In the run-up to the release of Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, I decided to take a look at a couple of films featuring Sharon Tate.
Inevitably, Sharon will always be best remembered for the horrific events of the ninth of August 1969, but here I just want to examine Sharon Tate, the promising actress who was beginning to carve out a career in film in the second half of the 1960s.
First up is The Fearless Vampire Killers, a horror parody by her future husband Roman Polanski.
Also known as Dance of the Vampires, or even briefly Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck, this spoofs the kind of movie that Hammer specialised in at the time. Polanski directed, and co-wrote the screenplay with Gérard Brach, as well as reserving a starring role for himself as Alfred, the hapless assistant of expert though hopeless vampire hunter Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran).
As a director Polanski’s talents are undoubted. As an actor, this isn’t the case, albeit he’s not terrible.
Set in a secluded village ‘deep in the heart of Transylvania’, the pair arrange to a stay at a tavern as they continue their search for vampires. Strings of garlic decorate the rooms, so they just might be on the right trail.
Alfred accidentally walks in on the innkeeper’s daughter Sarah Shagal (Sharon Tate) having a bath. She’s radiantly beautiful, with Pre-Raphaelite hair and dazzling eyes. He instantly falls in love with her. It’s easy to see why.
Sarah is obsessed with cleanliness and soon she’s having another bath. When we see a hand clearing snow from the skylight above her, viewers may assume that this is some peeping tom perv.
It’s not. It’s Count Dracula, sorry, Count von Krolock, an ashen-faced vampire who kidnaps her, taking her back to his nearby Gothic castle.
Luckily – or maybe not – for her, our (far from) fearless vampire hunters hatch a plan to rescue her from the Count’s clutches.
Initially, Polanski wanted another American actor Jill St. John – who he had been linked with romantically in the press – for the role of Sarah.
Co-producer Martin Ransohoff had other ideas, and insisted that newcomer Tate would be ideal. He held the purse strings for the project and Polanski was forced to relent, although he wasn’t entirely satisfied with Tate’s acting early in the shoot. As filming progressed, he became more impressed by her abilities and the pair became closer.
This is certainly no Repulsion or Chinatown but it is worth a watch. There are a number of laughs, including a Jewish vampire who isn’t overly concerned when a crucifix is brandished in his direction and Polanski directs slapstick inventively. A mention must also be made for the score by Krzysztof Komeda, which admittedly is a little uneven but is often utterly wonderful.
Sharon Tate here is often something of a fleeting presence. She obviously possessed charisma and the camera loved her. In the relatively short time she is onscreen, she also demonstrates a very good touch for comedy.
Jacqueline Susann’s novel Valley of the Dolls was a staggering success, a publishing phenomenon that topped the New York Times bestseller lists and which, to date, has sold over 31 million copies. Its runaway sales speedily ensured that a movie adaptation would soon follow and a blockbuster was expected.
It’s the story of the rise and fall of three young females who enter different branches of show business and the lead roles would be expected to significantly raise Hollywood profiles. Candice Bergen, Raquel Welch and Ann-Margret were director Mark Robson’s early favoured choices but none eventually filled the roles envisaged for them.
20th Century Fox had also been especially keen for their contracted star Raquel Welch to play Jennifer North, but she feared she might be typecast as a sexpot if she did so. She offered to play Neely instead but that role went to Patty Duke, who’d won an Oscar, aged only sixteen for portraying Helen Keller in 1962’s The Miracle Worker.
A wide range of actors were then considered to play Jennifer, including Mary Tyler Moore, Julie Christie, Ursula Andress, and even Warhol superstar Baby Jane Holzer, but Tate won over the production team with her screen test.
Jennifer is a sweet-natured but ditzy blonde who craves fame, although as she admits to her far from encouraging mother: ‘I know I don’t have any talent, and I know all I have is a body.’ She meets and marries a successful crooner and is a loving wife to him. She couldn’t be happier but as this is Planet Susann, don’t expect that joy to last long.
Anne Welles (Peyton Place star Barbara Parkins) finds work with a theatrical agent and is then offered a modelling contract where she becomes immediately recognised by audiences all over America as the sophisticated face of the ‘Gillian Girl’.
Then there’s Neely, an upcoming singer, kicked off a Broadway show for threatening to outshine main star Helen Lawson, a spectacularly rude diva of epic proportions played by Susan Hayward. ‘The only hit that comes out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson,’ she proudly proclaims. ‘And that’s me, baby!’
Not to worry, before the midnight hour strikes that same day, Neely has become an overnight sensation anyway after being invited to sing at a nationwide TV charity telethon and wowing the audience.
Again in the world of Jacqueline Susann, you never know when stardom might come knocking.
The plot here is hard to detail but there is illness, addictions, fame, fortune, love, marriage, death, abortion, love, tragedy, addictions – I might be repeating some of these now but it is difficult keeping up with the conveyor belt of ups and downs the characters go through.
Believe me, this trio of women would never need to employ any PR gurus to invent highs and lows in their lives.
Struggling to cope with an outrageous workload, Neely adds booze and, of course, dolls (barbiturates) into the equation with predictable consequences. As she screeches on and on about needing more dolls, I began hoping for a fatal overdose. When this fails to transpire, I suspected I might need some drugs myself if I was to watch this through to the closing credits.
Valley of the Dolls is a melodrama with a load of musical numbers thrown in. I don’t like melodrama, and I’m allergic to any musical that isn’t Phantom of the Paradise. This really isn’t a film for my tastes.
The often overblown style of acting doesn’t help. Patty Duke is ferociously bombastic as Neely. At one point she gets involved in a catfight with Helen Lawson which it’s easy to imagine is over who is giving the most wildly OTT performance. Patty Duke edges that particular contest.
Then something strange happened. I began to enjoy the preposterousness of it all. Maybe the heat got to me – it’s so rare where I live and I watched on Thursday, the hottest day in Scotland for years.
Neely morphs into Helen Lawson but with added self-destructive tendencies. ‘I don’t have to live by stinking rules set down for ordinary people,’ she rants in one of a lengthy list of brattish tantrums.
On the first night of her big Broadway comeback show, she has more than one or two drinks too many – and likely more dolls than might be considered any kind of good idea. With the show about to kick off, she pokes her head out her dressing room after being called to go on. She’s in an absolute state and wearing the costume that she was supposed to have on for the second act.
And when told so, she delivers her response with all the skill and emotion of Tommy Wisseau being torn apart in The Room. ‘So, I’ll do the second act first!’
The scene almost parallels a real-life incident concerning the film. Judy Garland had been signed up to play Lawson, but was supposedly fired after only three days when found out her face in her trailer, refusing to come to the set. Ironically, Garland was at least part of the inspiration to Susann when creating the character of Neely.
As for Jennifer, her world is shattered when husband Tony is diagnosed with a degenerative and terminal illness. On the night she discovers the devastating news; she is invited to move to France to launch a career in ‘arthouse movies’. Or as Neely calls them ‘nudies’. She accepts the offer almost immediately.
I suppose someone had to pay his medical bills but poor Tony, dying in a sanitorium knowing his wife is establishing a reputation for herself as a soft-porn star
Although it didn’t intend to be,Valley of the Dolls is campy as hell. It was old Hollywood trying to be modern but bore little resemblance to what a new Hollywood was beginning to offer – The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy and Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, where Sharon took an uncredited role as ‘Girl at the Party’.
Without the modish threads and hairstyles, this could be the 1940s – the novel started off in 1945 and continued for another twenty or so years. Here we begin maybe in 1964 and continue only an undefined but obviously short period of time. No attempt is made to age the characters and don’t expect Vietnam or psychedelia to make any appearances.
Dionne Warwick supplies a slushy theme tune and there’s a soppy score to go with the hysterical soapy plot-lines.
It’s maybe hard nowadays to imagine audiences queuing up to see an adaptation of an airport novel that was almost universally slammed on its release as trashy. Then again I remember being in a cinema and witnessing crowds flocking in to see Shades of Grey, a commercial hit that few critics failed to mock.
Made on a budget of around $4.7 million, Valley of the Dolls took over $44.4 million at the box office and was studio 20th Century Fox’s biggest hit that year. It was also one of the top ten grossing films in America. According to website The Numbers, it sold over 37 million tickets in 1967. Which for a movie only released halfway through December is remarkable.
Like the novel, it received a critical mauling, and Jacqueline Susann herself is said to have hated it. As did many members of the cast.
Sharon Tate is, by the standards of the movie, almost subdued, despite suffering more than any of the lead characters. She really is much better than the lines she was asked to deliver and even found herself nominated for the New Star Of The Year – Actress Award at 1968’s Golden Globes, although that was won by The Graduate’s Katherine Ross.
‘The work she did in the film was very sensitive,’ multiple award winning actor Lee Grant told Vanity Fair in 2017. Grant, who played Jennifer’s sister-in-law Miriam in the movie also noted: ‘There was something in her character that struck a chord with her… I found her fascinating.’
Would she have gone on to become a major star?
Very possibly. I wouldn’t go as far to say she was one the most gifted actors of her generation but she was already good and potentially about to become even better with more experience. Certainly her talent and good looks would have ensured plenty of parts in projects with better source material than Valley of the Dolls.
Mark Robson bumped into Roman Polanski on Sunset Strip after both movies had been completed and told him: ‘That’s a great girl you’re living with. Few actresses have her kind of vulnerability. She’s got a great future.’
Sharon Tate: January 24, 1943 – August 9, 1969.
For Sharon’s official site, click here.
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