Actress Suzanna Leigh Remembers Sharon Fondly But Not Roman, LAPD Detective Who Worked on the Tate Case Passes, Actor Hugh Grant Turned Down "The Ghost Writer", and Actress Olivia Williams Says "No Comment" on Polanski Case But Insists He is a Great Director

I got this book recently that includes talk of Sharon.  It is a autobiography of Actress Suzanna Leigh.  She was good friends with Sharon and mentions her fondly in the book.  However, she does not have nice things to say about Roman.  Not sure if I should mention what she says of him in the book.  If you are interested in a copy here is her website:

http://www.suzannaleigh.co.uk/index.html

Actress Suzanna Leigh.

Here is a highlight of what she says of Sharon:

 

"She was one of the sweetest people, besides being absolutely stunning. 

"I had met Sharon when she came over to London from Los Angeles in 1966 and I knew from our very first meeting that she was a lovely girl.  She had long blonde hair, the most stunning figure and legs that went on forever.  She also had a sweet personality and I don't think she ever said a nasty word about anyone."

 

It is an interesting book and offers many rare and great stories about Leigh's co-star and good friend, Elvis Presley.  So I do recommend it.

 

One of the LAPD detectives who worked on the Tate murder case has passed.  I remember how Polanski said all of them were so helpful in the case.  Here is a article about his passing:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-danny-galindo8-2010apr08,0,1301666.story

Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2010:

Danny Galindo dies at 88; LAPD detective in Tate-LaBianca murder cases

He was the first detective to arrive at the scene of the LaBianca slayings and conducted a detailed search, according to the book 'Helter Skelter.'

Danny Galindo, a retired Los Angeles police detective who helped investigate the notorious Tate-LaBianca murders, died of a heart ailment Tuesday at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, his family said. He was 88.

"He was an important member of the Manson murders investigative team," said Vincent Bugliosi, who was the chief prosecutor in the case. Cult leader Charles Manson and several followers were sentenced to death (later reduced to life terms) in the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and five others.

Described by Bugliosi as amiable and hard-working, Galindo was a member of the LAPD's prestigious Robbery-Homicide Division when he was sent to the Tate house in Benedict Canyon, where the first five killings took place on the night of Aug. 8, 1969. As he told Los Angeles magazine last year, he took charge of the evidence being gathered and stayed to guard the house after the other investigators left the gruesome scene.

The next night he was filing reports at Parker Center downtown when he was called to the scene of two more murders, this time in the Los Feliz area. He was the first detective to arrive at the LaBianca residence and conducted a detailed search, according to Bugliosi's book about the murders, "Helter Skelter." Galindo later testified about the results of his search, including finding the word "WAR" carved into the abdomen of Leno LaBianca.

On the night of the LaBianca murders he was asked by a television reporter if the Tate and LaBianca murders were related and regretted his answer. "I told him, 'I think it's more of a copycat case.' I introduced that expression, and I've lived with it forever. It was a hell of a mistake on my part," he said in the Los Angeles magazine piece, "because it wasn't until much later that things would begin to fall into place."

Galindo was born in El Paso on May 4, 1921. He flew a fighter plane for the Army Air Forces during World War II and was awarded the Purple Heart and Flying Cross after he was shot down over Germany.

He joined the LAPD in 1946 and quickly became a detective. He retired from the department in 1977 after three decades in homicide. He later worked as an investigator for the State Bar of California before starting his own investigations firm.

He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Margie, a son, a daughter and a grandchild.

 

Actor Hugh Grant apparently turned down a part in "The Ghost Writer":

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/news/article_1546036.php/Hugh-Grant-passed-on-Roman-Polanski-movie

And here, Actress Olivia Williams talks fondly of Polanski but does not want to discuss his current case:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/7547577/Olivia-Williams-interview-Polanski-terrified-me-but-hes-a-movie-master.html

 

A highlight from that interview is this quote from Williams about 'what if this is Polanski's last movie?':

“That would be a tragedy, a f---ing waste. Roman is one of the great masters of film; he is unlike any other director. The over-sensitivity of modern actors has affected directing in a very negative way. So often these days, at the end of a take, you will find a director tentatively whispering to his star: 'That was great but perhaps, maybe, would you possibly even consider trying it again ever so slightly differently…’. Roman is not like that at all. If he is unhappy with something, he will interrupt a take waving his arms and bellowing: 'No! No! No!’, which, at first, was absolutely terrifying.

“He came at me with that once during my crying, shagging scene, which is a, you know, somewhat sensitive and vulnerable moment for any actor.” Again the eyebrow creeps up, comically. “It turned out he was upset because the pillow behind my head was at an angle that irritated him. After that, I stopped taking it personally.”

Jailed Polanski finishes film for Berlin Competition

Jailed Polanski finishes film for Berlin Competition

Gautuman Bhaskaran, Hindustan Times
 
January 2010
 
Roman Polanski, the Polish director, is no stranger to me. Certainly his work, no. My first brush with it was at one of the editions of the International Film Festival of India in Kolkata during the early 1990s. The film was Bitter Moon. Starring stars such as Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Seigner and Peter Coyote, it was an extremely provocative work that had the classic Polanski’s psychological touch, thrilling to the core and disturbing to its depth. Set on the high seas, the movie traces the lives of two couples as they sail towards Istanbul on their way to India. Polanski explores bondage, sadomasochism and voyeurism to narrate the bitter story of death and destruction, passion and possessiveness.
 
I still remember that the film was introduced by the dashing Bengali actor, Victor Banerjee, whose parting line was, “Yes, there is a lot of masala in it”. But there has been even more masala in Polanski’s life, often tragic I would think.

Now under house arrest in Switzerland, waiting for his deportation to the USA, where he could be tried for having sex with a 13-year-old girl (who incidentally has long pardoned him), Polanski has completed his latest movie, The Ghost Writer. It will compete at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival to roll on February 11.

Based on the International Thriller Writers’ Award-winning novel, The Ghost by Robert Harris (who also penned the screenplay), Polanski’s movie was shot at Studio Babelsberg, outside Berlin, and was finished by him while he was in Swiss prison.

The film stars Ewan McGregor as a professional ghostwriter hired to pen the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister, essayed by Pierce Brosnan (the man we knew best as James Bond). The writer finds himself in political and sexual intrigues (without which, I guess, no Polanski work will be complete) that involve the ex-Prime Minister’s wife and his aide. It soon transpires that the Brosnan character has a terrible secret that may well upset international ties. Tony Blair is reportedly the inspiration for this character.

Often considered a master of crime and conspiracy, Polanski himself fell a victim to these when his beautiful, young and pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was savagely murdered by a cult in LA in 1969. A shattered Polanski, who was then in Britain, returned to Europe saying that there was nothing to hold him back in Hollywood. He later wrote in his autobiography that his “absence on the night of the murder is the greatest regret of my life…Sharon's death is the only watershed in my life that really matters… her murder changed my personality from a boundless, untroubled sea of expectations and optimism to one of ingrained pessimism ... eternal dissatisfaction with life".

And his work since then has reflected these.

He came out of his self-imposed seclusion in 1971 with The Tragedy of Macbeth. His later movies continued to have this tinge of the dark and the forbidding. Tess, Chinatown and Death and the Maiden, for example, have all had their share of the mysterious. Dedicating Tess (based on Thomas Hardy’s famed 1891 novel), to Sharon, Polanski said that his wife had given him a copy of the book on the last occasion he saw her alive. She had said that it would make a great film. It did.

Polanski continued to make movies such as The Pianist (2002, Palm d’Or for Best Picture at Cannes and Academy Award for Best Director) that in some ways were an echo of his own life. The Pianist is set during the dark days of World War II and was adapted from Jewish-Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman’s autobiography. Like Szpilman, Jewish Polanski escaped death in Nazi hands, while his mother was killed at Auschwitz. Polanski and his father survived German tyranny. The father lived through the horrors of a concentration camp, while Polanski escaped from the Krakow ghetto. He changed his name, behaved like a Catholic and saw the end of the war.

This was the fighter I met at Marrakech a couple of years ago, and his agility and verve amazed me. As the head of the jury at the film festival there, he was a 75-year-old bundle of unimaginable energy. In a way, he epitomises all that one sees in his cinema: sensitivity, intelligence and a lot more.

As he now bides his time incarcerated in a Swiss chalet, there is a wave of sympathy for him. Letters pleading for the dismissal of the American legal case against him have been coming in. Probably justice must prevail, but if his imprisonment, if that happens, can well be a sad loss for cinema. For at 77, Polanski may not have many more years of helming.

(Gautaman Bhaskaran has been writing on international cinema for over two decades, covering major film festivals at home and abroad, including Cannes, Venice and Berlin.)

A few more articles today on Polanski:

Swiss Preparing Decision on Polanski



Compiled by DAVE ITZKOFF-New York Times



Published: January 7, 2010



The justice ministry of Switzerland said Thursday that it may decide soon whether to grant a request by the United States to extradite Roman Polanski, Agence France-Presse reported. The ministry’s spokesman, Folco Galli, told Agence France-Presse: “We are preparing our decision. It could be January, it could also be in February. I am not going to be more precise.” Mr. Polanski, who fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl, was apprehended in Switzerland in September. He spent several months in a jail near Zurich before posting $4.5 million bail in December and is now under house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad. On Wednesday a written request from Mr. Polanski to be sentenced in absentia was presented to a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. The judge, Peter P. Espinoza, has scheduled a hearing on Jan. 22 to consider it.


And one more link of interest:

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b160804_roman_polanski_seeks_long-distance.html