Sharon Tate is better known for how she died than how she lived.
In 1969, she was one of five people killed by members of Charles Manson's Family cult,
an event reimagined in the 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
So let's dig deeper into the little-known truth about Sharon Tate.
Tate's father Paul was a colonel in the United States Army, so the family packed up every
few years to move from Army base to Army base.
While growing up, Tate lived in six different cities, and she blamed her shyness and inability
to make friends on her family's itinerant lifestyle.
The family eventually settled in Italy, where Sharon, having gotten a part as an extra in
the 1962 film Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man, was picked out of the crowd by
the film's star, Richard Beymer.
For a short time, Tate dated Beymer, and he encouraged her to pursue acting, introducing
her to his agent and helping her find roles.
But that wasn't the first time she was impressing people in public.
At the tender age of six months, Tate took top honors in the "Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas"
competition.
Her mother Doris was the driving force behind the beauty competitions that Sharon competed
in.
In 1959, Sharon won five different pageants in one year.
Her beauty was recognized across the pond as well.
Her Italian schoolmates named her homecoming queen and Italy's most beautiful American,
while perhaps most noteworthy was her winning turn as Miss Stars and Stripes when she was
in her late teens.
Tate's first major movie role was a witch in the 1966 British occult horror film, Eye
of the Devil, which tells the story of a young couple hoping to restore a vineyard to its
former glory.
"Do you believe in magic?"
To make Eye of the Devil more realistic, the filmmakers hired as consultants Alex and Maxine
Sanders, a Wiccan high priest and his wife.
In her autobiography, Maxine claimed that Tate was fascinated by Wicca's neopagan rituals
and became an adherent of sorts.
Whether or not Tate was really into Wicca, though, it cannot be denied that 1960s America
was obsessed with the occult, and Tate was at the forefront thanks to her movie roles.
Tate's relationship with her eventual husband, Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski, got off to
a fittingly strange start.
They first met over an uncomfortable dinner with a producer, after which Polanski invited
Tate to his apartment.
Having left her alone for several minutes, he reappeared wearing a Frankenstein's monster
mask.
Tate let out a scream, which convinced Polanski that he should cast her as the lead in his
new horror comedy, The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Meeting Polanski and falling in love with him turned out to be a mixed blessing for
Tate, who was nine years younger than her very powerful husband and was often intimidated
and controlled by him.
She came from a conventional family and wanted at least the semblance of a traditional marriage.
Polanski, on the other hand, wanted the freedom to pursue other women, and rumors abounded
about his infidelities.
In the biography Sharon Tate: A Life, Tate was quoted as having said,
"We have a good arrangement.
Roman lies to me and I pretend to believe him."
Tate's sister Debra has insisted that Sharon's character in the 1967 beach romp Don't Make
Waves inspired the creation of Malibu Barbie.
Mattel, the company behind the classic toy, has never confirmed the rumor, but Tate's
character, clad in a beige bikini for the majority of the film, was named "Malibu."
Don't Make Waves manages to touch on nearly every trope of mid-century California beach
bum cinema.
Bodybuilders, spiritual gurus, and bikinis are everywhere.
There's even a mudslide that leads to each character ending up with the right guy or
girl.
In spite of all the attention Don't Make Waves brought, Tate reportedly despised the film.
But the cheesy script couldn't blunt her undeniable appeal.
She begins the film saving a drowning Tony Curtis with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Later, she takes a short but memorable turn on the trampoline.
It may be lightweight material, but it's still an enjoyable part of her legacy.
Tate's violent death went unsolved for several weeks, and during that time her family lived
in limbo.
They were traumatized not only by the loss of a loved one but also by the sheer brutality
of her killing and the police's seeming inability to solve the crime.
Paul Tate used his background in military intelligence to try to close his daughter's
case himself, even going so far as to dress up as a hippie to hunt down the perpetrators.
Sharon's mother Doris was perhaps the most changed of all of her family members.
She went on to become a leading voice in the victims' rights movement.
She founded the Coalition on Victim's Equal Rights, and advocated for the use of victim
impact statements in sentencing hearings.
For several years after Sharon's death, Doris was a recluse, struggling with grief and depression.
Then she got word that Leslie Van Houten, a Manson Family member and convicted killer,
was hard at work trying to amass the signatures needed to be granted parole.
So Doris launched her own campaign to make sure that Van Houten remained in prison.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush honored Doris and her work as a victim's rights advocate
as part of his "Thousand Points of Light" initiative.
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