The Year in Sharon Tate for 2009, Happy New Year Everyone!

For someone who has sadly been gone for 40 years, Sharon Tate still makes news even today.  Thankfully, her beautiful memory has not been forgotten.

Here are some highlights from this year (not necessarily in this order but...) :

20.  "Twilight: New Moon" and Vampires made Sharon's film "The Fearless Vampire Killers" a topic of conversation for vampire enthusiasts.

19.  A Nude Photo taken by David Bailey of Sharon and Roman together went for $11,250 at an auction.


18.  New book on Sharon's friend Designer Travilla is coming out soon. The biography is called "The Gentleman Preferred Dressing the Blonde, the glamorous life of Bill Travilla" by Kimberely Ashley.

17.  Micaela has a great Italian blog on Sharon: http://sharontate4ever.wordpress.com/

16.  Also, Tammie makes great montages that if you haven't already seen you should here:
http://sharontaterememberedandvideoblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/rhiannon185


15.  Please sign my petition, if you have not already done so, for Hatami to do a book on Sharon:
http://www.gopetition.com/online/30818.html.


14.  Polanski has kept busy making his film--and now editing it--"Ghost."

13.  We compared Sharon to many great actresses from now and the past including: Farrah Fawcett, Carole Landis, Hedy Lamarr, Keira Knightly, Penelope Cruz, Actress/Model Tasha de Vasconcelos, Catherine Deneuve, Michelle Pfeiffer, Natasha Richardson, Brittany Murphy, and Marilyn Monroe.



12.  Sharon was an extra in a movie and we just recently found out about it: "The Sea Musketeers" starring Channing Pollock, Aldo Ray, Pier Angeli and Robert Alda.

11.  We also looked back on the life of Hair Stylist Jay Sebring and are looking forward to his nephews upcoming documentary on him.

10.  Celebrities and friends alike remembered Sharon fondly, reminiscing about her we have heard from Ingrid Pitt, Steve McQueen, Sheliah Wells, Kathy Kersh, Leslie Caron, Actress Brienne De Beau, Photographer Jerry Schatzberg, Photograher Ellen Graham, Short Filmmaker Albert Maysles, Former MGM Publicist Christopher Farries, Jozy Pollock, High School friends: Tim Avedovech, Michael Ragland, Clifton Bowers, Mike Brady, Judy Campbell, Irene Hays, Carol Jean Thompson and Judy Willox.

9.  Celebrities that have copied Sharon's signature style have been: British singer Duffy, Jessica Simpson, Milla Jovovich, Claudia Schiffer, Diane Kruger, Sienna Miller, Kate Hudson, Model Natasha Poley, Hillary Duff, January Jones, Amber Valletta, and Molly Sims.

8.  We've seen many magical art pieces from the wonderful Swedish artist, Kerstien Matondang (http://www.kerstien.se/sharoninart.htm) among many others from the internet and Deviant Art.

7.  Debra Tate appeared on Larry King Live, The Today Show and the Manson documentary that featured a new interview with Linda Kasabian.

6.  Some of Sharon's friends passed away including: Dominick Dunne, Paul Burke, Paul Newman, Ricardo Montalban and there were a few others from the 1960s, like John Phillip Law that passed among others, however, I do not--unfortunately--know if they actually ever met or knew Sharon?  But it was definitely a sad year for celebrity deaths.

5.  Sharon inspired people like Stylist Rachel Zoe, Dear Creatures' Designer Bianca Benitez, Designer Tommy Hilfiger, Designer Michael Kors, Elvira, Gucci, and Beauty Expert Lianne Farbes.

4.  Films that Sharon came close to being in like Polanski's "What?", "Tess," "Bonnie and Clyde", "Untitled Western" Project also with Polanski, "The Sound of Music," "Le Mans," and "The Cincinnati Kid."

3.  Artist Jeremy Corbell for his show ICON An Exhibit Dedicated to Sharon Tate.  Debra Tate helped out by letting Corbell take photos of model Lauren Hastings wearing Sharon's real vintage clothing.  He used the pictures in his Exhibit.

2.  Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland and is now on house arrest there at his chalet awaiting the outcome of a 32 rape year old case.


1.  It was the 40th Anniversary of Sharon's murder.  Along with that, Susan Atkins died September 24th.  Atkins had tried to be released from prison earlier in the year under 'compassionate release' since she said sh was dying of a brain tumor but the final ruling did not allow for this to take place and she was denied for the final time. 

Another Reporter Remembers Sharon and Roman Plus Vampires and Beautiful Women

CAD Magazine February 1970

Our Life is our Jungle by Bruce Harper

When I encountered vibrant and intense Roman Polanski at Paramount Studios he was in the midst of editing Rosemary’s Baby, the brilliant film on satanism and witchcraft in our time that was to bring worldwide acclaim.

It was the spring of 1968 and the slight, intense, lean, young man who sat next to me at the small table was as happy as he possibly would be in his life.

He was thirty-four and looked ten years younger. He was already a world renowned festival prize winning film director, of Polish origin but now very mobile in the far-flung film world – Paris, London, Rome and now the heart of the industry, Hollywood.

But above all Roman Polanski had just wooed, won and married the unbelievably beautiful and talented young film star, Sharon Tate. If there was one young couple among the beautiful people who had everything going for them – love, immensely successful talent, exciting careers and the unlimited admiration of their peers – it was Sharon and Roman.

At this point a reddish-haired movie-star handsome, turtleneck-sweatered young fellow stopped to say hello to Roman. “Krysztof Komeda,” Roman said, “my composer. He is also a doctor. I told him he better leave the hospital, always rushing for an operation or something, and really stay in music. So he abandoned, of course, the study of medicine.” Polanski pointed to a mark on his upper lip. “I had a cut here,” he said. “He pulled my stitches out. I had a fight in Paris a few days ago, I came back with the stitches and I said, ‘I must have it pulled.’ Kris said ‘All right, I’ll pull it.’ He sat down and cooked the scissors and pulled it out. ‘You can do it so fast,’ I said, ‘I’m going to start being in doubt about the music!’”

I wanted to know about the fight. Did it have anything to do with moviemaking? “The fight?” Polanski responded dryly. “No, I just had a fight on the street. I got married, you know, I was in Paris on my honeymoon with my wife Sharon Tate. We were just going to the cinema. On the street there were three guys going in the opposite direction, and one stuck his hand under my wife’s skirt, so I punched him. And he had the stupid idea to punch me back. He had a little ring on his finger and he cut my lip.” This was instantly more than I expected, this insight into the contrasts shadowing Roman Polanski’s life. He was newly rich, famous, ensconced in that room at the top of his profession, just happily wed to fabulous Sharon Tate – and he had to fight with his fists against three toughs on the streets of Paris!

In Hollywood and London Polanski met Sharon Tate, and his life took on a new radiance. She was five-foot-five, a stunning ash-blonde--so glamorous that producers and directors kept discovering her. First it was director Martin Ritt who met her as a sixteen-year-old nymphet in Venice, where her father was then posted as a colonel in Army Intelligence. “You ought to be in pictures!” Ritt told Sharon, but Papa was against it. But later on a visit to Hollywood she remembered Ritt’s advice and went to agent Hal Gefsky. “All I know is,” he has said of that encounter, “when she walked into the my office she was the most beautiful girl in the world.”

She began making her own way, appearing in TV commercials, trying to break in the hard way. “I was just a piece of merchandise,” she said of that difficult period. “No one cared about me, Sharon.” The producer Martin Ransohoff saw her, signed her and groomed her for a superstar.

Now fate twisted together the bright-and-dark strands of Roman and Sharon’s lives. He was bewitched by the stunning, hypnotic witch (she played one in Eye of the Devil) on the screen and cast Sharon in a film he was then about to make that spoofed the vampire films, titled The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck! She romped through this wild satire in a red wig –and nothing else in a fantastic nude scene! This is how Cynan Jones saw her at that buoyant time of her life:

Sharon is the eternal woman, yet paradoxically she twists and turns her lithe body in the eager coltish manner of a careless tomboy. She affects the no-make-up Italian look, except for black eyeliner which serves to emphasize her wide hazel eyes and thick natural eyelashes. She has high cheekbones in an oval pre-Raphaelite face and her coloring is fresh and vivid with natural glowing cheeks. Her usual attire when not working is a huge oatmeal-colored sweater and skin tight jeans… She apparently cares little for clothes – and why should she with such an exquisite healthy body?

Sharon herself once said, “I’m really different underneath. All my life I’ve been told that I’m beautiful. But beauty has nothing to do with me – the real me. Anyway, you can stay covered up to your neck and still be sexy, you know. I would like my image to be somewhat secretive, simple and down-to-earth. I adore the little girl look." But when Roman Polanski entered her life he had still a different idea of her potential. “I’m trying to make her a little meaner,” he said. “She’s too nice and everyone walks all over her. She’s embarrassed by her own beauty.”

For her part, Sharon was fascinated by her brilliant young husband. “When I first met Roman,” she said, “I couldn’t believe he was a director because he looked so young. He’s the youngest looking man for his age I’ve ever seen. But he really isn’t as young as he looks. He’s thirty-five.” Her luminous eyes glowed as she rhapsodized about Roman. “He is wise, wonderful, brilliant and he knows everything! Above all, Roman is an artist.”

An interviewer found that she had “an aura, a magic, a curious mystique . . . a face of extraordinary beauty and a body that won’t quit,” and predicted that Sharon Tate would be with us a long time. It was a just prophesy, if some perverted destiny had not interfered with the right course of things…

Here is another article mentioning the recent vampire craze and it includes Roman and Sharon in The Fearless Vampire Killers:

http://www.whitefieldconsulting.com/wordpress/?p=1695

And another blog includes Sharon as one of the most beautiful women of the 1960s:

http://www.retrokimmer.com/2009/11/retrokimmer-favorite-1960s-beautiful.html