Charles manson
Five decades on, why are filmmakers still fascinated by the Manson Family murders? As Quentin Tarantino shoots Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Buff looks at the man who brought an end to the Summer of Love and still haunts movie folklore.
Why does he still inspire pop-culture fascination?
After Charles Manson died in November 2017, three competing claims emerged to his estate and remains. In March, Manson’s grandson, Jason Freeman, was granted custody of the body of the cult leader, criminal, racist and failed musician. If Manson’s estate remains contested, so do his memory and meaning: almost half a century after the Tate-LaBianca murders, the fascination with Manson and his ‘Family’ is undiminished.
On 8-9 August 1969, a group of Manson’s followers murdered eightand-a-half-months pregnant actor Sharon Tate, three of her associates (Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski) and a visitor (Steven Parent) on 10050 Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills. The next night, Manson Family members killed LA supermarket chain executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary; Manson did not commit the murders, though he tied up the LaBiancas.
Forty-nine years on, at least four films are revisiting (to varying degrees) the crimes. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood; American Psycho/I Shot Andy Warhol director Mary Harron’s Charlie Says; Hilary Duffstarrer The Haunting Of Sharon Tate; and Tate (with Kate Bosworth) are in various states of pre/post-production. The films follow a recent surge of books, TV shows, podcasts, documentaries and more that either explore, evoke, satirise or allude to Manson, from Emma Cline’s breakout novel The Girls and the podcast You Must Remember This to TV’s American Horror Story, Mindhunter, Mad Men, Aquarius and beyond.
Over the past five decades, this fascination has extended to true-crime books, operas and musicals, besides numerous pop/rock Manson namedrops. Yet the bigger Manson mystery was posed by prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter (1974), a meticulous recounting of the investigation into the murders. “There are thousands of evil, polished con men out there,” noted Bugliosi, “and we’ve had more brutal murders than the Manson murders, so why are we still talking about Charles Manson?”
Criminal tendenCies
Perhaps, with his wild-eyed rants, Manson personifies many people’s timeless ideas of what so-called ‘evil’ looks like. Perhaps the story of a disenchanted racist failure who predicted an apocalyptic race war and carved a swastika into his forehead seems grimly timely, given the rise of the alt-right. Perhaps the murders fascinate because of their time, evoking clichés about the dark side of the ’60s, and the perceived end of the Summer of Love’s hippie ideals. Factor in Manson’s mostly female following,
a whiff of dark Hollywood, a hint of occultism and salacious tabloid appetites, and you’ve got a broad range of multi-generational fears, headlines and talking points in a nutshell.
Whichever reading you prefer, Manson’s story unfolds thus. He was born in Cincinnati, 1934, to alcoholic 16-year-old Kathleen Maddox and a dad he never knew; termed No Name Maddox for a while, he eventually received the name Charles Milles Maddox, and later took his stepfather’s surname. Raised by foster parents, juvie and reform schools, he turned to crime early. At 13, he was accused of armed robbery; at 17, of male rape in prison. Forgery and the transfer of women across state lines for prostitution landed him in prison in 1960, from which he emerged on 21 March 1967; by then, he had been divorced twice and fathered two sons.
On his release, Manson headed to San Francisco hippie mecca HaightAshbury, the San Francisco epicentre of the Summer of Love, where his ex-con mystique, hippie speak, guitar skills and messianic front attracted followers – often young, middle-class women. His acolytes included Mary Brunner, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme. After time spent travelling on a repurposed school bus, the Family settled at California’s Spahn Ranch, an old western movie set; here, Manson’s quasi-commune seemed to occupy the old/new Hollywood tipping point that helped shape a generation. Spahn offered drugs, orgies, the illusion of freedom: magnets for the disaffected.
Music played key notes in Manson’s history. In 1968, he heard The Beatles’ The White Album and mis-interpreted their lyrics wildly. In ‘Helter Skelter’ he divined a prophecy of a race war, from which he claimed his Family offered protection. Manson wrote songs to trigger said apocalypse.
FaCe tHe musiC
He had his defenders in music, and a sort-of influence. Neil Young claimed Manson was “quite good” in his 2012 memoir, Waging Heavy Peace. In spring 1968, Manson and Family lived with The Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson, who introduced Manson to record producer Terry Melcher; Manson thought Melcher was his opening to rock ’n’ roll fame. Wilson, meanwhile, let the drugs do the talking when he said, “Charlie’s real cosmic, man. He’s deep. He listens to Beatles records and gets messages from them about what to do next.”
As for Manson’s musical influence, one Brian Warner courted quick-fix controversy by mixing Marilyn Monroe’s forename with Manson’s surname for his stage name. On 1993’s The Spaghetti Incident?, Guns N’ Roses covered Manson’s ‘Look At Your Game, Girl’. David Bowie and Leonard Cohen invoked Manson as a kind of synonym for dark matters on – respectively – ‘Candidate’ and ‘The Future’; Nine Inch Nails, meanwhile, recorded 1994’s The Downward Spiral at 10050 Cielo Drive. In the ’80s, Henry Rollins corresponded with Manson, intending to produce an album of Manson songs. “I was very young,” Rollins explained, “and having him write me letters made me feel intense.” Brit-rockers Kasabian angled for some of that heaviosity when they lifted their name from Family member Linda Kasabian.
But Manson flopped as a musician. When The Beach Boys overhauled his song ‘Cease To Exist’ as ‘Never Learn Not To Love’ on their 1969 album 20/20, Manson wasn’t credited (though he was reportedly paid). Melcher didn’t secure Manson a record deal, and it may have been a desire for revenge that directed Manson to 10050 Cielo Drive, once Melcher’s residence.
motives For murder
Alternative motivations have also been seeded, entangled with drugs and racism. When Family member Bobby Beausoleil was arrested for the murder of teacher Gary Hinman, someone at the Family supposedly had the idea of conducting killings that made it look as if Hinman’s murderers were at large, thus freeing Beausoleil of suspicion.
Another influence was drug dealer Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe. When
Manson instructed high-school athlete-turned-Family member Tex Watson to source money in preparation for Helter Skelter, Watson defrauded Crowe, who responding by threatening the Family. Manson retaliated by going to Crowe’s home and shooting him; when Manson received reports of a Black Panther’s corpse found in LA, he figured it was Crowe and readied the ranch for the retaliatory first strike in the Helter Skelter war.
Whichever version you favour, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Kasabian left the commune on 8 August 1969 to hit 10050 Cielo Drive and, on Manson’s order, “totally destroy everyone in [it], as gruesome as you can”. Kasabian stood watch while the rest murdered coffee heiress Abigail Folger, would-be screenwriter Voytek Frykowski, Hollywood hairdresser Jay Sebring, 18-year-old visitor Steven Parent and Tate. Frykowski suffered 51 stab wounds, Tate 16.
The next night, Van Houten, Steve ‘Clem’ Grogan and Manson joined the same four Family members and murdered the LaBiancas; again, Kasabian was a witness. The killers scrawled the walls of both houses with words such as “piggies” and “helter (or “healter) skelter”, in reference to Manson’s Beatles obsession and in a bid to frame the Black Panthers.
PaniC in la
The murders terrified LA. Mia Farrow, Steve McQueen and Frank Sinatra were numbered among those fearing for their lives; Bugliosi claimed one Beverly Hills store sold 200 firearms in two days. Press speculation ranged from political to occultist; as Bugliosi wrote, “The towel over Sebring’s face became a white hood (KKK?) or a black hood (Satanists?), depending on which paper or magazine you read.”
It took the police a few months to connect the murders. Only after Family members were arrested for car crimes did the pieces click: when she boasted to fellow inmates about the murders, Atkins steered the trail to Manson.
The trial became a media magnet. Reportedly, Rolling Stone wanted to proclaim Manson’s innocence on the magazine’s cover. Manson carved an X on his forehead in protest at his treatment; Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten copied him. At one point, Manson lunged for the judge; when he testified, he ranted for an hour-plus.
The tense atmosphere was heightened during the trial by the death of Van Houten’s attorney, Ronald Hughes. He may have drowned; or, he may have been murdered by a Family member in retaliation for his intent to argue that Van Houten was acting under Manson’s influence, not of her own volition (no one has ever been charged in connection to Hughes’ death). Family members were also found guilty of murdering stuntman Donald Shea, a Spahn Ranch hired hand who Manson believed reported the Family to the police for car theft.
Manson and his followers received death sentences, which became life sentences as the death penalty was invalidated in California. Manson’s final stay in prison began in 1971: since then, his profile has grown.
long goodbye
A deceptively sharp merger of Manson’s American-nightmare persona with a cutesier narrative appeared on The Ben Stiller Show in 1992, predating Manson satires on Family Guy and South Park. Bob Odenkirk played Manson as a Lassiestyle pet to the Wilson family; he talks gibberish, but the Wilsons somehow discern wisdoms in his nonsense, even though he’s often underfoot.
Manson’s presence has certainly stuck. Bugliosi birthed the true-crime genre in his book Helter Skelter. Fromme returned the Family to the headlines when she attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, while Manson generated attention from prison. Exacerbated by his association with white supremacist prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood, his tabloid coverage increased when he changed the X on his head to a swastika.
Late in life, Manson gained a new follower in 26-year-old Afton Elaine Burton, who he renamed Star. Manson applied for a licence to marry her in 2015, though the marriage never took place. Some press reports alleged that Burton wanted to have Manson’s body for public display after he died.
Meanwhile, pop culture’s fascination with Manson is as intense as ever. While former Doctor Matt Smith will play him in Harron’s Charlie Says, Tarantino is determined to assemble a huge cast for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Though Tarantino’s epic is thought to focus more on Hollywood than Manson, it will be released on the 50th anniversary of the Tate murders. Margot Robbie will star alongside Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. Cline’s The Girls has been tapped for adaptation, and ITV has unearthed the Family’s home video tapes for a docu-special. For good or bad, Manson may well be “underfoot” for some time to come.
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