Photo Comparison of the Week, Sharon Photo Sites, Elvira and Sharon, Sharon as Janet Trego

Here is our photo comparison of the week:

I've noticed that Actress Amanda Seyfried has that Sharon Tate style every now and then.  Also, be sure to check out the cover of Elle--the one that only subscribers get!--it has a photo of Amanda with a very early type Sharon hairdo.   Here are some other examples:

Here are some Sharon photo sites I found.  Sorry but the first one has commericals. :(

http://www.devotedpics.com/gallery/sharon-tate-pictures/

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/sharon-tate/photos

Here is a web mention of Sharon and Elvira (Cassandra Peterson):

http://joycestake.blogspot.com/2010/09/happy-birthday-cassandra-peterson.html

And here is another blogger that mentions Janet Trego fondly.  Thanks to Melissa for this:

http://www.liketelevision.com/blog/2009/09/sharon-tate-as-janet-trego.html

Photo of the Week, Rare Early Sharon photos from "The Beverly Hillbillies" and a new film reminiscent of Polanski

Here is the photo of the week that went for big bucks on ebay recently:

And more new rare screen capture photos from ebay of Sharon as Janet Trego on "The Beverly Hillbillies":

Here is a film that is said to be reminiscent of Polanski's work.  It's called "Black Swan" and stars Natalie Portman.  Look at the second and third review here to see the connection:

http://www.cinematical.com/2010/09/01/black-swan-reviews-call-film-weird-sexy-and-devastating/

Have a Great Weekend!

Quote of the Week, Yuba Exhibit Shows Victims, and Sharon Tate as a Gift?

I found a quote today that I thought would make Sharon laugh:

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I was thinking of little things Sharon used to do like overwatering her plants and having the water come out of the bottoms all over.  On the contrary though, I do not thing this shows Sharon as being dumb. I think we all do silly things sometimes.  At least Sharon could laugh at herself.  But that doesn't mean she was not intelligent.  I think she was... I recall Deborah saying somewhere that Sharon was kind of like Goldie Hawn.  And even though Goldie could do silly and funny things too, that does not mean she was not a very savvy career woman. I think Sharon would have become more known this way if she had lived.  After all, she was still relatively young when she died and we all know that we change in our thirties in the way we think of things.

Yuba exhibit puts face on victims of violence

http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/victims-94224-photographs-ended.html

Twenty-five photographs tell a story of lives ended — but never forgotten.

The Yuba County residents who were victims of homicides are displayed at the courthouse and county Government Center for National Crime Victims Rights Week.

Jason Roper, Victim Witness Program manager for the Yuba County Probation Department, said the photos put faces to people whom some may know only as names in a newspaper story.

"It's definitely created a huge emotional reaction," Roper said. "It's caused a lot of discussion."

Michelle Porter — stepmother to Crystal Porter, 19, who died with her 1-year-old daughter Katelynn in a suspicious Sept. 17, 2006, fire in Marysville — said her family members and all those shown in the photos shared a similar fate.

"They were all taken from us way too soon," Michelle Porter said.

The photographic project by Victim Witness, she said, follows extraordinary help from the county agency since the 2006 deaths. "Victim Witness has always been there for myself and my family," Porter said.

Such help had not always been available here or elsewhere.

Dan Levey, national president of Parents of Murdered Children, said a presidential task force started in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan was a key part of efforts to assist crime victims. Levey praised the Yuba County photo project.

"It gives meaning and honor to who they were," he said.

Bilenda Harris-Ritter, a Folsom attorney who is on the board of the national parents group, said that before the early 1980s, the criminal justice system often overlooked crime victims.

"People don't see the victims in a murder case," Harris-Ritter said. "They do see the defendant every day."

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, in a letter about the Crime Victims Week, noted the event evokes powerful memories of a time when victim support services were not available to those harmed by crime.

"In the not so distant past, victims were being routinely excluded from courtrooms," Holder wrote.

Sandy Fonley, who worked for Yuba County in victim assistance for more than two decades, said the 1969 murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles by the Manson Family helped spur attention to crime victims.

Doris Tate, Sharon's mother, had said her daughter's celebrity status shouldn't have made her death more significant than others, recounted Fonley, who met Doris Tate.

Fonley recalled Tate saying, "My daughter happened to be beautiful," as she crusaded for the rights of all victims.

CONTACT Ryan McCarthy at749-4707 or rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.com

And I bet a lot of men would love to have Sharon as a gift. ;)  Here is a look back at one of the bits from the Beverly Hillbillies episodes.  Be sure and watch the whole thing to see what I am talking about. :)
 
http://www.wikio.com/video/sharon-tate-clampetts-culture-janet-trego-3130960

Sharon Tate Article Nouvelle Starlet and Kerstien Matondang's Coppertone Ad

Here is another article from my collection that I hope you enjoy:

From: Films of the Golden Age, Fall 1997

Sharon Tate - Nouvelle Starlet

By Eve Golden

In the late 1960s, she was one of the most promising starlets in Hollywood.  Breathtakingly beautiful, hard-working and genuinely well liked, Sharon Tate had a future easily as bright as other newcomers like Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway and Candice Bergen.  But a handful of lunatics changed all that, and Sharon became better known as one of the decade's most famous murder victims.  She only made nine films, but Sharon had been on her way to becoming one of the industry's brightest stars as the 1970s dawned.

She was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 24, 1943, the daughter of Major Paul Tate and his wife, Doris.  Already a beauty at six months, she won the Miss Tiny Tot contest.  Sharon and her two younger sisters had adventurous childhoods: their father, working with Army Intelligence, spent much of the 1950s moving his family from Dallas to Tacoma, Houston, El Paso and San Francisco.  In 1959, when Sharon was 16, they moved to Verona, Italy, where she attended high school and quickly became multi-lingual.

 

It was in Italy that she also began mulling over an acting career.  Richard Beymer was making a film near Sharon's school, and introduced the teenager to his agent.  Nothing came of this, but Beymer had put a flea in her ear.  She came back to the U. S. in 1963 and began seriously looking for work.  "I was shy and bashful when I reached Hollywood," she said in 1965.  "I only had enough money to get by and I hitch-hiked a ride on a truck to the office of an agent whose name I had."

 

An audition for the TV series 'Petticoat Junction' didn't pan out, but her test was seen by Martin Ransohoff of Filmways Productions.  Impressed, he put her under a seven-year contract and set out to "develop" her in the old-fashioned Hollywood manner.  Ransohoff sent Sharon to New York's Actor's Studio, and to classes in dancing, singing, body-building and modeling.  "I'm sure the three years I spent in training to be an actress will pay off," Sharon told The New York News in 1966.

 

By that time, she had also gotten her first few jobs.  She can be briefly glimpsed guesting on 'Mr. Ed' and as secretary Janet Trego, Mr. Drysdale's secretary, in a few episodes of 'The Beverly Hillbillies.'  She did commericials, including one for cigarettes which nearly did her in: "The commericial required many takes," Sharon recalled. "Just when they were ready fro the final one, I passed out from taking too many puffs on my first attempt at smoking."

 

Ransohoff helped get her small roles in 'Separate Beds' (1963), 'The Americanization of Emily' (1964), and 'The Sandpiper' (1965), to help her get accustomed to filming.  Her first major role was in the dreadful, pretentious British-made thriller from 1965, 'Eye of the Devil', also known as '13'.  The film starred David Niven and Deborah Kerr as a middle-aged couple living in a chateau.  Sharon was thrilled to be in such company, even in a less than sterling project.  She portrayed Odile, a spooky local girl who wanders about looking creepy and uttering ominous  lines.  No one got much of a chance to act in this film, and it made no real impact on the budding starlet's career.

Sharon Tate was an odd duck in the swinging Hollywood of the mid-1960s.  Strictly brought-up, she was sweet and innocent in a town that was neither.  One actor called her "one of the toughest lays in town.  Strictly a one-man woman."  She reportedly had an unhappy relationship with a French actor for two years, then was briefly engaged to her hairstylist, Jay Sebring. The two broke up, but remained friends.  Then, at a London party in 1966, she met Roman Polanski.

 

The 33-year-old director and actor was already famous for his dark films 'Knife in the Water' (1962), and 'Repulsion' (1965).  He also had quite a reputation: one ex-girlfriend described him as "the quintessential male chauvinist pig.  He treats women like objects, like toys, like his latest pet car.  It can be fun to share his limelight for a while, but ultimately it becomes boring."  Ransohoff loaned Sharon to Polanski for his horror comedy film 'The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967).  Sharon and Polanski became involved, despite their obvious cultural differences.  He himself later said, "It took the longest time for me to get her to go to bed with me.  She was not someone who went easily to bed with a man."  They moved in together in Belgravia, London, and Sharon learned to love London's Swinging '60s scene:  "There are so many talented young people with fantastic, original ideas here," she said in 1967.  "...The Mod Look, the long, straight hair for girls and long hair for boys, mini skirts...it all started here and eventually got to America.  Americans are too inhibited but they are slowly coming around to realizing what a swinging world we live in."  But the fast Polanski crowd was too swinging even for her.  According to Mia Farrow, Sharon experimented with pot and LSD, but never really got into drugs.

 

Sharon's only film with Polanski turned out to be something of a disappointment.  Visually, it was stunning, capturing a vision of 19th century Eastern Europe in the dead of winter.  But the performers were given little to do.  'Vampire Killers' veered between bad sitcom dialogue and gory thrills, and never seemed to quite settle on a style. Sharon, in a red wig, looked beautiful and somewhat detached.  The film did not do well in the U.S., and Polanski tried to help it along by shooting nudes of Sharon for the March 1967 issue of Playboy.  Aside from raising questions of taste, this did nothing.

 

Sharon's first real U. S. exposure came with MGM's big-budget beach comedy 'Don't Make Waves' (1967), starring Tony Curtis.  Sharon had a small but showy role as Malibu, a sky-diving beach bunny whom Curtis steals from her body-building boyfriend.  The film wasn't up to much, but critics noted Sharon's combination of beauty and deadpan humor.  She, however, did not share their enthusiasm.

"It's a terrible movie," she accuarately noted before it had even been released, then admitted that "sometimes I say things I shouldn't.  I guess I'm too outspoken."

To be continued tomorrow...

I don't think Sharon's films were that bad.  At least she showed potential especially in comedic roles.

Her venture into the 'Valley of the Dolls' and more will be discussed in the article tomorrow.

 

I noted Kerstien Matondang's great video site yesterday and today she told me she has added another.  This time it is with Sharon's voice and images doing a Coppertone ad for when she made 'Don't Make Waves.'  Please be sure to comment on it and tell Kerstien what you think?  Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLf-HaeuVqo

Remembering Sharon Tate from a young age; One person who knew her and another who admired her from afar and Sharon as a Babe of Yore

Found some rare glimpses into Sharon on the net tonight that I thought I'd share...

 

Remembering Sharon:

Former Hollywood talent agent Chappy met Sharon when he was seven years old, and remembers her well. The following is Chappy's memories of Sharon Tate and the affect her murder had on him.

I met Sharon when I was little. I was 7 years old and recognized her with my mom at the market. She had on this tight bright yellow mini dress and that was shoulderless, but wrapped around the neck, with a big white vinyl belt she wore around it. Her hair was straight, perfectly combed straight and she had some sort of flower printed silk scarf around her head, that was wrapped around the hairline and underneath her hair. She wasn't wearing it like a bandana on the top of her head. She had big dark squarish-round sunglasses on. I had commented how pretty she was. How REALLY pretty she was, and I remember her saying to my mom, "Oh, isn't he the cutest!"

 

Then on occassions mom and I would bump into her again at the market. It got to be almost a random thing that she invited us to a cookout at her home.

Sharon was always friendly. You could never say a mean thing about her. She always made you feel comfortable around her.

 

I remember she had Christmas-type lights around the rail fence, that looked just beautiful at night. Sharon loved to decorate!

Roman was there and several of there friends on-and-off throughout the day would come to and fro there. I might have seen Voyteck and Gibby there, but I was to young to remember! If I bumped into Roman today, I don't think he'd remember me! Too many people came in and out of that place! I remember Cass Elliot from the Mamas & the Papas was there. She smoked alot! Sharon did too! Taryton cigarettes if I remember. She wasn't pregnant at the time! This was about the time her career started off!

 

I remember swimming in the pool alot and there were at least 4 or 5 dogs roaming about. I remember Sharon's [dog] Prudence...was always running around or in Sharon's lap, and how she'd lick my face all the time.

Prudence that is...not Sharon! Sharon always cradled Prudence like a baby! Hence the motherly instinct. I later learned through Debra Tate in a phone conversation, when I asked her "whatever became of Prudence?" Debra was quiet at first and told me when she learned to drive, she accidentally ran over Prudence when she was sleeping under the car! She felt really sad and guilty about it for the longest time and I told her that Prudence is with Sharon, and her Mom and Patti.

They [Sharon and Roman] had the grill in the driveway and I remember that I always thought it was so damn hot to have a grill there, with the sun beating down.

We went to 2 or 3 of these outings and then my dad was offered a new job and we moved [and] settled in Barrington, Rhode Island.

 

I didn't learn of the murders till after we moved! People don't realize how heinous the crime was! How violent it was!! People just figure it as another killing without so much knowing the details of it! Doris Tate always wanted people to see Sharon IN the crime & autopsy photos, so they knew how severe the crime was. And if people knew, then Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkle, and Van Houten wouldn't get out!!! Though Houten wasn't in the Tate killings, only LaBianca's!

I din't really mourn about it till years later when I understood about the crime itself, when I started getting back into Sharon memorabilia. I have about 700 some-odd photographs of her that I've collected over the years. In fact, I just won an Ebay item! It was a DVD of the tour of the Tate/Polanski home and the Spahn Ranch. It was suppossibly filmed by "Nine Inch Nails", Trent Reznor who lived there in '93 and '94! So I can't wait to see it and remember it more!


Thanks for this from Vanessa and Elizabeth.

 

And a blogger remembers Sharon as Janet Trego:

http://www.liketelevision.com/blog/2009/09/sharon-tate-as-janet-trego.html

Well, as a young boy (age 6-8 years old) - I loved the episodes with Miss Jane's assistant Janet Trego, played by Sharon Tate. She was really pretty and had a wonderful innocence about her that I found especially appealing. I was way too young to understand all the sexual innuendo jokes and I was a big fan of her white rain helmet hair, a style worn by many of the young women and mothers of the day. And though I did not really know what it meant, I always thought she was really cool. I had no idea who Roman Polanski was or anything, I was just a kid.

 

And I will never forget the news one day (August 9, 1969) - when I learned that a lady named Sharon Tate, the actress who played Janet Trego on the show, was murdered. And worse - she was very pregnant when it happened, so her soon to be born baby was also killed in the murder. It is hard to describe how awful such things are in the mind of a young boy, but I remember it to this day. And I was a huge fan of The Beatles too, but for a long time, The White Album, filled with songs like Helter Skelter and Little Piggies gave me the creeps for several years. Till I was a teenager - and had grown as creepy as the society I lived in. (for a sample of the times, check out Angels as Hard as They Come, Maybe I'll Come home in the Spring, or Born to Win) - Lots of people thought the "new age" of the 1960s with free love (see Harrad Experiment) and all the new way of thinking was really cool, but as a young kid, I am awful glad my parents were squares.

Anyway - Susan Atkins, the woman who killed Sharon Tate died today of cancer. She was 61. That is all the ink she is going to get from me today. Personally, I would rather remember Sharon Tate, and how I thought she was really pretty when I just a seven year old kid. Nothing nasty like so much of today's world. I just thought she was really pretty, and as one often does at that age, I imagined she was also quite a nice person. Of course I never knew her, but I am happy to remember her today.

Sharon Tate as one of the Babes of Yore:

 

http://theworldsbestever.com/2010/03/09/babes-of-yore-sharon-tate/

I certainly agree that she's one of the world's best ever!

Doris Tate 's Premonition of Sharon Tate 's Death and How She Coped, Polanski News, Doomed Movie Lovers and More

National Enquirer Article either from late 1970s or early 1980s:

The mother of murdered actress Sharon Tate says that she saw her daughter die in a vision - three months before the starlet was slain in the Charles Manson "helter-skelter" killings.

And she admits that today she can't sleep without a gun at her side.

Speaking for the first time about her life since losing her daughter, 54 year old Mrs. Gwen Tate told the ENQUIRER:

"Night time is always difficult for me. That is when I do my thinking."

It was night time on August 9 1969 when Sharon and four other were shot and stabbed to death in her Beverly Hills home.

And the passing of years can't erase the bloody imagines.

"I've put myself in Sharons place that night," says Mrs. Tate, "and I have to pull myself away. It is horrific. You could really go completely insane. And there were times when I felt I was on the edge. You just don't accept it. You don't face it."

"It took three years before I woke up and said 'shes gone.' "

Mrs. Tate sat holding a bible in her comfortable home in Palos Verdes, California. "You never get over something like this," she said. "I still go through depressions. I keep the bible close to me, in my bedroom I have my rosary... and a gun. I sleep with it by my side. If someone tried to break in, I wouldn't stop and say 'who are you?' I'd just blow his head off."

Mrs. Tate recalled the vision she had three months before Sharon was murdered.

"I saw myself with her in this room, and I was trying to get her out. A man dressed in black was shooting a gun." (The killers were dressed in black and one man, Charles Tex Watson had used a gun). 

Mrs. Tate recalled something that happened on the day of the funeral - Something that kept her from falling apart. "Sharon's casket was closed," she said. "I went over to kiss it - and I heard her say as plain as if she was standing beside me. 'Mother, that's not me.'  That's what saved my sanity and thats what gave me strength, because I do believe in life after death.

"I feel Sharons presence here in the house and I am certain that, somewhere, some day we will be together."

In addition, I found a link on the internet were it shows that Gwen/Doris Tate visited with a Spiritualist and Medium, Brian Edward Hurst, about Sharon.  He says: "Doris was a wonderful advocate for the Parents of Murdered Children. She has now passed to a higher life."  Here is the link to his website and he has a photo of himself with Doris Tate:

http://www.ktb.net/~hurani/

A new photo I found on the web of a behind the scenes from Polanski's 'Tess':

Here is a link about Celebrity Doomed Lovers that mentions Sharon and Roman:

http://www.celebrityinsightsblog.com/?p=767

Still looking for "The Beverly Hillbillies" and Sharon? :

http://www.oldies.com/product-view/0562D.html

And is it me, or is this asking for to much money for Greg King 's fine biography of Sharon?  I suppose it is out of print now?

http://www.madametalbot.com/pix/books/10/bks1510.htm

Absent Polanski to Dominate Berlin Film Festival?

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=9783715

Sharon Tate had to remake "Eye of the Devil" after Novak's departure and more

Here is another article I found on Sharon.  It is American but I do not know what newspaper it is from?  It looks to be about 1965-66:


She Gets Break in Remake: Same Role Twice for Sharon Tate

Hollywood-- (UPI) The opportunity of an actress' lifetime has befallen a fragile, blonde beauty who co-starred in her first movie with David Niven and Kim Novak and now must do it all over again.

She is Sharon Tate, 23, who spent three months filming "13" in London and France after which Kim Novak injured her back and was unable to continue.  Producer Martin Ransohoff was forced to start from scratch with Deborah Kerr replacing the ailing Novak. 

Sharon is now in the process of redoing all her scenes for the second time allowing her to correct the mistakes and awkward moments of the first time around.

* * * *

"I'm really lucky," she said on a brief trip to Hollywood.  "The first time my attention and concentration were easily diverted.  I was destracted by the mechanics of the camera and moves I had to make.

"Now I am much more at ease.  I've been taking voice lessons and I have more confidence in myself.

"The most important thing is working with Deborah Kerr.  I learn something new everyday just watching her perform.  And Mr. Niven goes out of his way to make me feel comfortable."

Few screen performers in history have been able to run through the same role twice, and when it happened, the actor has the advantage of having seen himself in the first version.

Not so for Sharon.

"I haven't seen a single foot of the first film," she said.  "I don't want to because I'm sure it would make me self-conscious.

"But there's no question in my mind that doing the picture a second time will improve my performance 100%.  What's more, they've enlarged my role."

Shron is the daughter of a career army officer and is engaged to be married to Jay Sebring, the man who restyled the Hollywood haircut.  She's also under long term contract to Ransohoff who signed the slender beauty when she read for a role in one of his television shows. 

* * * *

Her previous acting experience was limited to three small roles in sequences of "The Beverly Hillbillies."

"Mr. Ransohoff came on the set, saw me and said, 'Sign that girl!'  I thought he meant somebody else.  I could not believe he was talking about me.  I looked so awful.  I was wearing an orange dress with big patch pockets and my hair was all over the place.

"I still can't believe all this is happening to me.  It seems like a dream," she said.

Okay so was she doing a cigarette commercial or trying out for a part on one of Ransohoff''s tv shows?  I've seen it printed both ways? 

I didn't know that Sharon's part was enlarged when she had to remake "Eye of the Devil."  It looks like Sharon took everything in stride and was thankful for what she had.  A very admirable trait in a girl so young.  But then again, I wouldn't expect anything less from Sharon. And I bet Sharon looked exquisite in that orange dress. ;)

In other news, I've been linked now by another blog.  I have linked others but have not been linked by another blog until now.  The great thing is that it is a nice and fair blog that has many articles on Roman Polanski.  Here is the link:

http://dankprofessor.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/roman-polanski-on-sharon-tate/

Thanks to dankprofessor for this! :)