Roman Polanski

From Metapedia
(Redirected from Polanski)
Jump to: navigation, search

Raymond Thierry Liebling, later known as Roman Raymond Polański (born 18 August 1933 in Paris), is a Jewish film director, producer, writer, and actor. In 1969, his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and four friends were brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family. Since 1978, he has been a fugitive from the U.S. criminal justice system, having fled the country while awaiting sentencing in his sexual abuse case, in which he pleaded guilty to statutory rape of a minor. In addition, there have been various other allegations.

Life

Polanski is son of Ryszard Liebling and Bula Katz, both Jews. They returned to Poland 1936, and lived in Cracow. Polanski studied in Lodz, Poland, at the high school for making films, and married Barbara Kwiatkowska, a Polish actress. He left Poland for England 1963 and later left England for the USA.

He is also known for his tumultuous personal life. He lived in German-occupied Poland during WWII. In 1969, his pregnant second wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. In 1978, after pleading guilty in a plea bargain with the Los Angeles district attorney, to "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a 13-year-old girl, Polanski fled to France before sentencing. He now lives there and has French citizenship (France has limited extradition with the United States). He is a fugitive from justice wanted by U.S. authorities and cannot return to the United States without risking arrest. His lawyers however have recently filed to have the charges against him dropped.

He has continued to direct films from Europe, including Frantic (1988), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Ninth Gate, the Academy Award-winning and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist (2002), and Oliver Twist (2005).

Relationship with Sharon Tate, Rosemary's Baby (1968), and the Manson murders

Polanski met rising actress Sharon Tate shortly before filming The Fearless Vampire Killers (she was known to producer Martin Ransohoff), and during the production the two of them began dating. On January 25, 1968, Polanski married Sharon Tate in London. In his autobiography, Polanski described his brief time with Tate as the best years of his life. During this time period, he also became friends with martial-arts master and actor Bruce Lee.

Shortly after, in 1968, Polanski went to the United States, where he established his reputation as a major commercial film maker with the success of his first Hollywood film, Rosemary's Baby, based on the recent popular novel of the same name by Ira Levin. The film is a horror-thriller set in New York about Rosemary (Mia Farrow), an innocent young woman from Omaha, Nebraska, who is impregnated by the devil after her narcissistic actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), offers her womb to a coven of local witches in exchange for a successful career. Polanski's screenplay adaptation earned him a second Academy Award nomination.

In April 1969, Polanski's friend and collaborator, the composer Krzysztof Komeda (1931-1969), died from head injuries sustained from a skiing accident, though other accounts of the cause of his death exist. After the short Two Men and a Wardrobe, he scored all of Polanski's feature films (with the exception of Repulsion), and is probably best known in the U.S. for his final collaboration with the director: the haunting soundtrack to Rosemary's Baby.

On August 9 1969, Tate, who was eight months pregnant with the couple's first child (a boy), and four others (Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent) were brutally murdered by members of Charles Manson's "Family", who entered the Polanskis' rented home at 10050 Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills intending to "kill everyone there". Previous resident Terry Melcher had angered Charles Manson because he had declined to record some of his music. Melcher and his girlfriend at the time, actress Candice Bergen, had been living at the house but had moved out in February of 1969. In March, Polanski and Tate moved in.

When Manson ordered members of his group to go to the property and kill everyone, they obeyed. After Parent, Sebring, Frykowski, and Folger had been murdered, Tate pleaded for the life of her unborn son. Susan Atkins replied that she felt no pity for her and began stabbing her. She soaked up some of Tate's blood with a towel and wrote "PIG" on the front door with it.

Polanski was at his house in London at the time of the murders and immediately traveled to Los Angeles, where he was questioned by police. As there were no suspects in the case, police checked on the past history of Polanski and Tate to try to determine a motive. After a period of months, Manson and his "family" were arrested on unrelated charges, which revealed evidence of what came to be known as the Tate-LaBianca murders. Polanski returned to Europe shortly after the killers were arrested. He later said that he gave away all his possessions as everything reminded him of Tate and was too painful for him, and that the greatest regret of his life was that he was not in Los Angeles with Tate on the night of her murder.

Alleged Rape and other sex offences

In 1977, Polanski, then aged 44, became embroiled in a scandal involving 13-year-old Samantha Geimer (then known as Samantha Gailey). It ultimately led to Polanski's guilty plea to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

According to Geimer, Polanski asked Geimer's mother if he could photograph the girl for the French edition of Vogue, which Polanski had been invited to guest-edit. Her mother allowed a private photo shoot. According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, "Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him." She added, "It didn't feel right, and I didn't want to go back to the second shoot."

Geimer later agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977 at the Mulholland area home of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles. "We did photos with me drinking champagne," Geimer says. "Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." Geimer testified that Polanski performed oral sex on her, and vaginal and anal intercourse, after giving her a combination of champagne and quaaludes. In the 2003 interview, Geimer says she resisted. "I said no several times, and then, well, gave up on that," she says.

Polanski was initially charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance (methaqualone) to a minor, but these charges were dismissed under the terms of his plea bargain, and he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

In his autobiography, Roman by Polanski, Polanski alleged that Geimer's mother had set up her daughter as part of a casting couch and blackmail scheme against him.

In 2008, a documentary film of the aftermath of the incident, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Following review of the film, Polanski and his attorney, Douglas Dalton contacted the Los Angeles district attorney's office about prosecutor David Wells' role in coaching the judge, Laurence J. Rittenband. Using Wells' own claims from the film, Polanski and Dalton are investigating whether the prosecutor acted illegally and engaged in malfeasance in interfering with the operation of the trial.

A fugitive

Following the plea agreement, according to the aforementioned documentary, the court ordered Polanski to report to a state prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation, but granted a stay of ninety days to allow him to complete his current project. Under the terms set by the court, he was permitted to travel abroad. Polanski returned to California and reported to Chino State Prison for the evaluation period, and was released after 42 days.

On February 1, 1978, Polanski fled to London, where he maintained residency. A day later he traveled on to France, where he held citizenship, in order to avoid extradition to the U.S. by Britain. Consistent with its extradition treaty with the United States, France can refuse to extradite its own citizens. As a consequence, an extradition request later filed by U.S. officials was denied. The United States government could have requested that Polanski be prosecuted on the California charges by the French authorities, but this option has not been pursued.

Polanski has never returned to Britain, and later sold his home in absentia. Since the United States could still request the arrest and extradition of Polanski from other countries should he visit them, Polanski has avoided visits to countries that are likely to extradite him (such as Britain) and mostly travels between France and Poland.

In a 2003 interview, Samantha Geimer said, "Straight up, what he did to me was wrong. But I wish he would return to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest for both of us." Furthermore, "I'm sure if he could go back, he wouldn't do it again. He made a terrible mistake but he's paid for it".

In 2008, Geimer stated in an interview that she wishes Polanski would be forgiven, “I think he's sorry, I think he knows it was wrong. I don't think he's a danger to society. I don't think he needs to be locked up forever and no one has ever come out ever - besides me - and accused him of anything. It was 30 years ago now. It's an unpleasant memory ... (but) I can live with it."

In December of 2008, Polanski's lawyer in the United States filed a request to Judge David S. Wesley to have the case dismissed on the grounds of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct. The filing says that Judge Rittenband (now deceased) violated the plea bargain by keeping in communication about the case with a deputy district attorney who was not involved. These activities were depicted in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

Vanity Fair libel case

In 2004, Polanski sued Vanity Fair magazine in London for libel. A 2002 article in the magazine written by A. E. Hotchner recounted a claim by Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's, that Polanski had made sexual advances towards a young model as he was travelling to Sharon Tate's funeral, claiming that he could make her "the next Sharon Tate". The court permitted Polanski to testify via a video link, after he expressed fears that he might be extradited were he to enter the United Kingdom.

The trial started on July 18, 2005, and Polanski made English legal history as the first claimant to give evidence by video link. During the trial, which included the testimony of Mia Farrow and others, it was claimed that the alleged scene at the famous New York restaurant Elaine's could not have taken place on the date given, because Polanski only dined at this restaurant three weeks later. Also, the Norwegian model disputed accounts that he had claimed to be able to make her "the next Sharon Tate". In the course of the trial, Polanski did admit to having been unfaithful to Tate during their marriage.

Polanski was awarded £50,000 damages by the High Court in London. Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, responded, "I find it amazing that a man who lives in France can sue a magazine that is published in America in a British courtroom". According to the British tabloid Daily Mirror, Samantha Geimer commented, "Surely a man like this hasn't got a reputation to tarnish?"

2009 Arrest

Police in Switzerland arrested Polanski in September of 2009 and plans to extradite him to the United States to serve a prison term for the 1977 rape of Samantha Geimer.[1] Following the arrest, Bernard-Henri Lévy started a petition to release him which was signed by many Jewish celebrities.[2]

External links

References

  1. ↑ Anger in France and Poland after Polanski arrest
  2. ↑ Si vous souhaitez signer la pétition pour Roman Polanski
Retrieved from "http://en.metapedia.org/m/index.php?title=Roman_Polanski&oldid=514451"