Sharon Tate

Sharon Tate (born January 24, 1943, Dallas, Texas—killed August 9, 1969, Los Angeles, California) was an American actress and model. The second wife of film director Roman Polanski, Tate was brutally murdered (along with four others) by followers of Charles Manson at the couple’s rented home in Los Angeles in 1969 (see Tate murders).

Early life

Tate was born to Paul James Tate and Doris (Willett) Tate and was the eldest of three siblings. A beautiful child, she won her first beauty contest as a baby after her grandmother submitted photographs of her to the organizers of the Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas contest. Her father was an officer in the United States Army, and the family moved frequently; by the time she was 16, she had lived in six different cities. In her teen years Tate won a number of beauty pageants and began to work as a model. Her father was assigned to Verona, Italy, in 1962, and Sharon attended an American high school in nearby Vicenza, where she was crowned both prom queen and homecoming queen. She was cast as an extra in a few Italian films, and it was in Italy that she met American actor Richard Beymer, who encouraged her to pursue her interest in acting and gave her the card of his agent, Hal Gefsky.

Career

Upon her father’s transfer back to the United States in 1963, Tate hitchhiked part of the way to Hollywood, where she met with Gefsky. With her soft lilting voice and large distinctive hazel eyes, she quickly landed roles in cigarette and automobile commercials and in films as an extra. She also continued to pursue her modeling career. She was cast in a recurring role as a bank secretary in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies and appeared in other small roles, on the series Petticoat Junction, Mr. Ed, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

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Tate murders

Tate’s film career was launched with a minor role in the occult thriller Eye of the Devil (1966), which was filmed in Europe. In 1967, while working on the set of the horror spoof The Fearless Vampire Killers; or, Pardon Me but Your Teeth Are in My Neck (1967), she met Roman Polanski. As their romance blossomed, she amicably broke off her relationship with celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, who would remain a close friend. Tate’s pivotal role in the beach farce Don’t Make Waves (1967) led to her breakthrough that same year as the starlet in Valley of the Dolls. She and Polanski married in England in 1968, and the glamorous couple had an array of friends in the entertainment industry. She appeared as a red-haired beauty in the spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1968), starring Dean Martin, and was pregnant while filming 12 + 1 in Italy and France in early 1969.

Murder and aftermath

In the summer of 1969 Tate and Polanski were renting the house at 10050 Cielo Drive in the exclusive Benedict Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles. On August 8 cult leader Charles Manson ordered his follower Charles (“Tex”) Watson to go to that house with three other “Family” members and kill everyone there “as gruesome[ly] as you can.” Manson was familiar with the residence because its previous tenant, music producer Terry Melcher, had earlier considered and then decided against giving Manson a recording contract. On that August night, Polanski was in Europe, and his friend Wojciech Frykowski and Frykowski’s girlfriend, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, were staying with Tate; Sebring was also there. When the four members of the Family arrived on the property after midnight, they first encountered Steven Parent, an 18-year-old who had been visiting the estate’s caretaker in the guesthouse; Watson shot Parent to death. The four people in the main house were then made to gather in the living room, and Tate and Sebring were linked by ropes tied around their necks. Sebring was shot and stabbed to death. Frykowski and Folger managed to free themselves and flee the house, but both were chased down and killed. Finally, Tate, who was now more than eight months pregnant, was fatally stabbed, and her blood was used to write the word “PIG” on the front door.

By year’s end all the killers had been arrested, and the trial of Manson and his followers in 1970 attracted national attention. In 1971 Manson and the four murderers were sentenced to death, but, following the abolition of capital punishment in California in 1972, their sentences were commuted to life in prison. Although they eventually became eligible for parole, their requests were repeatedly denied.

Tate was buried with her unborn son, named Paul Richard Polanski on the tombstone, in a family plot in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

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Legacy

The violence of Tate’s death influenced Polanski’s subsequent film, Macbeth (1971), a gory yet artistically effective adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. With an on-screen dedication “For Sharon,” his film Tess (1979) was crafted as a tribute to Tate, as it was she who had encouraged Polanski to read Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and recognized its silver-screen potential.

A classic blonde beauty with a carefree style, Tate and her character Malibu in Don’t Make Waves are said to have been the inspiration behind Mattel’s successful Malibu Barbie doll, which debuted in 1971. Her character Freya Carlson in The Wrecking Crew served as an inspiration for the character Felicity Shagwell in the 1999 movie comedy Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Tate’s mother became a passionate activist in the victims’ rights movement, founding both the Coalition on Victims Equal Rights in San Luis Obispo and the Doris Tate Crime Victims Research Bureau in San Rafael. In 1982 her groups helped push through California’s so-called Victims’ Bill of Rights, which stipulated that crime victims or their family members had the right to read a statement in court. She repeatedly read such statements at the parole hearings of her daughter’s killers.