"The Saturday Evening Post" - May 6, 1967
'SEXY LITTLE ME'
This is how Hollywood turns a pretty Texas girl into Sharon
Tate, the star.
By John Bowers
Sharon Tate had finished her last scenes for 'The Vampire
Killers' (later to be called 'Your Teeth in My Neck'), and had no film work for
the moment. At 95 Eaton Mews West, London, she moved about in the late afternoon
looking for something to do. She sat Buddah-style on the living room floor and
put on fake eyelashes, one eyelash at a time. She worried that a sunlamp
treatment, taken a few hours before, was going to make red cracks in her face.
"Doesn't it seem to be getting all red on the cheeks? Look close now."
She wore a gray sweat suit and furry boots, having been to her daily gym
class that afternoon. She didn't like the gym class, but Roman Polanski, her
director, had told her she must go. She frowned into a hand mirror, thinking she
saw a red streak. She started to bite a fingernail, but stopped. Roman had
forbidden any more fingernail biting; she had a tendency to bite them down to
the nub. She went to the refrigerator, and amidst Wyborowa vodka and Carlsberg
beer, brought out the makings for a salami sandwich. She would not drink a beer
because it might bloat her, and Roman was taking her out for dinner.
There was no place in the apartment for her to settle back and relax now.
Everything inside had a transient look, as if the tenants would only be there a
short season. A complicated stereo set sat on crates; Bach on top of a stack of
records, Cannonball Adderly on the bottom. There were no pictures, no pets, no
cozy heat. Upstairs on the wall was a framed citation stating that 'Knife In The
Water' under the direction of Roman Polanski had been nominated for an Academy
Award. As Sharon reached for a folder of still photographs from 'The Vampire
Killers' to show a male visitor, she stuck up her bottom in a way she has; as
she went through the photos, she pooched out her bosom. But she did it by
reflex. Her thoughts were totally on her director, who was not there. She had
been in three unreleased films - '13', 'Don't Make Waves' and 'The Vampire
Killers', all with different directors. If she caught the public's fancy in any
of these pictures, she would become a movie star. And she was pleased with her
work in 'The Vampire Killers'. She was in a nude bathtub scene in it, and in a
brief sequence in which she got spanked.
The phone rang; it was a strange female voice with a French accent. "Is
Roman there?"
"No, I'm sorry he isn't," Sharon said, in her accent of the moment, which
was English. "Who shall I say is calling, please?"
"Oh - I just wondered if he were in. Tell him Barbara. Thank you very
much.."
The dull London afternoon turned dark, and still no Polanski. He could be
cutting 'The Vampire Killers', or he could be tied up in London traffic or he
could be sitting in a café. She took off her furry boots and put her feet into
his house slippers, which rested at odd angels by a mammoth bed that cost over
$600. The slippers were far too big for her. She wondered if tonight she would
be thrown with people who would overwhelm her with their wit, their awesome
knowledge, their self-confidence. When she was out in public with Roman, she
never felt adequate enough to open her mouth. 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.
At the age of six months Sharon Tate was elected Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas,
Tex. Her mother had sent in photos of the beautiful baby to contest officials.
Sharon's father was (and is) in the Regular Army, and was then stationed in
Dallas. (Both her parents are natives of Houston.) As Sharon grew up, the family
moved around in Army style, her father frequently absent from home. She
remembers that when her father would return from an overseas tour, and she had
reached a nubile age, her mother's first command would be, "Now you, Sharon
Marie, button up that night gown when you come out of your bedroom. Daddy's
home." Her father was very strict with her as she budded through adolescence,
turning thumbs down on potential boyfriends and making her stay in nights. He
was very strong and knew how to take charge.
But most people continued to do things for Sharon without her lifting a
finger. At 16 she was elected Miss Richland, Washington, and a short time later
named Miss Autorama. At the age of 17 she was in Verona, Italy, where her father
was stationed, and the prizes mounted. At Vicenza American High she was a
cheerleader and baton twirler, and was chosen Homecoming Queen and Queen of the
Senior Prom. The Vicenza yearbook for 1961 shows her as a very pretty,
large-eyed girl, with hair somewhat darker and hips a little broader than now.
She daydreamed at this time about becoming a psychiatrist and a ballerina, and
had little to do with her classmates. Yet if any far-out stunts or fads were
proposed, this terribly quiet girl was ready to lead the way. "If miniskirts had
come in then, " she says, "I'd have worn the shortest one."
Today the fad among young girls in cosmopolitan circles is to use the old
Anglo-Saxon words in everyday conversation, and Sharon Tate leads the way. But
back in Italy at 17, she was just starting her worldly knowledge. She watched
the on-location shooting of 'Barabbas', a film about ancient Rome, and the
family scrapbook now includes still pictures of Jack Palance and Anthony Quinn
in the movie costumers they wore in Italy. As she walked in Venice one day, she
was spotted by the choreographer for the 'Pat Boone Show', which was being
filmed in Italy. She next appeared very briefly in one of Boone's TV shows, and
his glossy smiling face now rests in the album with a fond inscription for
Sharon.
When the Tate family moved from Italy to Southern California, Sharon
decided it was time to live on her own. She was 18, and she paid a visit to
Harold Gefsky, then agent for Richard Beymer, a young actor she met in Rome.
"She was so young and beautiful," Gefsky, a softly-spoken man, said in his
Sunset Boulevard office, "that I didn't know what to do with her. I think the
first thing I did was take her to a puppet show."
He also got her work because her father, in Calvinistic style, had only
given her a few dollars to sink or swim. One of her first jobs was dressing up
in an Irish costume and handing out Kelly-Kalani wine in Los Angeles restaurants
at $25 a day. She also appeared in TV commercials for Chevy cars and Santa Fe
cigars. People who knew her during this period agree on one thing. She was the
most beautiful girl in the world. "Everywhere I took her she caused a
sensation," Gefsky said. "I would take her into a restaurant and the owner would
pay for her meal. Photographers kept stopping her on the street. I've lived in
Hollywood since the mid-Forties, but I've never seen anything like it before or
since." But at this point no one, except perhaps Sharon, knew if she wanted to
be an actress. Then one day Gefsky took her by to meet his friend Herbert Browar,
who was connected with TV's 'Petticoat Junction'. He thought possibly Browar
could fix her up with a minor role, something to tide her over. Browar took one
look at her and rushed her in to see Martin Ransohoff, head of Filmways, Inc.
Ransohoff has a strand of hair combed over his bald dome. He wears loose
sweaters, torn windbreakers and breeches that are baggy in the seat. He first
started producing TV commercials in New York when food particles were glued onto
Brand X's plate to show the differences in detergents. He branched out into TV
programs with such commercial winners as 'Mr. Ed', 'The Beverly Hillbillies' and
'Petticoat Junction'. He then tackled movies on the order of 'The
Americanization of Emily' and 'The Loved One', which got mixed reviews but
generally made money. He founded the company in 1952 on $200, and today it
operates on a budget of over $35 million. He will talk about Oswald Spengler or
H. L. Mencken and then croon into his ever-present phone, "Helloooo, Bertie,
baby. Where's the action, kid?" He chews gum till his head rings, smokes two
packs a day and sends everyone to the wall with his adrenaline. He can be
gratuitously cruel in speaking of others - "She's got a lunch pail for a mouth,"
he said of an aging actress, "and if we take out insurance on her, it'll have to
be that she'll die." Then he can take his twin sons to a football game, clean up
a dog's mess in his Bel Air living room, and talk to anyone in the world who has
guts enough to call him. A rich man's son, he sold pots and pans from door to
door while going to Colgate and claims the experience taught him what the public
will or will not buy. He had little interest in films before he became involved
in them, and his favorite actress in the old days was Deanna Durbin - who,
coincidentally, was also Polanski's favorite. Both vividly remember her pedaling
a bicycle down a shady street and singing through a dimpled smile. Not everyone
has had pleasant dealings with Ransohoff in Hollywood, but all agree he is a
super salesman.
When he first saw Sharon Tate, he squinted his right eye and did something
that was very impulsive, even for him. "Draw up a contract," he shouted. "Get
her mother. Get my lawyer. This is the girl I want!"
He had not seen a screen test, not even a still photograph. She had hardly
opened her mouth. But Marty Ransohoff, like the rest of us, has his fantasies -
and Sharon Tate walked into one of his fondest ones. "I have this dream,"
Ransohoff said, "where I'll discover a beautiful girl who's a nobody and turn
her into a star that everybody wants. I'll do it like L. B. Mayer used to, only
better. But once she's successful, then I'll loose interest. That's how my dream
goes. I don't give two cents now for Tuesday Weld or Ann-Margret.."
"I think he's just trying to pull one over on the public," Gefsky said.
Sharon signed a seven-year contract, and Ransohoff took charge. Gefsky, a
nice man, bowed out. At first she lived in complete fear of Ransohoff, and did
as she was told. "She wouldn't even eat a hamburger if he told her not to," a
friend from that period said. If Ransohoff said she was to appear on 'The
Beverly Hillbillies' disguised in a black wig, she appeared. If he told her to
go on a moments notice to Big Sur, New York, London, she went. Off and on she
studied acting.
Jeff Corey, one acting coach, said, "An incredibly beautiful girl, but a
fragmented personality. I tried to get reactions out of her, though. Once I even
gave her a stick, and said, 'Hit me, do something, show emotion' ..If you can't
tap who you are, you can never act."
Charles Conrad, another acting teacher, said, "Such a beautiful girl, you
would have thought she would have all the confidence in the world. But she had
none." Among her friends, however, she began to refer to herself as "sexy little
me."
Ransohoff tried to place Sharon in 'The Cincinnati Kid' - his own movie -
but failed when the director demanded Tuesday Weld. He packed her off to New
York to study under the personal direction of Lee Strasberg at the Actors
Studio. "She was only with me a few weeks," Strasberg said, "but I remember her.
She was a beautiful girl." In New York Sharon had a romance with a young French
star, who offered her relief from her Texas style, Puritan upbringing. The actor
was tall, dark and very nice. When they broke up, the actor bungled a suicide
attempt.
Sharon continued to fear Ransohoff. Once, while driving at a high speed
near Big Sur, she turned her car over four and a half times, but somehow managed
to crawl out with only minor injuries. Her first thought was that Marty would be
mad. The first picture he finally placed her in was his French made '13', in
which she plays a chillingly beautiful, expressionless girl who goes about
putting the hex on people. Completed many months ago, '13' still rests in the
can waiting for a 1967 release date. Ransohoff flew Sharon back to Hollywood for
her second film, 'Don't Make Waves', in which she plays a beautiful, deadpan
skydiver. Sharon's first two directors were older men. Britishers - very polite,
very nice and understanding with a novice actress.
And then Ransohoff began dickering with Roman Polanski, the Polish
director living in London, to make a picture. Polanski, a tiny, baby-faced man
whose explosive manner and Beatle-like appearance belie his much-admired skill
as a maker of art films, wanted to do something with Ransohoff called 'The
Vampire Killers', a spoof of horror movies. He wanted to play in it himself,
and, as in all his movies, he wanted a beautiful girl in a supporting role.
"How about Sharon Tate?" Ransohoff said.
"I was thinking more in terms of Jill St. John," Polanski said.
At Ransohoff's instigation, Sharon and Polanski had dinner together. He
looked at her from time to time, but said nothing. On a second dinner date he
was painfully silent once more. Real weirdo, she thought. What's he waiting on?
She found out shortly. Walking in London's Eaton Square, he suddenly put a bear
hug on her and they fell to the ground, Polanski on the bottom. Sharon clouted
him and stormed off. "That's the craziest nut I ever saw," she said. "I'll never
work for him."
But Polanski apologized, and they saw each other again. One night he took
her to his apartment which had even less furniture than it has now and no
electricity. He lit a candle and excused himself, flying upstairs to don a
Frankenstein mask. He crept up behind her, raised his arms, and whinnied like a
madman. Sharon turned and emitted a terrible scream. It took over an hour for
her hysterical weeping to subside. Not long afterward Polanski informed
Ransohoff that Sharon would do fine for 'The Vampire Killers'. On the set he
treated her as if they never saw each other at night. He cajoled, flattered, got
angry - which ever worked - and never had lunch with her. During the nude
bathtub scene, he snapped still pictures of her. Still enthusiastic, he had her
pose all over the set in the altogether, and then sent the results to Playboy.
She plays a gorgeous redhead in 'The Vampire Killers' - and she shows emotion.
Roman Polanski walked into his apartment in a sharp blue blazer and
high-gloss shoes, carrying a briefcase. He had a good-sized nose and searching,
deep-set eyes, and he nodded briskly to Sharon. "A Barbara called," she let out
daintily. "Do you know who that could be?"
"A Barbara?" he called from the kitchen, out of sight. A pause. "You
didn't get any last name? Always get last names. I don't know any Barbara that
would be calling. Sharon, Sharon. There's no liquor here. Always see to it that
we have enough whisky. Can't you do that?"
Sharon went on the phone to order some, worrying about which brands to
specify. She didn't want to be embarrassed by asking Roman - although he would
certainly tell her. He knew the correct whiskey brands in London, the good
pastrami places in Manhattan, and the right topless spots in Hollywood. He
learned a country's customs and its language in a couple of weeks. He took a
bath now upstairs, calling down for Sharon to fetch him some tea. Later he
descended the stairs in a cowboy outfit and boots, ready for dinner. Some movie
friends had shown up, and he led the party on foot toward Alvaro's restaurant.
At the restaurant Sharon basked in the eyes that roved over her. She
listened big-eyed to Polanski explain the difference between the sun's heat and
that on earth, apropos of Truffaut's 'Fahrenheit 451'. The only trouble was that
it was difficult to digest pasta in such a giddy atmosphere, and she complained
of her stomach. After Polanski figured out how to work the waiter's ballpoint
pen, he signed the check.
In a dreamlike state, Sharon began slipping into her fox fur coat in the
foyer. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a tall Englishman with a prep-school tie and
large teeth popped up and put his arm around her. "Ummm, you have a sexy feel,
love. Don't we all love to touch you now.." She squirmed away.
Out on the street, she said, "Roman, a complete stranger began hugging me
in there."
"Yeah? Really?" A short distance away he suddenly spied a blond in fox fur
who had the same duck walk that Sharon has. "Hey, there goes Sharon," he said.
"Let's get her and put the two of them together!"
"Don't you dare," she said, her anger flashing.
Another day, away from Sharon, Polanski said, "I'm trying to get her to be
a little meaner, She's too nice, and she doesn't believe in her beauty. Once
when I was very poor in Poland I had got some beautiful shoes, and I immediately
became very ashamed of them. All my friends had plain, ordinary shoes, and I was
embarrassed to walk in front of them. That's how Sharon feels about her beauty.
She's embarrassed by it."
Sharon has a quarter-inch scar under her left eye and one beside the eye,
the result of accidents which she keeps having. As Polanski drove with her one
night in London, meticulously keeping on the left in the custom of the land, an
Englishman with a couple of pints under his belt hit him from the right. The
only one hurt was Sharon, whose head bounced off the dashboard, spraying blood
on slacks, boots and fur. An angry red wound appeared at the start of her scalp,
and it will leave another whitish scar on her head. With blond hair combed down
over her forehead to hide it, she skied at St. Moritz. And then she caught a jet
for Hollywood because Ransohoff had called. She must redo a few scenes for
'Don't Make Waves'. She grumbled a little. She found she could grumble to
Ransohoff now. She hated Hollywood, and she didn't want to leave Polanski. Also,
she hated to fly. She had to be drugged to endure it.
And then she appeared beside Ransohoff at La Scala restaurant in Beverly
Hills. She had a black costume that looked more like a slip than a dress, and
her blond head caught glints of movie-star light as she turned this way and
that. "Oh, there's David! David Hemmings. David, David!"
David Hemmings, who had been featured with her in '13' and had gone on to
star in Antonioni's 'Blow-Up' waved. Other celebrities flicked glances her way,
at each other, to the door to see what majesty might enter next. Occasionally
they looked down at food or drink. The place was as crowded as Alvaro's in
London, the customers practically the same. Ransohoff wore an open-neck sport
shirt and shapeless coat, and he talked business. "Listen, sweetie, I'm going to
have to cut some stuff out of 'The Vampire Killers'. Your spanking scene has got
to go."
"Oh, don't do that. Why would you do that?"
"Because it doesn't move the story. The story has got to move. Bang, bang,
bang. No American audience is going to sit still while Polanski indulges
himself."
"But Europeans make movies differently than Americans, " she explained to
the producer she once feared. "'Blow-Up' moved slowly. But wasn't it a great
film!"
"I'll tell you something, baby. I didn't like it. If I'd have seen it
before the reviews, I'd have said it'd never make it. It's not my kind of
picture. I want to be told a story without all that hocus-pocus symbolism going
on."
"But that one scene, Marty. When the girl show's her, ah ---" (only Sharon
said the Anglo-Saxon word). In Hollywood, New York and London they all talked
now about 'Blow-Up', dwelling on that scene.
"Yeah, I got to hand it to the guy for that one." Ransohoff said,
chuckling. "He pulled a good one off there."
"Oh, I want to do a complete nude scene," she said. "Say you'll let me!"
"OK, OK," Ransohoff said, bored, looking toward the door. "Yes, yes."
"Do it now. Don't just say it." Then Sharon got bored.
Early in the morning Sharon appeared before the camera at Malibu Beach,
redoing a scene for 'Don't Make Waves'. The sun had a hard time getting through
the wisps of fog, and strong klieg lights helped out. In a sequence with an
undraped David Draper, "Mr. Universe", Sharon stuck out her backside and shot
out her front. Magically, a button or two came undone on her polka-dot blouse,
and after close examination of camera angle, director Sandy Mackendrick decided
to leave it that way. He gave Sharon guidance in rubbing mineral oil over
Draper's bare back, as the scene called for. "Treat him like a horse," he said.
"Pat him just as you would an animal. That's the way.."
She lovingly went over Draper's muscled back, and then went "ugh" when the
camera ceased to roll. The scene was done over and over. In her tiny trailer
dressing room, she took a break and smoked daintily. "I'm happier when I'm
working," she said. "I don't have time to think to much that way."
One thing to think about was a visit to her parent's home in Palos Verdes
Estates, an hour's drive away. (Her father was stationed in Korea, her mother
and two younger sisters were at home.) Driving to the house one night in a heavy
seaside fog, she became quieter and quieter, her words less Anglo-Saxon. A
passenger beside her remarked, as the car neared its destination, that the fog
reminded him of snow. "You know what it looks like to me?" she said. "Vomit."
Her mother - a pleasant, plump, dark-haired woman - turned Sharon's face
this way and that. "Have you had your blood count recently, honey? You look so
pale to me." What did she think of Sharon's becoming a movie star? What did she
think of Roman Polanski? "You know," she said, in the voice of every
middle-class American mother, "I don't care - just as long as she's happy."
Back in Hollywood Sharon moved from hotel to hotel, from one friend's home
to another. She talked to Polanski by phone. (It embarrassed him to try to write
letters in English because of his mistakes.) So many things were unresolved,
shadowy. Ransohoff was sore at Polanski because Polanski had gone way over the
budget on 'The Vampire Killers' ("Very un-Hollywood of him," a Filmways
executive said; another only referred to him as "the little---."); Polanski was
mad at Ransohoff because Ransohoff was cutting away at his film and postponing
its release in the States. (Ransohoff had also had difficulties with Tony
Richardson, the English director, over the budget and the cutting of 'The Loved
One.) "The thing is," said Sharon, "that Roman is an artist."
At night Sharon went to The Daisy, a private discotheque in Beverly Hills.
She wore an aviator's leather jacket, slacks, and tinted Ben Franklin glasses.
Seated near the dance floor, she silently watched young actresses her age go
through their gyrations. Suzanne Pleshette and Patty Duke did subdued turns;
Linda Ann Evans, in a miniskirt, did a much more spirited fling. Carolyn Jones,
who only yesterday had played the ingénue, now looked like a chaperone. Sharon
gave Linda Ann Evans the once over and said, "I've worn a much shorter mini in
London. That's nothing."
From another table a slim, bronzed young man with a pampered black hair
ambled confidently past Tina Sinatra, Patty Duke, Suzanne Pleshette - and
hovered over this strange blond beauty in an aviator's leather jacket. He had
the air of a football star in a small town high school, who was used to having
his pick. He showed his beautiful white teeth and said, "Let's dance."
"No," she said, "let's not."
He kept the smile on his face as he backed away. He was now another who
had tried to bring Sharon Tate into a private fantasy - but he didn't know that
she had passed his type long ago.
She was going to fly to London and get engaged to Roman Polanski. Then she
was going to fly back to star in 'Valley of the Dolls'. Ransohoff was lending
her to 20th Century-Fox to play a sexy bombshell who goes to Europe to star in
nudie movies and who bewitches the world with her improbable lushness.
