Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

According to close friends, though Sharon Tate looked the part of the starlet, she didn’t live up to at least one portion of that image. She was not promiscuous. Her relationships were few, and rarely casual, at least on her part. She seemed attracted to dominant men. While in Hollywood, she had a long affair with a French actor. Given to insane rages, he once beat her so badly she had to be taken to the UCLA Medical Center for treatment.[6] Shortly after this, in 1963, Jay Sebring spotted Sharon at a studio preview, prevailed upon a friend for an introduction, and, after a brief but much publicized courtship, they became lovers, a relationship which lasted until she met Roman Polanski.

It was 1965 before Ransohoff decided his protégé was ready for her first featured role, in Eye of the Devil, which starred Deborah Kerr and David Niven. Listed seventh in the credits, Sharon Tate played a country girl with bewitching powers. She had less than a dozen lines; her primary role was to look beautiful, which she did. This was to be true of almost all her movies.

In the film, Niven became the victim of a hooded cult which practiced ritual sacrifice.

Though set in France, the film was made in London, and it was here, in the summer of 1966, that she met Roman Polanski.

Polanski was at this time thirty-three, and already acclaimed as one of Europe’s leading directors. He had been born in Paris, his father a Russian Jew, his mother Polish of Russian stock. When Roman was three, the family moved to Cracow. They were still there in 1940 when the Germans arrived and sealed off the ghetto. With his father’s help, Roman managed to escape and lived with family friends until the war ended. Both his parents, however, were sent to concentration camps, his mother dying in Auschwitz.

Following the war, he spent five years at the Polish National Film Academy at Lodz. As his senior thesis, he wrote and directed Two Men and a Wardrobe, a much acclaimed surrealistic short. He made several other short films, among them Mammals, in which a Polish friend, Voytek Frykowski, played a thief. After an extended trip to Paris, Polanski returned to Poland to make Knife in the Water, his first feature-length effort. It won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, and established Polanski, then only twenty-seven, as one of Europe’s most promising filmmakers.

In 1965, Polanski made his first film in English, Repulsion, starring Catherine Deneuve. Cul de Sac followed, which won the Best Film Award in the Berlin Film Festival, the Critics Award in Venice, a Diploma of Merit in Edinburgh, and the Giove Capitaliano Award in Rome. In the news stories following the Tate murders, reporters were quick to note that in Repulsion Miss Deneuve went mad and murdered two men, while in Cul de Sac the inhabitants of an isolated castle each meets a bizarre fate until only one man is left alive. They also noted Polanski’s “penchant for violence,” without adding that most often in Polanski’s films the violence was less explicit than implied.

Roman Polanski’s personal life was no less controversial than his films. After his marriage to Polish film star Barbara Lass ended in divorce in 1962, Polanski became known as the playboy director. A friend would later recall him leafing through his address book, saying, “Who shall I gratify tonight?” Another friend observed that Polanski’s immense talent was matched only by his ego. Non-friends, who were numerous, had stronger things to say. One, referring to the fact that Polanski was just over five feet tall, called him “the original five-foot Pole you wouldn’t want to touch anyone with.” Whether one was captivated by his gaminlike charm or repelled by his arrogance, he appeared to touch off strong emotions in nearly everyone whom he met.

It was not so with Sharon Tate, at least not at first. When Ransohoff introduced Roman and Sharon at a large party, neither was particularly impressed. The introduction was not accidental. On learning that Polanski was considering doing a film spoof of horror movies, Ransohoff had offered to produce it. He wanted Sharon for the female lead. Polanski gave her a screen test and decided she would be acceptable for the part. Polanski wrote, directed, and starred in the film, which eventually appeared as The Fearless Vampire Killers, but Ransohoff did the cutting, much to the displeasure of the Polish director, who disavowed the final print. Though the film was more camp than art, Polanski revealed another phase of his multi-faceted talent in his comic portrayal of the bumbling young assistant of a scholarly vampire hunter. Sharon, again, looked pretty and had less than a dozen lines. A victim of the vampire early in the picture, in the last scene she bites her lover, Polanski, creating still another monster.