Sharon Tate: A Life

by Ed Sanders

Overview

Ed Sanders gave readers their clearest insight yet into the disturbing world of Charles Manson and his followers when he published The Family in 1971. Continuing that journalistic tradition, Sanders presents the most thorough look ever into the heartbreaking story of Sharon Tate, the iconic actress who found love, fame, and ultimately tragedy during her all-too-brief life.

Sharon Tate: A Life traces Sharon's path from beauty queen to budding young actress: her early love affairs, her romance with and marriage to director Roman Polanski, and the excitement of the glamorous life she had always sought — all set against the background of the turbulent 1960s. This sympathetic account tells the powerful story of her determined rise through the ranks of Hollywood and to the brink of stardom before her name became forever linked with the shocking murder spree that took her life.

In 1969, the Polanski house was targeted by the followers of cultist Charles Manson. Why the Manson clan focused its gaze on Sharon remains unclear, but the world was soon shocked to its core as it learned of the brutal murders of a pregnant Sharon Tate and her friends at her idyllic home in Los Angeles. Sanders once again examines this horrific crime and its aftermath, expounding on what may have led the killers to that particular house on that particular evening.

Sharon Tate takes readers on a sometimes joyous yet inevitably heart-wrenching tour of the '60s as seen through the eyes of someone who lived it, survived it, and remembers it all too well. Brilliant illustrations by noted artist Rick Veitch lend character to this riveting narrative of the life and times of a beloved actress whose image and whose fate still haunt us to this day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306818899
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	01/05/2016
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	978,934
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ed Sanders is the author of Fug You, Tales of Beatnik Glory, and numerous volumes of poetry. He is an American Book Award winner and lives in Woodstock, New York.

Table of Contents

Thanks vii

Dedication ix

Foreword xiii

Chapter 1 Early Years 1

Chapter 2 Discovered by a Producer 17

Chapter 3 Early Films: Eye of the Devil, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Don't Make Waves 37

Chapter 4 1967: The Year of Love, Dolls, Rosemary 61

Chapter 5 1968: Marriage and Rising in Hollywood 81

Chapter 6 1969: Cielo Drive and Pregnancy 115

Chapter 7 Sharon's Final Film 135

Chapter 8 The Summer of 1969 145

Chapter 9 A Cult at the Spahn Ranch Kills 153

Chapter 10 Sharon Tate's Final Few Days 163

Chapter 11 Death on Cielo Drive 173

Chapter 12 Night and Morning 199

Chapter 13 August 9-10: More Carnage and Grief 209

Chapter 14 Aftermath and Investigation 221

Chapter 15 The Manson Group Keeps Killing and Moves to the High Desert Near Death Valley 243

Chapter 16 The Breaking of the Case 255

Afterword 263

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

10/12/2015
Since Sharon Tate’s murder in 1969 at the hands of Manson Family members, many authors have tried to make sense of the 26-year-old actress’s tragic fate. Sanders, who wrote The Family, an in-depth 1971 account of the Manson murders, returns to the infamous crime, focusing on Tate’s short life and death. Lacking the earlier book’s broad focus, this offering is a loosely compiled assemblage of facts, theories, newspaper headlines, and rumors held together by the thinnest of threads. Sanders is obviously still troubled by Tate’s murder, but this lifeless biography provides very little new information or insight. Relying on secondhand accounts and interviews with now-deceased celebrities, the author is eager to link Tate’s counterculture activities, including her alleged drug use and metaphysical interests, with the horror films she and Polanski worked on. At the same time, he suggests her murder was a ritualistic act committed by crazed occultists possibly associated with Robert Kennedy’s assassination. That curious premise might be worth exploring, but Sanders is unable or unwilling to do the serious research required to substantiate such an incendiary idea. The most heartfelt passages come in an opening dedication to investigator Larry Larsen, who died while helping the author compile data for the book. Rick Veitch’s striking black-and-white illustrations accompany the text. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

“The Bookworm Sez,” 1/25/16
There are many reasons to like this book. Author Ed Sanders writes about more than just Tate here; we also read about other people in her world, and we get a good feel for the feel-good '60s—drugs, sex, weirdness, and all…If you love a good crime story, you've come to the right place.”

Milwaukee Shepherd Express, 1/19/16
“Sanders returns to the scene of the crime.”

Connecticut Post, 1/15/16
“[A] gripping look back at the life and death of the actress who was murdered by the Charles Manson gang…Anyone with an interest in the pop culture of the 1960s should find this ‘Rashomon'-like portrait a fascinating read.”

Chronogram, February 2016
“A touching biography of a young beauty…Sanders is meticulous and affectionate in his chronicle, its tone dry, wry, and journalistic…Was Tate specifically targeted? What were Manson's true motives? No one truly knows the answers, but Sanders has tried harder than anyone living to figure it out, and his exploration of all available sources is a fascinating look at chaotic times and a fitting tribute to a life cut brutally short.”

Waterbury Sunday Republican, 2/7/16
“Will likely appeal to readers who enjoyed Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon.”

Hartford Advocate
"Sanders ties all of his earliest threads–up to 1970–together in the most engagingly idiosyncratic memoir of the year. Indeed, now that his friend and mentor Allen Ginsberg is dead, Ed Sanders is the strongest living link between the Beat Generation, the hippies, and all other underground currents that have trickled along the countercultural pipeline since then."

High Times
"This brilliant memoir not only chronicles the band's early days, but paints an outrageous, inspiring picture of life among the artistic outlaws of New York's Lower East side in the '60s."

Baltimore Sun
"In short, impressionistic chapters, Sanders details his adventures, as well as his encounters with seemingly everyone who was anyone in the Beat and hippie scenes. Sanders provides a fly-on-the-wall view of many facets of a turbulent decade."

San Francisco Book Review, 3/7/16
“Pulse pounding reading…[An] excellent biography.”

Buffalo News, 4/10/16
“As a gripping, comprehensive, relentlessly involving revisiting of the Manson murders…it is a stunner…[Sanders] succeeds in shedding new light on the horrors of 1969. This is true crime lit at its most grimly compelling.”

Washington Post, 4/10/16
“As a biography, Sharon Tate is thorough.”

Praise for Sharon Tate

Elle, January 2016
“Sanders takes a look at the doe-eyed actress's life and death.”

New York Post, “Required Reading,” 1/16/16
“If you were on the fence about Roman Polanski, Sanders' book is sure to push you to the thumbs-down side.”

New Republic, 1/12/16
“Sanders seems to resist stepping in where he doesn't feel he can, or should, hold forth, and this feels respectful…Sharon Tate: A Life is a decent project, dutiful and worthy of acknowledgment; as a read, it has moments…The senseless violence of Tate's death superseded her; at least Ed nails that senselessness.”

Closer Weekly, 1/18/16
“Sanders' book reveals new details of the star's last days.”

Globe, 1/25/16
“A shocking new book.”

Woodstock Times, 1/15/16
“An immersive journey into the life of the doomed actress that also touches on everything from New Age mysticism to the moon landing to the RFK assassination.

From the Publisher

2015-10-14
The author revisits the murder that spawned his best-known book, The Family (1971). Before the Manson family murders, Sanders (Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side, 2011, etc.) was known primarily as the frontman for the Fugs. He was also a poet and political agitator. Yet his bestselling Manson book was a surprisingly straightforward work of first-rate journalism, and it enjoyed commercial success beyond anything he had previously done. As he explains in this decades-later follow-up, it was the release of a largely forgotten solo album, "Sanders Truckstop," that brought him to Los Angeles in 1969 and placed him in the midst of the terror surrounding the ritualistic serial murders. The first part of this book is a standard movie-star bio, relating Tate's ascent from beauty-contest queen to Hollywood sex symbol, with much of it featuring overly long synopses of films that don't warrant them as well as career curiosities. Tate's career arc intersects with that of Roman Polanski, soon to be her husband, and the series of strange films he had made or was considering. The book builds, as the author's earlier one did, to the murders, with lots of warmed-over detail and rumors, reportage, and perspective from the four decades since. "In the over forty years since I first became involved in writing and researching this case, some things have never made sense," writes the author, who admits that it remains "a lingering mystery" why Tate and the others were targeted. Speculation includes: she wasn't supposed to be there, she was part of a satanic cult, she knew things she shouldn't about Sirhan Sirhan, she was involved in a high-profile home pornography ring, and the murders were part of an attempt to cover up previous murders or a contract hit for a drug deal gone bad. Readers are likely to finish the book more confused than illuminated by all the possibilities, theories, and potential co-conspirators.

Kirkus Reviews