Down In It

10050 Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills. Mapquest it - that's the Tate murder house. Where the Manson gang did their deeds. Actually, you can't Mapquest it because it got torn down 1994, and now the closest thing to it is 10066 Cielo. The last person to live in the Tate house (and she & Roman were only renting anyway) was Trent Reznor while he was recording The Downward Spiral. Rumor has it that he stole the door that had been graced with the word "PIG" spelled out in Sharon's blood when he heard the place was being torn down.

Anyway, I bring this up because it is one of those Hollywood legends, but people forget about Sharon Tate otherwise. Not that she was a great actress or anything, because she wasn't, but she is rarely identified as anything other than a tragic murder victim.

There is an exhibit in LA that is ending this Saturday which you should check out if you want to see her in another light... Photographs of Sharon, I think taken on the set of The Fearless Vampire Killers. They were taken by Roman Polanski and, quite simply, are just sweet and beautiful. I'm going to actually use the word "enchanting" in association with them.

There is also a series of shots taken by Jay Sebring (hairdresser and fellow victim) the week before the murders. They show friends frolicking by the pool, Sharon happily displaying her 8 months of pregnancy, stuff like that. Peeking into someone's life... you know.

And then in the back room: the crime shots. See Sharon sliced up, because that's how we remember her, unfortunately... Dreamy and scary, all at once, kinda like Hollywood.