The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood

by Sam Wasson

Robert Evans, responsible for protecting Paramount’s investment, was summoned to location in New York a week into production. The call had come from Bill Castle, producer: He wanted Polanski off the movie. Evans balked; he had seen the dailies. They were fantastic.

The film was‘Rosemary's Baby’ (1968)

Roman and Sharon opened their home to new friends, collaborators, Sharon’s ex-boyfriend Jay Sebring, Polish writers and filmmakers, and Sharon’s family. No one was denied. “Sharon couldn’t turn any friendship down,” Polanski said. “Every time I came home from the studio there was Sharon, the dogs and friends.” Having spent the bulk of her life traveling, first as an army brat and later as an actress, Sharon savored home life, and Roman in it. She doted on him.

“[Polanski] and Sharon Tate,” said filmmaker Paul Mazursky, “were like a king and queen. He was a genius and she was this stunningly gorgeous hippie. They were John and Yoko in Hollywood. They were making art and making love. They were what L.A. at that time was all about.”

Polanski proposed a few days shy of Sharon’s twenty-fifth birthday. On January 20, 1968, they were married, she in a taffeta minidress, he in a green Edwardian jacket. “Just about the only really happy married couple I knew in Hollywood,” Robert Evans would recall, “were Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.” It was true.

She found a cat.

This was the end of the section when POLANSKI found out SHARON had been murdered.