Photo of the Week, The Last Part of the Translated Article: Sharon Tate wanted to eventually have a baby girl, and More on Polanski

Photo of the Week:

Sharon looking as beautiful as ever.

Here is the last part of the Translated Article:
L'Europeo August 21, 1969
My meeting with Sharon Tate
by Adriano Botta

(Warning: take some of this part with a large grain of salt...)

Photos from the actual magazine I got this article from.

Sharon Tate caught her breath, as the "bunnies" continued to deploy rose petals that they knew had hashish and brought a giant wedding cake on which was written: 'Enough with stripping, Elda!' There was a laugh by contortions. Roman Polanski stopped drinking whiskey and promoted an investigation. He learned as he copied the voice of Groucho Marx that the pastry chef had mistaken the cake by sending it to them.  Instead it was intended for a stripper at the Playboy Club that was retiring. "I have only now begun to perform in stripping," said Sharon, making a joke of it. "That will become increasingly good at becoming essential in my eroticism. Could I really become the Marilyn Monroe of the seventies?  Not in the Martin Ransohoff way. I want to be a type of Monroe who, with her eroticism set the world on fire without burning it.Yes, I will continue to undress. In a I could be undressed forever. If only to die soon in a satanic way*. I adore the way of working and living that has Roman's genius written all over it. There is an absolutely horrible sense of hypocrisy in the world. I am shocked.  Too bad for them. I and Roman have been a pair for about three years and we did not get married and it did not bother me at all. Marriage is a bourgeois convention. How important is marriage? If two people love each other and do get along well together why should they have to marry to make everyone else happy? For three years I've been with Roman and Hollywood is shocked? To bad for them.  They don't understand.  I stay away from Hollywood as best I can.  I've had it with the whole of Hollywood and its false puritanism. It is no longer the Mecca of cinema but more of a graveyard of the past studio system. I prefer London and Rome to Hollywood. "

"Why did you get married then?" someone asked. Sharon replied, "We said why not have a wedding?  The idea of it was fun. And the wedding reception at the Playboy Club was well worth the effort of a formal ceremony like marriage but it does not change anything. We are like a middle class couple, we strive to make sacrifices for each other and to encourage each other. There is no duty or restriction imposed on each other. And we often forget even to be married. I want to have children, yes. I'd like a girl. And I wish that she inherits my looks."

 
Sharon Tate is dead in Hollywood, in the cemetery of the old studio heads from which she was intended to flee. And she died like in a film by Roman Polanski, hanging from a cord of nylon, the beautiful body pierced by daggers.  And she died with four others, one of whom was also her ex-lover, the hairdresser of the stars, Jay Sebring.  He was stabbed and his head wrapped in a black hood. A morbid aggression, a crime that is crazy and repeated two days later, a few miles away, in another villa, two Italian spouses killed with the same ferocity and the same technique, with the same left written on the walls, 'pigs.' Two crimes like the demonic films inspired by the fantasy reminiscent of Polanski.  The face of America now bitter and dark. Sharon Tate was twenty six years old. She was to give birth to a baby in four weeks. Even Polanski has fallen to such a degree of shame with his cruel curse of literature.

*This sentence makes no sense with the rest of what Sharon is talking about.  And why would anyone say that anyway?  The only thing I can think of is that the reporter heard about the rumors of a possible santanic murder and added that comment to go along with it. I think a lot of reporters added this kind of thing for sensationalism. 
 
And it sounds like the reporter also went along with the Polanski makes macabre films so it imitates his life.  Like it is his fault for making movies like "Rosemary's Baby" that is the reason why he deserves this suffering in real life. 
 
Like I said, this kind of thing must be taken with a large grain of salt.
 
On a better note, here is a person who is trying to watch 1001 Greatest Movies of all time and reviews Polanski's "Chinatown." :
 
http://1001plus.blogspot.com/2010/02/separating-man-from-his-art.html
 

More on working with Polanski by The Ghost Writers stars Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor:
 
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/18/earlyshow/leisure/boxoffice/main6219911.shtml
 
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/ewan-mcgregor-praises-ghost-writer-director-roman-polanski/story?id=9873344
 
http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/02/18/pierce-brosnan-interview-the-ghost-writer/
 
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Interview-Ewan-McGregor-17134.html

http://wonderwall.msn.com/movies/polanski-picked-on-mcgregors-accent-1538837.story

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

More of the Translated Article: Sharon Talks About Polanski, Roman's New Film is a Critical Hit and what Ewan McGregor says about working on the film.

L'Europeo August 21, 1969



My meeting with Sharon Tate


by Adriano Botta


Continued from yesterday...
 

Sharon colorized art from Deviant Art.

"The critics (for Eye of the Devil), however, admited that my beauty was charged with sexuality.  This at once made me shudder and at the same time excited," says Sharon Tate at the banquet after her marriage. Roman Polanski nodded in a small, dark corner with the pictures of the faces of Mickey Mouse behind him.



She gradually made two other films, The Valley of the Dolls and Don't Make Waves with Tony Curtis and Claudia Cardinale. Then she began echoing her meeting with Polanski for The Fearless Vampire Killers. "It was an encounter that changed everything in my life. I had never before known such a man. I am terribly in love with him. He has taught me many things. Not only to remain naked with joy and ease, but also to live life with more intensity-- I--who am so lazy that I could sleep at night and day.


"It is not true that we take a lot of drugs. To me, Roman is a drug. Next to him I feel drugged. I do not take drugs from his orders.  Instead we go roaring around in a red Ferrari that runs with of the wind. I was ordered not to smoke anymore, because the tobacco, would ruin my teeth. He ordered me not to wear underwear because it leaves marks on the skin. And without the constraints of bourgeois body, it is much more beautiful and natural. In The Fearless Vampire Killers we have made our first film together. I play a bewitching part, or rather, I portray a vampire. At first I am not a vampire though, no, I'm a country girl kidnapped by vampires. Roman, who besides directing the film has a part in it.  He falls in love with me and saves me before all the blood was sucked out of me by the vampires. But she does not get a transfusion. The blood and rigor in the films of Roman. So much so that she leaves the country with this tremendous experience a new taste. The taste of blood. She becomes a vampire and changes him into one too. The finish is spectacular. I grow teeth like Dracula. I must confess: I like the macabre Roman does.  It is exciting to me.  He is a macabre genius."

Tomorrow more of this new translated article.

Polanski is getting some great reviews for "The Ghost Writer:"

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/movie_reviews/b167807_review_ghost_writer_clever_thriller.html

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2010-02-19-ghostwriter19_ST_N.htm

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/the-ghost-writer-is-a-sleek-and-satisfying-thriller-for-grown-ups

This one is by famous critic Kenneth Turan of 'The Los Angeles Times' :

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-ghostwriter19-2010feb19,0,5640884.story

This critic is already talking about Oscars for next year for Polanski's film:

http://www.seattlepi.com/movies/415582_film32307228.html

Ewan McGregor on Polanski:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/02/18/the-ghost-writer-star-ewan-mcgregor-on-his-upcoming-projects/

Sorry mainstream media. Ewan McGregor, star of the Roman Polanski thriller “The Ghost Writer,” knows that you want him to dish on the 76-year-old director, who’s currently under house arrest in Switzerland stemming from a 1977 sex-charge case. But he’s not biting. The actor, who plays an unnamed author hired to ghost-write a memoir for a disgraced ex-British prime minister, said he sympathizes with Polanski and feels bad for him, but that’s the furthest he’ll go.

“It’s very tricky because his whole situation is so complicated and nothing to do with me,” he said. “I worked intensely with him for four months and I felt badly for this children, whom I got to know during the shoot.”

McGregor talks more about working with Polanski in this article and it shows a clip from the film:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703444804575071470108130174.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel

The Wall Street Journal: It's hard to talk about "The Ghost Writer" outside the context of Mr. Polanski's troubles. Is that fair to the film?

Mr. McGregor: I think the film is a much heavier political story than it is a commentary on Polanski's life. He really seems like a very self-assured person to me who doesn't need to make a comment on his life through his films...Polanski seems terribly private. He wasn't with us at the launch of the film [in Berlin] but quite probably, he wouldn't want be there anyway.

Mr. Polanski is notoriously direct with actors while on set. Did you find him as gruff as advertised?

He doesn't sugarcoat his notes. Most directors would tell you, "That was great, but let's try it like this." He'll just stop you mid-take and go "No no no—why are playing it like this?" and you'll just look back and be like, "I don't know, good question." We're sensitive souls, us actors, and after a while, it dents your ego, but once you realize he's like that with the set dresser and the prop man, and just about everyone, it was OK.

Morgane Polanski.  Makes you wonder what Sharon and Roman's own future daughter might have looked like?  I know their first child was a boy but I have always wondered if they had more...

Note on Polanski's "The Ghost Writer": it has 94 year old Eli Wallach who has remembered Sharon fondly when she was an extra on the film set from the movie, "Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man."  Also, Polanski's beautiful daughter Morgane playes in her dad's film.  She plays a hotel receptionist trapped in period costume.

Next Part of Translated Article: Things were not great with Ransohoff and Bronsan talks about Polanski and More

L'Europeo August 21, 1969


My meeting with Sharon Tate


by Adriano Botta

Continued from yesterday...


The contract she signed was for seven years. Sharon exacted a million pounds a week without shooting a meter of film. Martin was creating his character, he made her look like a diva, mobilized around her make-up experts, dietetics, riding, fencing, and tennis. They came up with slogans like these: "Nothing is more exhilarating for a 'tete-a-Tate'", "It's not the one you are admiring Sharon Tate, but the Tate Gallery: Only in the famous British Museum there is such beauty."


"I had great confidence in my own producer," Sharon says. "I loved him. And I put up all his nonsense. Practically lived in a prison. I was forbidden to go out at night, forbidden to go to the movies, forbidden to go to the theater, forbidden to be photographed. Forbidden everything. Martin said that the public should not see me before I was ready. I become the puppet that he wanted. Trained for three years. I recommended to him that I wanted to take acting seriously.  He said didn't like the idea of acting! I asked him to let me take a course at the Actors Studio in New York and you know what he answered? 'Wretch! You're just an accident! You have not yet realized that you're a force of nature. Acting as understood at the Actor's Studio will kill your beauty, take away any flavor.' Instead I realized that he had decided to make me a 'dumb blonde.'  And one day I had a screen test. I was in the anteroom of the principal. The door of his office was still open. Martin spoke on the phone. 'In a couple of months I can give you something great,' he said, 'now it is not yet possible. She needs to gain some weight, at least a couple of pounds: even her teeth need a little work and it will be necessary, but then how can you complain?  She is a niave and an inferior airhead and will do fine. She will be a hit, you'll see. We will make plenty of money on her.' Yes, this is the way he saw me. I loved him. I believed in him as a second father. In order not to disappoint him I had been made up to look like a prostitute who does tricks in Soho: layers of foundation, lipstick, big hair.  It made me feel dirty. I had agreed to wear ostentatious clothing, like corsets squeezed to show my breasts and jewelry that looked ridiculous. I would puff up my hair, and stick out my bottom lip and say invented idiotic jokes for advertising as an example of the Tate Gallery.  I was good, obedient. He always told me so. And he was still smiling when I felt like crying. Sure, I was paid handsomely. But money is not everything. I have my pride."

After she heard the call Ransohoff had made Sharon exploded. She told Martin "No, I will never be a whore moron!" To appease Sharon, Martin pulled in the reins and he sent her to study at the Actor's Studio for a while.  Sharon had to turn a blind eye on her romance with the prince of Hollywood hairdressering, Jay Sebring, and she was inserted into a movie with grim tones. The Eye of the Devil with David Niven and Deborah Kerr. It was a film about witches. The farmers are at a feud in the French Bordeaux region where they are mesmerized by a medium and try to kill the husband of the Marquise to remove the curse that weighs curse to their fields. Kerr played the Marchioness, Niven portrayed the Marquis, Sharon Tate was the visionary girl who unleashes fear and hatred from peasants, a modern witch who is mysterious, with a devilish charm. The film was not a particularly warm welcome to the film world but Sharon was pleased. It pleased her body, if not its soul.

More coming tomorrow....

Pierce Brosnan talked about Polanski in a interview saying: "There will be people who say he deserves everything he gets," Brosnan says. "I think forgiveness, compassion, some dignity — he hasn't murdered anyone. What he did was terribly wrong in a time that was terribly wrong in many ways. There's forgiveness on her side. You just hope there's closure for his family and her family. He's a brilliant fellow and a very fractured man in many ways."

For Brosnan, the reason for doing the film was simple: Polanski. Brosnan met Polanski in Paris over lunch during Mamma Mia!'s European promotional tour two years ago.

"We talked about this and that, lives, life lost, movies," Brosnan says. "We didn't talk about the motivation of my character or any of the politics."

For more on Brosnan and the rest of this interview:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2010-02-18-Brosnan18_ST_N.htm

Also, the stars regreted that Polanski was absencent at Berlin premiere.  This article offers some great quotes from the cast of "The Ghost Writer" and some insights into Polanski as a director:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/brosnan-regrets-polanski-absence-at-berlin-premiere-20100213-nxsy.html

More of the Translated Article: How Sharon's career got started, 'Macbeth' and Polanski and Polanski's First Wife

More of the Translated Article from Yesterday:

L'Europeo August 21, 1969



My meeting with Sharon Tate

by Adriano Botta

Continued...

The adventure of the body (if not the soul) for Sharon had begun very early in the second years of age. Sharon Tate is her real name. Her father, Paul Tate, was an officer of the American Army, department-- information. He lived in Dallas, making Sharon Texas-born. "In two years" her mother says, "I had her portrait taken with a bow on her head and her legs curled up on a round cushion. I sent the photos to a newspaper, for the Main Competition of Miss Baby and Sharon met her first triumph.  She was Miss Bebe. All the moms from Texas were full of envy."



Little was in Dallas. His father was transferred frequently. California, Washington, Omaha, Italy. And Sharon was a department mascot on a training airplane in California, she was Miss Richland in the federal capital and Miss Nebraska at Omaha. Her career in films was born in Verona. She was seventeen years old and spoke good Italian. She buttoned her blouse too low and waited for a secret audition in Technicolor in Venice before her father came home. Renzo Avanzo was a long-time public relations man for Technicolor's film lab in Rome and a cousin of Roberto Rossellini. Avanzo was to do the audition.  The audition and participation in a fleeting show of Pat Boone kindled her imagination. Returning to America for the new transfer of Paul Tate, who was now the rank of major, Sharon decided to try her luck in Hollywood. She was eighteen years old, her body was sometimes something of a spectacle. Major Tate was beginning to get tired of hearing the full regiments, the officers in his head, whistling to the passing of his daughter. Yes, it was time that she was on her own. The last time she buttoned her blouse too low her father said, "I recommend that you keep yourself covered in the best possible way. 'Now you're a woman.' "

Sharon debuted pouring wine to customers at a restaurant in Los Angeles, in an Irish costume, for twenty-five dollars a week.   She poured wine and seduction. A director from TV filled his glass up, got drunk and took Sharon to Filmways, the editor was his friend, Martin Ransohoff, and Martin cried when he saw Sharon and told his secretary to make up a contract for her. "She is the girl I always wanted. She could be another Marilyn Monroe to the seventies, I am willing to bet my reputation."

More tomorrow as Sharon decides she does not want to be the Next Marilyn Monore...

Here is an interesting theory on why Polanski chose Shakespeare 's "Macbeth" after the death of Sharon. 

http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/time-music-in-third-ear-bands_14.html

Paul Minns (Musician and was in the band, 'Third Ear Band', this band did the music for Polanski's Macbeth):

"Macbeth" was done at Air Studios playing live to black/white rushes. Often we repeatedly watched gory scenes. Polanski related quite a bit but was under pressure from the bankers as things dragged on. He had strong views about film music such as doing the complete opposite to that on the screen. This was contrasted with "cartoon" type sound for each action in the fight scenes. We spent a long time in the studio with very little material to show for it. The engineers didn't know what the hell was going on (I don't blame them). I was struggling and had to restrained from attending the last sessions. Buckmaster reminded us of his needing to protect his reputation and there was general jockeying for Polanski's favour. The Sharon Tate murder had happened not long before and I felt that by choosing "Macbeth" Polanski hoped to substitute one grisly act by another, so erasing his memory. My playing was very shaky on the record which I produced - everyone else having done a runner.

Also, some said that one of the articles on my blog said something about Sharon being Roman's first wife.  This is apparently a mistake as Barbara Lass-Kwiatkowska was his first wife and Sharon his second.  Hope that clears that up.  Here is a photo of Barbara and Polanski:

A closer view of Lass:

Speaking of Polanski, here is another interesting take on his current situation:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/02/is-roman-polanski-really-no-different-than-leni-riefenstahl.html

And a great review of "The Ghost Writer" by Rolling Stone Magazine's Peter Travers:

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/32254953/review/32254955/the_ghost_writer

Translated Article from Italian Magazine: 'No need to be embarrassed about being nude' and More on Polanski

L'Europeo August 21, 1969

My Meeting with Sharon

by Adriano Botta

Producer Martin Ransohoff wanted to make her another Marilyn Monroe, the 'sex symbol' of the seventies. But Sharon reacted and got to attend the Actor's Studio. The meeting with Roman Polanski, Sharon called it 'a drug', radically changed her life.

I was one of six hundred and forty invited to the wedding of Sharon Tate in London on 20 January 1968, which was performed in place less for married couples than any place in the world, the Playboy Club. Roman Polanski, the husband, called 'genius and profligacy' by British film critics, dashed down streams of whiskey and told stories that nobody seemed to listen to. The 'bunny' club had distributed rose petals that they knew had hashish. The lights were low, like from a cabaret. On the tables there was no shadow of dishes, so I buy food. Her husband, extolling her, the bride, who looked out of the modern novel of a masochist. She appeared sheathed by Elizabethan costume: lace, high collar and starched puffed sleeves of silk, and a skirt that barely covered her bottom. After alluding to the guests to smile, Sharon Tate sat at the center of the room, in a large bed with black sheets. On her legs that black shining white, long and thin, as in a framework designed for antolgia seduction. We all looked at those legs, our eyes were riveted.  We also watched Polanski--who appears to have a taste for suffering--together with a Raymond Chandler film style, the director who turns a cocktail of seduction-perversion-bloody cruelty in a commercial product with a large circulation. "A drop of blood at the spectacle of the wedding would have been in Polanski film fashion," said one of the critics present. Seduction and perversion were squandered, spurting from the contrast between the violent beauty of Sharon and her features delicate and innocent, like the Madonna of Siena, between his hard and sterile voice to hers an icy, sexy, girlish, rich, soft one.

Suddenly Sharon Tate picked up her white panty-hosed, long, and beautiful legs that bewitched so many of us, and came over to me and held a conversation with me for most of that extravagant banquet:

"I'm in love with Roman Polanski because he is beautiful and a genius to the bone and he has the unruliness of a man who is truly wise.  My father always told me to cover my legs and never to button my blouse too low.  And he scolded my mother since I was two years old when she sent my photographs to newspapers. With my husband, however, I was taught that nudity is not shameful but a way to be free, happy, full of life, and that we have only one duty, to be ourselves.  We do only what we want to do, ignoring the opinions of the world. We especially have fun. Roman has taught me that when women like me show themselves nude and beautiful that it is the most pure thing a woman can do. When we were going to shoot our first film together, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Polanski did not want me. The producer had to impose himself and put his foot down to get me the role. I had to shoot three sequences completely naked. I arrived on the set wrapped in a sheet like a ghost and when I opened it I was terribly embarrassed. I bent over and tried to cover my breasts and the rest.  Then Polanski told me: 'If you do that it attracts even more attention from the technicians and the matter becomes sordid and dirty. They are embarrassed if you yourself are embarrassed. You must learn to be naked in a natural sort of way, given that you're beautiful, with pride. This is the right attitude.'


"Roman was right. His talent subdues me. And the week after that he photographed me in color for Playboy, naked and natural. By this point I was already at ease. I had already forgotten the stupid complexity of modesty. The nude body has become the symbol of an era, or at least is becoming one. Like the sound of a new era and a new moral--morality naked--without the veil of hypocrisy. The morality of pleasure sought by the soul and the light of the sun. Body and soul: is that not the title of a popular ballad?"



To be continued tomorrow...

Polanski has some good news come his way:

Roman Polanski in Pole Position at Berlin Film Festival

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=9838779

By Mike Collett-White

BERLIN (Reuters) - Roman Polanski can enjoy a break from sensational headlines about his arrest and misdemeanors and bask in the glow of mostly positive reviews for his latest movie "The Ghost Writer."

The 76-year-old director, under house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad, is among the early frontrunners for prizes at the Berlin film festival this year, although the 10-day competition has yet to reach halfway.

The political thriller based on a novel by Robert Harris is one of 20 movies vying for the Golden Bear for best picture, which Polanski won in 1966 for "Cul-de-Sac."

The fact that it is among the favorites is remarkable given that post-production was completed while Polanski was in a Swiss prison and, later, under house arrest.

"With this immensely enjoyable, satisfyingly convoluted thriller he demonstrates exactly why he is still a force to be reckoned with," Wendy Ide wrote in the Times newspaper.

"From the opening scene it is clear Polanski had complete control, whether or not he was behind bars when he finished it."

The United States is seeking to extradite Polanski to face justice after he fled the country in 1978 on the eve of his formal sentencing for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian said: "This is his most purely enjoyable picture for years, a Hitchcockian nightmare with a persistent, stomach-turning sense of disquiet, brought off with confidence and dash."

Hollywood trade publications were more circumspect, however.

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter described the film about a disgraced British prime minister loosely based on Tony Blair as "sleek" and "hypnotic," "but once the credit roll frees you from its grip, it doesn't bear close scrutiny."

Derek Elley of Variety was one of the few dissenting voices in Berlin:

"All the ingredients are here for a rip-roaring political thriller ... but ... Polanski simply transfers Harris' undistinguished prose direct to the screen and ... there's little wow factor in the revelations as they appear."

GRITTY DRAMAS ALSO SHINE

The Ghost Writer stars Ewan McGregor as a writer brought in to spice up the memoirs of an ex-premier (Pierce Brosnan).

The politician soon becomes embroiled in a bid to have him tried for war crimes, while the writer, who remains nameless, begins to uncover uncomfortable truths about the former leader and his wife, played by Olivia Williams.

Polanski is not alone in impressing critics in Berlin this year, with two other competition entries scoring strongly.

"If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle" is part of the "new wave" of Romanian film-making that has wowed festivals around the world in recent years.

It follows an 18-year-old young offender who is days away from being released from a correction facility. He discovers his mother, who abandoned him as a child, plans to take his brother to Italy, forcing him to take dramatic measures to break free.

Screen International wrote of its "outstanding quality," and the same publication was even more positive about "Submarino," a tough Danish drama which contains scenes of domestic abuse.

"Rarely has there been such a downbeat feel-good movie, but feel-good it is: Submarino works like an emotional massage, leaving the viewer pummeled but invigorated," Screen wrote.

The Berlin film festival awards ceremony is held on February 20.