Sharon Tate remembered
Actress Sharon Tate’s name is back in the news, nearly 49 years after her shocking death at the hands of the Manson family in 1969.
Quentin Tarantino is set to release his untitled picture on the 50th anniversary of Tate’s death next year. Margot Robbie will portray Tate in the film Tarantino told IndieWire would center on the year the murders took place, not on Charles Manson.
Hilary Duff will star in another film on the model/actress, likely introducing her to a new generation less familiar with the star’s life and accomplishments before her untimely death. The Haunting of Sharon Tate is set for release this year.
Here are a few key things to remember about Tate ahead of the upcoming projects:
Her acting résumé
In the early and mid-60s, the Dallasborn blond appeared on the small screen in TV series Mister Ed, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Beverly Hillbillies. Her first credited role in a film came in 1966’s Eye of the Devil. In follow-up features, she would share the screen with big-name co-stars Dean Martin ( The Wrecking Crew) and Orson Welles ( Twelve Plus One). The film Valley of the Dolls (1967) earned Tate a Golden Globe nomination.
Her marriage to Roman Polanski
Days before her 25th birthday, Tate wed her Fearless Vampire Killers director and co-star Roman Polanski, 34, in a ceremony at the Chelsea Register Office in London on Jan. 20, 1968.
While the two appear happy in footage from their reception that followed at the Playboy Club, Sharon Tate: A Life author Ed Sanders writes in his 2016 biography that Valley of the Dolls writer Jacqueline Susann, a guest at one of the couple’s wedding parties, remembered Tate “was very happy, but she was completely under Roman’s domination. He doesn’t look it, but he must be a dominating man.”
In 1977, Polanski was charged with statutory rape stemming from an encounter with a then-13-year-old girl. He plead guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, then fled to France in 1978 on the eve of sentencing.
Lasting influence on pop culture
Tate’s iconic image continues to captivate decades after her death, inspiring beauty looks on the catwalk and Drew Barrymore’s Harper’s Bazaar looks in 2010.
Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant confirmed (in a NSFW tweet) that she was influenced by a 1967 Esquire magazine photo shoot when putting Megan Draper in a white T-shirt emblazoned with a red star.
Tate also was profiled in David Wills’
2017 book Switched On: Women Who Revolutionized Style in the ’60s. In Wills’ work, designer Trina Turk said, “Sharon Tate has transcended her career in the
’60s to become one of the great fashion and style icons of the 20th century and beyond.”