Raquel Welch and Sharon Tate Friends? When Is the New Tate Biography to be Released? And Sharon has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame???

According to Kirk Crivello 's book, "Fallen Angels" he writes that when Sharon was making "The Sandpiper" :  Sharon became friendly with the girl who photo-doubled Elizabeth Taylor in the beach sequences.  Her name was Raquel Welch.

Taylor was jealous of Sharon from the start and had Tate's scenes cut from the film.  I have also heard a rumor that one of the reasons Taylor did not want Sharon around was because of Burton's promiscuous behavior.  Had Burton got a good look at Sharon, would she have been competition for Taylor's man?  Could be?  Welch herself has recently confessed to having an attraction for Burton and this article shows that Burton was certainly a ladies man :

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/04/01/raquel-welch-reveals-her-passion-for-richard-burton-91466-26154509/

Raquel Welch reveals her passion for Richard Burton

By Robin Turner

SHE was the beauty who burst from her cave woman brassiere to become an American sex symbol.

He was the brooding, working-class Welshman who became one of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars.

Now, 69-year-old big-screen veteran Raquel Welch has hinted she and Richard Burton could have been more than just friends on the set of their 1972 movie Bluebeard.

Welch – born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, Illinois – appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in the US this week to talk about her new memoir Raquel Welch: Beyond the Cleavage (£12.99 Weinstein Book, released in the USA today and available in the UK soon).

She told the chat show host about some of the leading men she had dated and known including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Dean Martin, Burt Reynolds and Richard Burton. Welch wrote of Burton (born Richard Jenkins in Pontrhydyfen, Port Talbot): “He’s like a heat-seeking missile, a smoking hot romantic.”

Oprah Winfrey repeated the line then asked: “Who were you talking about there?”

Welch confirmed:“I was talking about Richard Burton, who I did a movie with in Budapest. He was just so charismatic and just really something.”

When Welch admitted to spending time with Burton while they filmed Bluebeard Oprah Winfrey said with raised eyebrows: “Spending time with, I love that expression.”

Raquel Welch’s career as a sex symbol really took off after her scantily-clad appearance in the 1966 box office hit One Million Years BC.

Her marriage to former manager Patrick Curtis was just about over when she started filming Bluebeard in 1972 and she would divorce Curtis later that year. Her leading man, Richard Burton, playing a murderous World War I era German aristocrat, who had a reputation for flirting with his leading ladies.

His Henry VIII film with Genevieve Bujold was known in the acting circles as “Anne of a Thousand Lays”.

And former film publicist Michael Munn said in his book on Burton, Prince Of Players, that the Welshman had flings with Marilyn Monroe, Jean Simmons, Lana Turner, Claire Bloom and Susan Strasberg.

“I was like a hungry bear with salmon jumping into my paws, Sybil (his first wife) was incredibly tolerant,” Munn claimed he told him.

Raquel Welch said of Bluebeard, in which she played a former nun: “I gave up my habit for Richard Burton. My nun had some rather libidinous leanings, she was kind of a sexpot underneath.”

Until now, Welch has never hinted at any romance with the late Welsh actor, who at the time of the movie was also going through marital problems. Like Welch, Burton would also get divorced that year when he finalised his first split from Elizabeth Taylor.

Author and journalist Penny Junor, who has written a biography of Burton, said: “I think any affair that Burton might have had is credible. He was very promiscuous.

“He had an awful lot of women in his time. He made it a rule to try to conquer any leading lady that he had in the early days. The reason he ended up with Elizabeth Taylor was that she had a similar rule that she would only sleep with men she married.”

Swansea-born author Paul Ferris who also wrote a Burton biography, yesterday thurs said yesterday: “I did not know of any liaison with Raquel Welch when I wrote my book but his family, who helped with the biography, were understandably protective of him at the time because he was still alive and they were very fond of him. But it would not come as a surprise if there was a romance there as he was very attractive to women and I’m pretty sure he’d have been attracted to someone like Raquel Welch.”

Joan Collins wrote in her memoir that when she rejected Burton’s on-set advances, he embarked on a series of liaisons with other women including workers on the set. Collins playfully told Burton that she believed he would sleep with a snake if he had the chance, to which Burton is alleged to have replied “only if it was wearing a skirt, darling”.

Burton was born in 1925, the 12th child of a miner. His home in Pontrhydyfen was so crowded he was farmed out to relatives in Taibach, Port Talbot, where he grew up.

Though he made his name on the London stage as a brilliant young actor, Burton became an international star as much for his marriages to Elizabeth Taylor as his movies.

Replete with yachts, jewels and drunken fights, the Burton-Taylor alliance was even condemned by the Vatican for “erotic vagrancy”.

Burton, a heavy drinker who smoked five packets of cigarettes a day, died in 1984 aged 54.

He was buried in Celigny, Switzerland with a copy of Dylan Thomas’s poems.

In her book Raquel Welch: Beyond The Cleavage, the star reflects on her life from growing up in California and bursting onto the scene in One Million BC to a failed marriage to becoming a single mother and, at last, becoming a famous actress.

She starts the book by saying: “Contrary to popular opinion I did not hatch out of an eagle’s nest, circa One Million Years BC clad in a doeskin bikini.

“In fact, I was more surprised than anyone to find myself on location in such an exotic setting, high atop a volcanic mountain in the Canary Islands.”

“With the release of that famous movie poster, in one fell swoop, everything in my life changed and everything about the real me was swept away. All else would be eclipsed by this bigger-than-life sex symbol.”

Now separated from her fourth husband, Welch made a string of movies after Bluebeard including the Three Musketeers and the Four Muskaeteers, Bedazzled, Legally Blonde and Forget About It.

Also, here is an interesting interview with Welch on her new book:

http://entertainment.msn.com/video/?g=6f4fb1a4-bd82-4456-99f6-6e75d15046d6&from=en-us_msnhp>1=28101

A fairly recent photo of author Sanders.

According to Amazon, the biography of Sharon by "The Family" writer Ed Sanders is due out February 5, 2011.  So be on the lookout for that one.  It is officially titled: Sharon Tate: The Biography.  Let's hope it is a good one for those of us who can't get enough Sharon. ;)

And even though this is an interesting article on Sharon, it says at the bottom that she did receive a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?  News to me?  Although, of course, she certainly deserves it.

http://www.hollywoodusa.co.uk/HolyCrossObituaries/sharontate.htm

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.”