But I was in pain.
* * *
Polanski married the actress Emmanuelle Seigner, and they had two children, a girl and a boy, Morgane and Elvis.
At night, as he put Morgane to bed, she would ask him to tell her about his past. The stories of the war, how he survived. She could see her father straining, trying to guard her from certain terrible details. Perhaps to mitigate both of their suffering, she began to imagine him, like Oliver Twist, cheerily scavenging the ghetto streets. But truths crept in. “Even now, there are certain things that make him sad,” she said. “When we have leftover food, even just bread, I can tell he feels weird about throwing it away.”
She wanted to make movies. “I like psychological thrillers,” she said. “I like to be challenged. I like to be shaken. When I leave a movie, I think, ‘This is what I want to do to people. This is how I want to make people feel. This is what movies should do.’”
Meeting new people, she found herself hesitant to speak her full name.
“I’m Morgane.”
“Morgane what?”
“Isn’t Morgane enough?”
Her father was Roman Polanski. In 1977 he admitted to having unlawful sex with a minor and fled America, never to return. He also made Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Tenant, Tess, Frantic, Death and the Maiden, and The Pianist. He won Golden Globes, Césars, BAFTAs, the Golden Bear, the Palme d’Or, the Academy Award, the Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Icon Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema.
Once, dining in a Paris restaurant, he looked up to find Jack Nicholson, in a Hawaiian shirt, arms outstretched, running toward him. The planned surprise for Polanski was enhanced when, moments later, from the other side of the restaurant, Robert Evans appeared on cue.
“Sharon,” Polanski would say, “seems a very long, long way away.”
* * *
In Woodland there are still roses, and the mercies of old colleagues helping each other from the crime scene. “Evans and I sit up at his house alone,” Nicholson said, “wondering if we’re the last ones left who feel [that] the main artery pumping blood into Hollywood is glamour, excitement and fun.” Nostalgia blurs the edges of empires, and yet it did happen, didn’t it? The movies are the proof. They were made. People made them.
Acknowledgments
Thank you for your time and memories, Gorgiana Alonzo, Katherine Andrusco, Peter Bart, Joanie Blum, Lee De Broux, Barrie Chase, Wyn Costello, Nicolas Coster, Robert Evans, Charles Glenn, Anne Goursaud, Nandu Hinds, James Hong, Justin Humphreys, Pearl Kaufman, Virginia Kennerley, Mike Koepf, Hawk Koch, Diane Ladd, Sharmagne Leland-St. John, Steve Luckman, Annie Marshall, Susanna Moore, Marcia Nasatir, Maggie Parker, Julie Payne, David Picker, Roman Polanski, Jennifer Roche, Gilbert Segel, Joanne Segel, Teri Shropshire, Sarah Naia Stier, Anthea Sylbert, Don Taylor, Harry Ufland, Jesse Vint, and Lauren Weissman.
Thank you, Alan Selka and Michael Binns-Alfred, for opening the doors of Woodland, for making me welcome.
Thank you as always to the librarians of the Margaret Herrick Library.
Thank you to Jeanine Basinger, Bob Dolman, Jack Dolman, Gary Copeland, Maria Diaz, David Freeman, Beth Henley, George Hodgman, Alex Horwitz, Lynne Littman, Jill Mazursky, Billy Mernit, Brandon Millan, Scott Millan, Graham Moore, Jaime Ocon, Amanda Parker, Nic Ratner, Julie Tepper, Ted Walch, Cindy Wasson, Jeffrey Wasson, and Sophie Wasson for the benefit of the intelligence and expertise you applied to my subject.
Thank you also, Malgosia Abramowska, Lauren Bittrich, Laury Frieber, Susan H. Llewellyn, Bob Miller, Rick Pappas, Karen Stetler, Matthew Snyder and Marina Zenovich. You made it better.
Thank you to The Robbins Office—one of the few perfect things I know—David Halpern, Kathy Robbins, Janet Oshiro, and Lisa Kessler.
Somehow it’s not enough to thank David Halpern once. If you knew what he could do, if you know what a most excellent friend, agent, reader, and ally he was, you’d agree. Thank you, David Halpern.
I want to thank my editor twice too. Thank you, Noah Eaker. Thank you, Noah Eaker. You are a model of ability. We were in communication every moment, even when we weren’t. You may not know that.
Julie Payne
1940–2019
Robert Evans
1930–2019
Notes
INTRODUCTION: FIRST GOODBYES
sitting at the bar: David Thomson, “Jack Nicholson, King of Mulholland,” Playgirl, Apr. 1981.
decorated store windows: https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/on-his-own-terms-6022.
apricot brandy and Hennessy: Richard Warren Lewis, Nicholson Playboy interview, Apr. 1972.
started drinking only when Prohibition: Jack Mathews, “Jack Laid-Back,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 5, 1990.
Robert Evans, a boy: Robert Evans interview with author.
“That wouldn’t be me”: Ibid.
Mrs. Walker’s hamburger stand: “Commentary,” Chinatown (1975; Los Angeles: Paramount, 1999), DVD.
bougainvillea: “Darkness at the Edge of Towne,” Michael Sragow, American Film, Feb. 1989.
time before the war: Mort Sahl Live #5, Studio 31, TV show, Mar. 21, 1992.
redwood tables: “Growing Up in a City of Senses,” Robert Towne, Los Angeles Magazine, May 1975.
“If you know what’s good for you”: Roman Polanski, Roman (New York: William Morrow, 1984), 25–26.
Chinatown is a state of mind: Robert Towne, “Dialogue on Film,” American Film, Dec. 1975.
PART ONE: JUSTICE
“Ransohoff is a perfect example”: Michel Ciment, Michel Perez, and Roger Tailleur, “Interview with Roman Polanski,” trans. Paul Cronin and Remi Guillochon in Roman Polanski: Interviews, ed. Cronin (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2005), 39.
Well, the producers always said: Dick Cavett Show, Dec. 22, 1971.
“What Sharon was”: http://www.sharontate.net/sharons_friends.html.
“An incredibly beautiful girl”: John Bowers, “‘Sexy Little Me,’” Saturday Evening Post, May 6, 1967.
“Hit me”: Ibid.
A few times: Polanski, Roman, 248.
steering wheel changed shape: Ibid., 237.
eyes and mouth were swastikas: Ibid., 239.
split the sugar cube: Ibid., 248.
she had heard so many sophisticates: Lloyd Shearer, “Sharon Tate: Sweetie, I’m Going to Make You a Star!” St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 18, 1966.
“Please don’t”: https://www.scribd.com/document/232487572/Tate-LaBianca-Investigation-Polygraph-of-Roman-Polanski.
“She was just fantastic”: Ibid.
“but I really hate talking about it”: Roman Polanski, Playboy interview with Larry DuBois, Dec. 1971.
“They thought Warsaw would be safer”: Peter Flax, “Exclusive: The Roman Polanski Interview (Podcast),” Hollywood Reporter, Dec. 4, 2015.