Then, only a day later, two more people-grocery store owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary-were murdered in another part of town.
The five victims: Wojciech Frykowski, Sharon Tate, Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, and Abigail Folger Early that morning, the cleaning woman arrived to discover the mutilated bodies and, on the walls, words written with blood. Steven Parent, 18, was killed in his car after visiting the house’s caretaker. On Saturday, August 9, Los Angeles awoke to learn-slowly and then frantically-of the gruesome murders of Tate, Frykowski, Folger, and Jay Sebring, 35, a hair stylist to the stars and former boyfriend of Tate’s. SHARON TATE AND ROMAN POLANSKI ON THE SET OF THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS IN 1967 Tate liked to have people around her, particularly with Polanski away, and friends were constantly in and out. Two friends, the aspiring director Voytek Frykowski, 32, and his book editor-girlfriend, Abigail Folger, 25, an heiress to the Folger’s coffee fortune, had been living there while Polanski and Tate were in Europe and stayed on when she returned. Photographer Peter Evans called them “the imperfect couple… cool, nomadic, talented, and nicely shocking.”īy July of the next year, Sharon was expecting their first child, and she returned from Europe to the house they had rented at 10050 Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles’s Benedict Canyon. Sharon and Roman fell in love working together on his film The Fearless Vampire Killers, and when they married, in London in January 1968, the haut monde of the swinging ’60s danced at their wedding reception. Tate was a Texas-born army brat who had early success as a model and actress, while the French-born Polanski was a child of the Holocaust, having grown up in Poland after his parents were taken to concentration camps when he was six.
He was the foremost international director of his generation, hot off the success of Rosemary’s Baby, and she was a Golden Globe nominee for Valley of the Dolls.
Tate and Roman Polanski at their 1968 wedding.īack in 1969, Roman Polanski, 35, and Sharon Tate, 26, were often at the center of the world’s most dynamic creative circles. The brutal slayings continue to be a dark stain on the city’s fabric, and in the coming months they will be revisited in such films as Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Mary Harron’s Charlie Says, undoubtedly provoking more gossip, speculation, and mythmaking. Those murders-of the actress Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and an unlucky stranger-took place 50 years ago this summer. “Ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true.” Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” Joan Didion has written. Below, we’re republishing the story on how the news of this tragedy spread through Hollywood This story was originally published in 2019, on the 50th anniversary of the murder of actress Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and an unlucky stranger by members of the Manson Family cult.
More than fifty years later, their friends recall hearing the news that changed Hollywood forever. After her murder by the Manson Family, they became the ultimate cautionary tale. Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski were glamorous, talented, and madly in love. © Michael Stillwell/SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION
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