by LINA DAS (link to article)
A new book on Roman Polanski's tumultuous life missed a final secret. Here, the man who was his wife's lover in the months before her bizarre murder tells his story for the first time
She was the wife of director Roman Polanski, a star of the cult movie Valley Of The Dolls, and with her flawless blonde looks was lauded as one of the great beauties of her time, but even to this day the actress Sharon Tate is remembered primarily for the horrific manner of her death.
On August 9, 1969, while at home with friends, Tate was murdered by the followers of Charles Manson's gang in Los Angeles.
Tate was eight months pregnant with Polanski's baby at the time, and yet her attackers paid little heed, stabbing her 16 times and murdering the four friends who were with her - Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Steven Parent and Voyteck Frykowski.
It was a night of inexplicable horror and sent reverberations not only through the Hollywood community, but throughout the world.
The events have been endlessly discussed, even by Roman Polanski, who finds himself the subject of yet another biography - Polanski by Christopher Sandford - to be published next week.
But throughout all this, there has been one aspect of Sharon Tate's story of which even Polanski has not been fully aware - her relationship with the actor Christopher Jones.
Most famous for his role as Major Randolph Doryan in David Lean's epic, Ryan's Daughter, Jones embarked on an affair with Tate when she was six weeks pregnant with Polanski's child and has not, until now, spoken fully of their relationship.
He says: "I loved Sharon and she loved me.
"I don't think I'm betraying any confidence by talking about it.
"I knew that she was married to Roman and I had no intention of splitting them up.
"I don't feel guilty."
Now aged 66, Christopher has retained his looks, although it is clear that the intervening years haven't always been kind to him.
We meet in the dimly lit environs of Nic's Restaurant in Beverly Hills. Slightly built, a touch gaunt of face and softly spoken, he chats openly but doesn't eat or drink throughout the twohour meeting (the reason why becoming apparent only towards the end).
He has managed to cram an awful lot into his life, including a marriage to actress Susan Strasberg (daughter of acting coach, Lee Strasberg), countless lovers (including actresses Olivia Hussey and Susan George, "who came up to my apartment when I was staying in London and the next day moved her toothbrush in, so I had to say, no way!"), seven children and a couple of brushes with death.
That he is still here to tell the tale is a testimony to his powers of survival.
When he was cast to star in Ryan's Daughter, Jones was already being heralded as the new James Dean after his role in the cult movie Wild In The Streets opposite Shelley Winters.
There was a huge buzz surrounding him - a factor which partly explains why so American an actor (Jones was born in Tennessee) should have been chosen to play so English a role, in the shape of Major Doryan.
Set in Ireland's Dingle Peninsula, the story follows Rosy (Sarah Miles), the wife of schoolmaster Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum), who has an affair with the dashing English officer Doryan, who arrives to take command of the local Army base.
The affair has tragic consequences for Doryan, a veteran of World War I who is suffering from shell shock, and it was Ryan's Daughter which brought Jones to the attention of the British cinema-going public at large.
More pertinently though, it was while Jones was in Ireland during the year-long filming schedule that he received the news of his former lover Sharon Tate's murder.
After filming on Ryan's Daughter was completed, Jones gave up acting for 26 years.
One wonders why he chooses to talk of Tate now.
He insists it is "partly because I want to see if God strikes me dead for talking about it.
"I loved being with her. Other women I've been with, I couldn't remember if my life depended on it, but she stuck in my mind."
The couple started their affair in Rome in 1969 while Jones was filming the movie Brief Season with his then lover, actress Pia Degermark. Tate, who was flying out to Rome with her friend, Jones's manager Rudy, had by then been married to Roman for a year.
Polanski, the Paris-born director of horror film Rosemary's Baby, was brilliant and troubled (his mother had died in a Nazi-run camp in German-occulied Poland) and he later gained a reputation for controversy when he was convicted of the statutory rape of a 13-year- old girl in 1977.
But in March 1969, "Sharon arrived in Rome with my manager," says Jones, "and so we all arranged to go out to dinner that night. We were on the patio, waiting for Sharon, when suddenly she appeared.
"She looked amazing.
"We sat next to each other and she was very nervous, almost like a deer, but she had this beautiful, perfect face. She had this little scar on the left of her face against all this perfection, and when I reached over to touch it, I could feel her react.
"She kept talking about off-the-wall spiritual things - she talked about reincarnation and how in a previous life she had died in a fire aged nine.
"The second she said that, the doors to the restaurant blew open even though there wasn't any wind, and she looked really shocked."
An Emirates Airbus A380 in sprayed with water at it lands at Manchester Airport for the first time, Manchester. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday September 1, 2010. Dubai-based airline Emirates flew the 500-seat aircraft into Manchester at the start of its daily services between Dubai and the northern England city. Emirates has been operating the A380, whose wings are made in the UK, into Heathrow but this is the first time a regional UK airport has received one. See PA story AIR A380. Photo credit should read: Dave Thompson/PA Wire
But he adds: "I wasn't planning on anything because I knew she was married to Roman."
Later that evening however, Jones found himself in Tate's room.
"We were sitting on the couch talking when I finally asked her where Roman was. She said he was stuck in London having trouble with his passport.
"We were talking and getting closer, and although her skirt was riding right up, she wasn't bothering to pull it down.
"She then said: 'Chris, have you ever smoked opium?' and I told her no, and she said I had to try it and that she had some in the bedroom.
"Everyone says that Sharon didn't smoke pot, yet she was definitely looking for this bag, but couldn't find it so came back over to me, standing by the bed.
"One minute she was looking at me and the next thing I knew, she was pulling me on top of her on to the bed.
"I hadn't even taken my clothes off but after we'd made love I told her I was going upstairs to sleep. She asked me to stay, but when I looked out the window I couldn't see a fire escape and my first thought then was: 'What if Polanski comes back?'.
"I wasn't afraid of him, just worried about the repercussions, but she stopped asking me to stay and I left.
"The next day I ran into actress Nathalie Delon (wife of actor Alain Delon) who was a friend of Sharon's and whom I had also been seeing, and she said: 'Chris, what did you do to Sharon? She has never been so in love.'
"Yes, I knew Sharon was pregnant and of course I felt guilty about that, but I've thought about this a lot since and the marriage vows say: 'What God joins together, let no man put asunder.'
"Well, God obviously separated them and put me there."
Jones and Tate continued to see each other, and although he might have been infatuated with Tate, it didn't stop him conducting simultaneous affairs with Pia Degermark and his former wife Susan.
"They all knew about each other.
"Well, maybe Susan didn't know about Sharon, but I had a little too much on my plate, and even that wasn't enough.
"One night, we were out at dinner and there was an Italian girl there. All I can say is that I was young, had a high libido and no conscience, and I just wanted to figure out a way for my manager to take Sharon back to the hotel so I could see the Italian girl.
"After I'd been with her, I came back to the hotel and tried Sharon's door which was open.
"I thought she was going to be mad at me but she didn't say anything, and after we'd made love, she whispered in my ear: 'That was the wrong way.'
"That stuck in my mind because the way we made love wasn't gentle, it was lustful, and although she wanted it to be more romantic, I wasn't feeling romantic.
"I felt that she was a woman I'd been living with for a while, whom you sneak back in on in the middle of the night.
"She didn't seem the least bit concerned about Roman, so either I was irresistible or she must have been unhappy. Although she seemed very happy that she was pregnant.
"I worried professionally in case I might have to work with Roman in the future.
"There was probably some guilt on my part there, in the way that any man would think to themselves: 'I deserve to be shot'."
Given the evil manner of Tate's death, some of Jones's recollections about his former lover take on an eerie significance.
"One night we went to visit the Trevi Fountain, and I looked at her and had the strongest feeling she was going to die.
"Another time I was looking over at her and asking her what she was thinking about, and she suddenly came out with: 'The Devil is beautiful. Most people think he's ugly, but he's not.'
"I thought it weird at the time but Roman had just done the movie Rosemary's Baby so I related it to that.
"I told her she shouldn't say things like that because it made me nervous.
"I knew that she and Roman lived in quite an isolated place in LA, so I told her that for her own protection she should have a gun, but she said that she could never shoot anyone even if she had one."
Of the last night they spent together in Rome, Jones says: "I told her that we'd get back together when we were in America and she agreed, and when I said: 'What about Roman?', she said: 'Don't worry about Roman.'
"I didn't envisage that she would leave Roman; I didn't envisage anything.
"I thought it was love. Whatever brief time we had together, we were very happy. I always expected to see her again."
Jones went from Rome to Dingle to begin shooting on Ryan's Daughter and Tate returned to LA.
"When she got there, she called my manager a couple of times," says Jones, "but she didn't ask to talk to me, which got me a little p****d off. But I was just getting on with my life."
Getting on with his life included embarking on an affair with Olivia Hussey, whom he had seen in the movie Romeo And Juliet.
"I saw Olivia's beautiful face up on screen and I asked my manager if he could arrange for us to meet, and so we started seeing each other.
"Olivia wanted to come to Ireland with me, so she did. That's what was happening when I heard about Sharon's murder."
The call came to the hotel in Ireland where Jones was staying.
"One of my other managers took it. When he hung up, he told me that everyone in the house had been murdered. At first, I didn't have a strong reaction because I was so stunned.
"Only slowly did it hit me, and then it hit me hard. I was pretty disoriented. I couldn't make sense of it, that someone that beautiful and young had to die like that."
Jones remained in shock for much of the filming of Ryan's Daughter, a state noted by his co-star Sarah Miles in the second volume of her memoirs, Serves Me Right.
Miles makes frequent mention of Jones's erratic behaviour during filming, and paints a picture of an actor who was pretty much a loner.
Most embarrassing of all, she describes the tortuous making of the film's pivotal love scene, where a lacklustre Jones was given a potion concocted by a chemist "to help matters considerably" and increase his sexual enthusiasm for Miles on screen.
"I was feeling weird," says Jones, "I attributed that to an accident I had had in my Ferrari or to Sharon's death, but I had no idea they had drugged me."
Did Miles ever make a pass at Jones (the scene in the bluebell wood was one of the raunchiest lovemaking scenes of its time, after all)?
"No, but Sarah was getting more jealous as the filming wore on.
"In that first scene where I'm pushing her up against the wall, as much as she said she didn't feel anything, she was gone.
"I read some of Sarah's book - I didn't like the part where she called me a midget and inferred I was a homosexual. During the shoot I hung out with Olivia.
"We were going to get married at one point, but my manager talked me out of it - I'm sure he was thinking of finances when he did - and after that, Olivia and I didn't talk much either.
"It was a difficult shoot, and after Ryan's Daughter I gave up acting because I realised I hated it."
Jones finally accepted a small role in the 1996 film Mad Dog Time.
In the interim, he lived on the money he had made from his movies and pursued a successful career as an artist (his painting of Rudolph Valentino hangs in the famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery).
In the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino approached Jones for a part in Pulp Fiction, "It was for the part of Zed the Gimp and my girlfriend at the time read it and said: 'You're not doing this - it's disgusting.' So I didn't."
Jones has had seven children by four women, and one son, Timothy, was convicted of the involuntary manslaughter of his mother, actress Susan Cabot.
Further problems ensued in 1996 when Christopher ingested "something caustic" and was taken to hospital.
"The doctors thought I'd tried to kill myself, which I hadn't," he says. "The medical report said I'd died in the ambulance, but somehow, I managed to survive."
The internal damage was so severe he now has to take all nutrients through a syringe connected to his stomach.
"I shouldn't drink, but occasionally I'll pour shots into the syringe.'"
He adds: "I've had a complicated life, but I've enjoyed it.
"It's not like Sharon's always preying on my mind, but if I see something about her on TV, it all comes flooding back."
THANKS MILLIE!
