Quentin Tarantino created the film 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' in her honor.
The name Sharon Tate was forever synonymous with a horrific image, one of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. That celestially beautiful girl -actress, model, fashion muse, who would have recently turned 80- was frozen forever at 26, and eight months pregnant, by the dark and incomprehensible murderous madness of Charles Manson and his followers of him.
Much more is said about her death than about her life, which was reduced to her last minutes. Her trajectory was overshadowed by her horrible ending. There are more books and stories about the Manson clan than about her, and countless stories about that night on August 8, 1969, when a pregnant Sharon and four other people were brutally murdered by members of the Manson clan in the house that the actress shared with her husband. husband, film director Roman Polanski, in Beverly Hills.
But Sharon Tate was more than her death. And she was also more than her beauty, by all accounts extraordinary judging by endless images that show her resoundingly beautiful, charming, and sensual. She was beginning a career in the cinema that could have taken her to important places, so much so that a year before her death she was nominated for a Golden Globe as a new actress. They say that she was very kind, sweet, cheerful, a faithful friend, an excellent cook, and a luxurious hostess, she possessed exquisite taste in both dressing and moving in the world.
Just after January 24, the day of her birthday, like an incantation against her unforgivable death, we remember her through three films, just fragments of what she could have been.
Dance of the Vampires
Roman Polanski's film was a milestone in the life and career of Sharon Tate. But the story begins much further back, with her birth on January 24, 1943, in Dallas and her winning the city's first beauty award when she was just six months old.
Sharon had an itinerant childhood in different cities in the United States due to her father's work -he was military- and spent her adolescence in Italy, where she also obtained several beauty titles (she was always beautiful) that helped her get some roles there as Extra in several movies.
Back in the United States, she had erratic appearances in television series such as 'The Beverly Rich and in films such as 'Souls in Conflict' (Vincent Minelli, 1965), where it is said that Elizabeth Taylor had her thrown off the set so that she would not overshadow the beauty of her. Her first major role was in 'The Devil's Eye (1966), a J. Lee Thompson film with David Niven and Deborah Kerr that was filmed in England.
There, at a party, she met Roman Polanski, who was looking for an actress to play the young "Sarah" in "Dance of the Vampires" (1967). It wasn't love at first sight. What's more, Polanski was about to reject her for the role of her because she was not a redhead and he treated her quite badly. But eventually, they fell in love.
Sharon separated from her boyfriend Jay Sebring, a celebrity hairdresser (he is the character that Warren Beatty would play in the 1975 movie 'Shampoo'), who remained her great friend and died with her in the massacre of the fateful house at 10050 Cielo Drive, in the luxurious Bel Air neighborhood in Beverly Hills, after a group of followers of Charles Manson brutally murdered them with bladed weapons and having written the word 'pig' on the wall of their living room.
Tate and Polanski got married on January 20, 1968, at the Playboy Club in London and became the coolest couple of the time. They lived to party, surrounded by celebrities like Mia Farrow, Jane and Peter Fonda, Peter Sellers, Warren Beatty, Ruth Gordon, John and Michelle Phillips (those from 'The Mamas and the Papas'). They were the golden 60s and flower power, alcohol and weed were running.
All of her friends loved Sharon and remarked on the radiance of her personality, her kindness, her playfulness, and her incredible beauty. On the other hand, things with Polanski were not so simple: according to the biography of Ed Sanders ('Sharon Tate: A Life'), the marriage was very toxic; the director cheated on her with other women, forced her to participate in orgies to record it and subjected her to continuous rudeness.
In his autobiography, on the other hand, Polanski gives another version and talks about love: "What I liked the most about her was her unchanging goodness, her natural joy, her love for people and animals, for all life in general", and he remembers that she cooked marvelously, that she cut his hair and that she packed his suitcases every time he had to travel.
With the pregnancy advanced, she decided to return to Los Angeles. On the last night she spent with Polanski, they dined in a restaurant facing the Thames and then she left Thomas Hardy's novel 'Tess d'Urberville' in his hotel room for him to evaluate as a possible script for a film in which they could work together.
Ella Sharon returned to the United States and a few days later she was dead. Roman Polanski premiered 'Tess' in 1979, starring Nastassja Kinski. The film won three Oscars, two Golden Globes, and three Césars. It is dedicated to Sharon Tate.
Valley of the Dolls
Sharon Tate garnered tons of this kind of criticism in her very short career, and it was often what she thought of herself because she was terribly shy and insecure. However, near the end of it, a comedian's vein began to appear in her that promised other directions and that was beginning to be noticed by some commentators in the media. Sharon loved to make people laugh and she seemed to walk into comedy. But there was no time.
Also in 1967, when she acted in 'The Vampire Ball', she was summoned to film a film that not only established her as an S- symbol but also as a Hollywood star: 'Valley of the Dolls'. Mark Robson's film, based on the famous novel by Jacqueline Susann, premiered in December of that year in New York and was hugely successful at the box office.
Sharon was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Jennifer North, one of the three beautiful women who in 1945 want to succeed in that evil world of cinema and entertainment. However, the first criticisms of her for her actions were harsh. Just as at the premiere of 'The Devil's Eye', 'The New York Times' had said that this new actress was “terrifyingly beautiful but without any kind of expression”, some magazines denounced her work in 'Valley of the Dolls' and called herself "unbearably foolish and vain."
The director Robson must have had something to do with this, who during filming had a terrible time with the three actresses (Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins, and Sharon Tate) and who, according to what they say, gave Sharon a terribly hard time filming the film: The guy constantly looked down on her on set, treating her like a cute and stupid girl, and she was especially sensitive about that topic.
The character of 'Jennifer North' actually has great similarities with Sharon Tate: both suffer from Marilyn Monroe syndrome, the beautiful actress with a stunning body who suffers from not being recognized for her talent and has a tragic fate.
In fact, it seems that Jacqueline Sussan was inspired by Monroe to conceive the character in her novel, with that life surrounded by luxuries and millionaire suitors, that desperation to be recognized as something more than an exuberant body, and that tremendous loneliness.
Jennifer and the real Sharon Tate end up looking even more alike. At one point, Jennifer tells her mother over the phone: "I know I don't have any talent, I know all I have is my body and I'm doing my breast exercises." It is a tormented life and ends up committing suicide. Seeing Sharon Tate in the skin of her character, dead, covered with a sheet, and on a forensic table is so premonitory that it scares her.
