When it was announced that Quentin Tarantino was working on a film centered on the Charles Manson murders that shook the Los Angeles elite in the summer of 1969, some filmgoers (myself included) worried that the director’s taste for extreme violence would be applied to these atrocious real-life events. The casting of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, billed in advance as a key character, also brewed anxiety over whether Tarantino, not always the best writer of female roles, would lean into the particularly gruesome death of Roman Polanski’s then-wife.
As it turns out, Tarantino’s cinephilic instincts took precedence over his bloodthirst: Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood focuses on Tate’s acting aspirations and her burgeoning recognition as a promising new talent at the time of her death, rather than the death itself—a tragedy that doesn’t even happen on screen. Easily Tarantino’s most melancholy and humane film since Jackie Brown, it presents Tate as someone to be remembered not for the way she disappeared, but for her life as a young woman trying to find both happiness and artistic fulfilment in an environment where her unusual beauty (even by Hollywood’s extreme standards) made her both a hot commodity and uniquely vulnerable.
Tate’s start in movies was, unsurprisingly, spawned by her striking looks. While living in Italy, where her father worked as a military officer, she and some friends got parts as extras in the film Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man, during which actor Richard Beymer (later to star as Ben Horne in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks) noticed her. They dated and were engaged for a year (she was 18, he was 22) and he encouraged her to pursue acting. But all that followed was extra work and screen tests that led nowhere.
In 2015, writer and podcaster Karina Longworth dedicated an entire series of her tremendously researched podcast about Hollywood’s forgotten histories, You Must Remember This, to “Charles Manson’s Hollywood.” Providing some context and corrections to an infamous narrative already familiar from books and movies (and which Tarantino’s film does little to flesh out), Longworth dedicated two of the 12 episodes to Tate’s life and explained how, from a very early age, the young woman felt insecure. Her strict upbringing, combined with her looks, made her shy and scared—an anxiety that was further imposed upon her when, while still living in Italy and before getting into acting, she survived a sexual assault on a date with a young soldier. But Tate wanted to become an actress, and although her lack of confidence repeatedly got in the way of her career, experience helped her free her instincts.
For a time, Tate’s agent, Harold Gefsky, and producer Martin Ransohoff confined her to the small screen, but her turn in 15 episodes of the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies helped unleash her comedic aptitude and certainly encouraged her self-confidence. As dark-wigged secretary Janet Trego, she played a little dumb, but with good comic timing and the lightness of an actress really enjoying herself.
After more missed opportunities to appear on the big screen, in 1967 Ransohoff finally gave Tate a real part in one of his film productions, the bizarre horror fable Eye of the Devil. Tate’s astounding beauty is her main tool in the film, as she plays an eerie witch living in an ominous castle with her family (her brother is played by David Hemmings in a smart bit of casting, his clear eyes and blond hair making him look pretty much like a male Sharon Tate) and terrorizing another family with strange rituals. Tate, her luscious hair glowing in the black-and-white photography, has her gigantic eyes painted in the style of the time, with dark kohl and heavy eyelashes emphasizing their bewitching effect. In a part that could easily have been laughably cliché, she proves genuinely mesmerizing, delivering her few lines with elegance and adopting a statuesque pose that fashion shoots helped her master. Eye of the Devil is not a good film, but Tate took it seriously. By the time she was 24, she had shown that she could play both ends of the spectrum—the clueless receptionist and the scary temptress.
But before the release of Eye of the Devil, another of Tate’s films came out to poor reviews, with which she herself agreed. Don’t Make Waves is a slight and silly comedy surf movie in which Tate plays Malibu, a lifeguard who saves Tony Curtis from drowning and distracts him from Claudia Cardinale (a predicament to be wished upon no one). The dumb blond image was not going to be easy to shed, but Tate was determined.
It was during her time in Swinging London after the shooting of Eye of the Devil that Tate met Polanski, then an up-and-coming star thanks to his European productions Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-sac (1966). Although at first unconvinced, Polanski gave Tate the role of Sarah, a beautiful damsel in distress, in his following project, the comedy horror film The Fearless Vampire Killers. Wearing a red wig, Tate functions primarily as the object of affection for Polanski’s character, Alfred, the young horny assistant of a professor chasing vampires and falling prey to them. She first appears in the film when the duo walks in on her having a bubble bath, and although she remains scantily clad for most of the movie’s runtime, her scenes with Polanski betray a genuine connection between them. The shoot apparently didn’t start well, however: Polanski had little patience for Tate’s insecurity and lack of experience; yet progressively, she demonstrated that she could take directions and that the dynamic script, requiring a few moments of action comedy and a general vivacity, was not beyond her grasp. After the shooting ended, the two moved in together. The film’s release was botched, with the studio presenting a heavily re-edited version to the public, but since then, a cut closer to the director’s original intentions has been released. The Fearless Vampire Killers has gained in popularity as a memento of its director’s youthful playfulness (Tim Burton must have been an early fan), as well as a unique historical document tinged by darkness. Even when trying to view Tate as primarily an actress not defined by her death or her relationship to the since very controversial Polanski, it is nearly impossible not to feel great sadness for the couple when seeing Sarah and Alfred exchange a tender kiss, perhaps Tate’s most sincere in her entire, short career.
Tate’s following feature was meant to be her proper beginning as a serious dramatic actress. Jacqueline Susann’s novel Valley of the Dolls was a sensational best seller and, as Longworth explains, Tate talked excitedly to the press about feeling close to her character, Jennifer North. A gorgeous small-town girl dreaming of Hollywood fame but devoid of talent and never taken seriously, Jennifer eventually turns to pornography in France to pay for her sick husband’s stay in a sanitarium. The parallels with Tate’s own experience arguably drew the actress to the part and helped her bring it to life. All these years of playing the dumb blond were finally paying off, and if Tate sometimes leans a little too much into this cluelessness, she also brings to it a touching vulnerability. Jennifer repeatedly receives phone calls from her mother scolding her for not having made it yet and asking for money (which Jennifer doesn’t have), and although these melodramatic conversations are undeniably camp, Tate, speaking to her mother like a little girl, makes Jennifer’s brutal loss of innocence and gradual disillusionment with her chances in Hollywood truly heartbreaking. One unexpectedly moving moment is when after one of these phone calls, Jennifer, alone at home, starts doing chest-toning exercises, but soon drops her arms and says, “Oh, to hell with ’em! ... Let ’em droop!” to herself; taken out of context, this is a silly moment, but it also feels like watching the real Tate in her everyday life. On her podcast, Longworth talks about the strict regime of dance, singing, and gym classes that Tate was subjected to when she arrived in Hollywood, “because you could always improve upon a perfect physique.” Tate’s impeccable figure was not simply the result of good genes; a lot of hard work and ambition went into it, and her dedication to an industry that treated her (and most other actresses) like an object was visible in her body, as well as in her willingness to play a tragic character so similar to herself.
Although Tate was nominated for a Golden Globe as New Star of the Year - Actress for her turn as Jennifer, Valley of the Dolls was panned by critics for its extravagance and its central performances. Roger Ebert called it “a dirty soap opera” for being so crude and pessimistic about sex, and he particularly hated Tate’s bust exercise scene, calling it “the most offensive and appalling vulgarity ever thrown up by any civilization.” (Somehow, Ebert went on to write the screenplay for the sequel.) The deep pathos of Jennifer’s fall from grace, as well as that of her friends—the musical star Neely O’Hara (Patty Duke, in a story line inspired by Judy Garland’s life) and the assistant entertainment lawyer Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins)—was deemed absurd and gross, too laughably exaggerated to be taken seriously. But watching it now, the misogyny of such views is blatant. The essential plot of Valley of the Dolls, which sees three women losing themselves to the stress of ambition and addiction, isn’t so different from that of A Star Is Born, in which it is a man who suffers from these ills, mostly out of jealousy toward his successful wife on whom he relies to be saved. But it is A Star is Born that has been remade four times, even as the tragic and impossibly sad stories of Jennifer, Neely, and Anne keep repeating themselves in real life. And if these narratives still appear too improbable and gruesome, Tate’s own biography unfortunately demonstrates that reality can be stranger, and more absurdly cruel, than fiction.
Tate’s last film was the sloppy and forgettable farce Twelve Plus One (which she signed up for to appear in a film with Orson Welles) but the last Tate-starring film to be released in her lifetime was the James Bond spoof comedy The Wrecking Crew, which premiered to positive reviews in February 1969. Tate appeared alongside Dean Martin’s 007ish agent Matt Helm as undercover spy Freya Carlson, a beautiful but nerdy (read: glasses-wearing) and clumsy young woman who more often than not slows down the agent in his investigation and prevents him from sleeping with the enemy. Tate practiced martial arts with Bruce Lee for a cute catfight scene between Freya and criminal Yu-Rang (Nancy Kwan), but more impressive yet is her progress as a comedy actress since her Beverly Hillbillies days. Serenely unconscious of her surroundings, Freya falls over countless times and often misunderstands Helm’s witticisms; her dazed charm indicates that Tate, although still growing into her skills, clearly felt more capable than ever. Only 25 years old at the time of production, she is the best part of this rather confused and only mildly funny spoof, and critics at the time recognized her as such.
The ultimate film critic, Tarantino honors Tate’s turn in The Wrecking Crew in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. In a likely imagined sequence, the director shows Tate going to a bookshop to buy a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles—which, in reality, she had read while staying in London with Polanski when she last saw him, and had suggested they adapt together for the screen—before impulsively deciding to attend a screening of her comedy. Once Upon a Time ... is imbued with Tarantino’s love for Hollywood history, and a spectator unfamiliar with Tate’s life story may be occasionally perplexed by the plethora of biographical details—but it would be difficult for anyone not to get emotional when watching Margot Robbie as Tate, watching herself on the big screen, growing giddy while hearing the rest of the audience laugh at Freya’s cute klutziness.
Tarantino’s tenderness toward Sharon Tate could seem surprising—and although his rewriting of her history doesn’t focus much on her as a mother, a wife, or simply a woman—it nevertheless makes clear that he cares greatly about Tate as a symbol of the Hollywood machine itself. Giving Tate a different fate through the power of film is perhaps a little too easy, but since her death was such a terrifying and random event, it makes sense for Tarantino, who has always used cinema as a fantasy machine, to employ that machine to give her a second chance. A second chance not only at simply living on, but also at really making it in the movies.
Manuela Lazic is a French writer based in London who primarily covers film.