summer of love and Woodstock, and the rise of the hippie
phenomenon. Sex and drugs topped the charts as a quick trip to finding
oneself and communicating with others.
Crime scene: Tate's death was one of
the most brutal murders in the history of Los Angeles. According to an
INS criminal investigator's report, the English Satanist group had
commissioned Manson to kill Sharon because of 'something that she
unfortunately overheard that she was not supposed to overhear either in
regards to Sirhan Sirhan or about Sirhan Sirhan,' the man who killed
Robert F. Kennedy
It was
that fall when a converted school bus painted black rolled into Topanga
Canyon with the words 'Hollywood Productions' written on the side. Its
occupants were a roaming group of followers of Charles Manson, himself
desperately seeking fame from his music.
The
motley crew moved into a secluded house called the Spiral Staircase at
the mouth of Topanga Canyon near the Pacific Coast Highway.
Meanwhile,
Tate had a starring role in the 1967 cult classic, Valley of the Dolls,
and attended the premier of the film that took place on a docked cruise
liner in November in Venice, Italy.
Tate
stayed on board for the 28-day journey that ended in Los Angeles and
arrived home to bad reviews calling Tate 'a no-talent show girl'.
She
took a mini-vacation with girlfriends to a spa in Big Sur, up the
coast, while Polanski returned to Los Angeles and invited a young
Balinese model to his rented beachfront mansion in Santa Monica for a
night of lovemaking.
Tate and Polanski were married two months later in January 1968 in London. Sharon was 25, Polanski 34.
After
returning to LA, they moved into the famed Chateau Marmont on Sunset
Boulevard. The couple rented different houses before settling into their
last – on Cielo Drive high up in Benedict Canyon.
Decadent parties followed.
When
she learned she was pregnant, Sharon telephoned her former fiance
Sebring to ask his advice on whether or not to tell Roman. He said to
wait a month when it would be too late to have an abortion.
Sharon was pregnant when she found a movie of Roman making love to someone else in their bed and thought of ending the marriage.
Roman, for his part, did not want to father a child, Shahrokh Hatami, a confidante of Tate's told the author.
Polanski
wanted her to get an abortion in Brazil and when she refused, he went
back to London and had an affair with Mamas and Papas singer Michelle
Phillips.
'I told him that I'm expecting his child, he said that he doesn't want to father a child, and protested,' Sharon told Hatami.
'I told him that I'm expecting his child, he said that he doesn't want to father a child, and protested,' Sharon told Hatami.
'You can't do anything, it's my child. I'm going to keep it,' she told Polanski.
Polanski was bored by her pregnancy and stopped having sex with her - but not multiple other partners.
That
summer 'he treated her like she was a piece of excess baggage. He was
even pointedly cruel to her in front of others at times, calling her 'a
dumb hag' and criticizing her whenever she expressed an opinion,' writes
Sanders.
She was under his spell and he was in love with her despite treating her badly.
'We have a good arrangement,; Tate said. 'Roman lies to me and I pretend to believe him.'
The
house at 10050 Cielo Drive was a revolving door with celebrities
dropping by, unknown people flitting in and out, and orgies fueled by
cocaine and hallucinogens like mescaline.
It was owned and rented out by Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son, a musician and record producer.
Michelle
Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas told of visiting that house and
'everyone in the house was busy filming an orgy and Sharon Tate was part
of it'.
Melcher and his girlfriend, Candice Bergen moved into Doris Day's house in Malibu.
Melcher
knew 'Charlie' Manson and along with his pal, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson,
they had been trying to get showbiz manager Rudy Altobelli to make
Manson a star.
It
was to the Cielo Drive house that Manson came looking for Melcher and
sent his Family to kill the occupants when there was no forthcoming
record deal to make him a star.
Polanski
was in Europe finishing the script for the Day of the Dolphin and
Sharon returned to America by ship, the Queen Elizabeth II, too pregnant
to fly.
She
did not want to come back to LA to have her baby and was very lonely.
Roman filled the house with friends of his so she wouldn't be lonely. He
wanted her in LA.
Sharon suspected he was having an affair in London. She thought about splitting up after having the baby.
Roman
promised Sharon he would leave London the next day, Saturday – only to
find out the embassy was closed and he couldn't get a US visa. He would
have to fly the following Monday or Tuesday.
That was too late.
On
the night of August 9, 1969, eight months pregnant, Sharon was stabbed
sixteen times and murdered along with Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger,
Steven Parent and Voyteck Frytowski – by the Manson Family.
The
book's author concludes, after years of interviews with principals in
the case as well as dogged research, that the one loose thread in the
story is the role of a mysterious English satanic cult that was active
in LA in those years.
The
author learned new details after working with LA private investigator
Larry Larsen, a former LA County deputy who assisted the investigation
into the death of Robert F. Kennedy.
Larsen
had been informed through associates that the English satanic group had
recruited Charles Manson to murder Tate because of information she had
learned about RFK's assassination.
The
contention is that members of the English cult had invited Sirhan
Sirhan to LA parties and one such party took place at Sharon Tate's
residence, where sexual and ritualistic rites occurred – along with
heavy drug use.
According
to an Immigration and Naturalization Service report, the English
Satanist group had commissioned Manson to kill Sharon because of
'something that she unfortunately overheard that she was not supposed to
overhear either in regards to Sirhan Sirhan or about Sirhan Sirhan'.
Whether or not Sharon knew something about the Robert Kennedy assassination remains unanswered.
Sanders
conducted a correspondence with Manson back in the 1980s. Manson sent
him a six-page reply to a question list but also said 'I'm not schooled
enough to play words on paper with you…'
Manson
refused to answer a follow up question asking whether he was offered
$25,000 to kill Tate as alleged by a woman and her husband who stated
they witnessed the contact with Manson.
'Indeed, it may all be smoke and mirrors and ultimately impossible to prove beyond doubt's shadow,' writes Sanders.
'No
loose ends can prevent our sense of outrage and anger for the horrible
injustice perpetrated upon Sharon Tate and her friends.'
Sharon Tate: A Life, by Ed Sanders and published by Da Capo Press is available on Amazon
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