Four decades later, will the Polanski saga ever come to an end?
(Warning: This post includes graphic description of rape and a mention of the name ‘Woody Allen’)
With a scandal-ridden reality star storming Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s easy to forget that Hollywood’s harbored, and continues to protect, other notoriously awful men, but one of Tinseltown’s most enduring rape cases has found its way back into headlines this week… with another voice adding to the oft-ignored echoes.
On Tuesday, a woman choosing to identify herself as only Robin M.held a press conference at the Los Angeles office of attorney Gloria Allred, alleging that in 1973, at sixteen years old, she’d been sexually assaulted by Roman Polanski.
While Robin’s words were chilling, they didn’t come as a surprise considering Roman’s long history of abuse… and his self-imposed exile to avoid punishment. But where did this all begin? And what does it spell out for the filmmaker’s future?
Let’s take a look.
I. The Michael Jackson Effect
Samantha Geimer writes in her 2013 memoir The Girl:
“Think about the kids who had sleepovers at Michael Jackson’s house and all the accusations that followed. Think about their parents. Were they bad or stupid people? No. They just wanted to believe that being famous made you good.”
Geimer, known decades ago as Samantha Gailey, has remained the central focus of a forty-year-old rape case hanging over Hollywood’s head.
In February 1977, Roman Polanski was looking for young girls.
Following a popular spread of his fifteen-year-old fling Nastassja Kinski for French Vogue, Roman had been on the hunt for other ingenues to supposedly photograph for another publication: Vogue Hommes.
Vogue later denied there ever being any assignment.
Through a mutual friend, the filmmaker had learned of thirty-year-old Susan Gailey, a television actress with bit parts in Starsky and Hutch, Police Woman, and a series of Ourisman Chevrolet ads…
…in addition to a thirteen-year-old daughter, Samantha.
After meeting at a Hollywood bar, Polanski paid a visit to Gailey’s home on February 13th, showing the mother-daughter duo a copy of Kinski’s Vogue shoot, and offering to give the aspiring teen actress the same star treatment he’d given his girlfriend, just two years her senior.
A little over a week later, he returned.
On February 20th, Roman escorted Samantha to a nearby hill. Near the top, though, the two stopped to begin their shoot. While the pictures started off innocuous enough - one of them even becoming the cover of Samantha’s memoir - eventually Roman asked his potential muse to remove her shirt.
It was then Gailey decided she wasn’t interested in being photographed by Polanski again.
Despite her apprehension, on the afternoon of March 10th, Roman returned once more.
Seeming to be in a rush, the filmmaker ordered the thirteen-year-old to grab her clothes and then they headed to the home of actress Jacqueline Bisset, who’d made her debut in a previous Polanski project, 1966’s Cul-de-sac.
After another hourlong photo session, Roman grew concerned by the dimming light and told Samantha he had a plan.
After phoning someone, the filmmaker told Gailey to grab her belongings and the two headed down the street to 12850 Mulholland Dr., Jack Nicholson’s house.
Upon arriving at the Chinatown star’s pad, the duo was greeted by neighbor Helena Kallianiotes, Nicholson’s Five Easy Pieces costar and a caretaker for several homes in the Mulholland area.
After chatting for a while, Polanski pulled a bottle of champagne out of the fridge and poured three glasses. Despite being only halfway through with hers, though, Helena took off… leaving Roman and Samantha alone to continue their shoot.
As Gailey gripped her champagne glass, Polanski requested the thirteen-year-old go topless - continuing to snap away before suggesting the two take a peek at Nicholson’s jacuzzi.
First, however, he wanted to phone Samantha’s mom.
At around 6PM, Susan Gailey received a phone call from her daughter. Suddenly, the filmmaker butted in and told the mother that they didn’t get many pictures, so he was going to try and use some “artificial light” near the jacuzzi.
“I thought, why a Jacuzzi? But I didn’t say anything. I mean I just didn’t,” Susan later recalled in court.
After hanging up, Polanski stepped inside Nicholson’s bathroom and pulled out a container. Inside? A broken-up tablet labeled Rorer 714.
The two split the quaalude before the filmmaker guided Gailey outside and asked her to take off her underwear.
After photographing Samantha in the jacuzzi, Roman decided to hop in… naked.
Slinking to the bottom, Polanski grabbed Gailey’s waist - causing the thirteen-year-old to claim she had asthma and needed to leave immediately.
As she dried herself off in the bathroom, though, Roman told her to lie down in a room across the hall. When Samantha responded that she had to return home and take her asthma medication, the filmmaker told the teen: “Soon.”
Scared, Gailey sat down on the bedroom couch, soon joined by Polanski… and his incessant advances.
As the filmmaker kissed her, he pulled off Samantha’s underwear and then began to sodomize her.
The thirteen-year-old continuously begged Polanski to stop, but he ignored her cries and proceeded to rape her - only pausing to ask Gailey if she was “on the pill.”
As he finished, he was interrupted by a knock on the door.
The teen quickly put her underwear back on as Roman crept over. It was Jack’s on-and-off girlfriend, Anjelica Huston.
After briefly talking, Roman shut the door and proceeded to rape Samantha a second time.
Finally, he was ready to take her home.
As Gailey wandered back into the living room, Huston was busy on the phone - pausing to ask the teen: “Are you the girl Roman is taking pictures of?”
Then she walked outside, got in Roman’s and cried.
As he drove her home, Polanski asked Samantha to keep the evening’s events their “secret,” adding: “You know, when I first met you, I promised myself I wouldn’t do anything like this with you.”
Once they arrived at Gailey’s home, though, Samantha darted inside and told her mother: “I told him I had asthma because I didn’t want to get in the jacuzzi. I just wanted you to know that.”
Roman followed suit, approaching Susan and inquiring about her daughter’s supposed medical condition. Confused, she muttered, “Yeah, it’s really too bad.”
Years later, in his 1984 memoir Roman by Polanski, the filmmaker questioned why Samantha had lied to begin with: “Why she did so baffles me to this day.”
II. Hollywood Justice
The night of March 10th ended with a 911 call.
After overhearing a conversation between Samantha and her seventeen-year-old boyfriend, Steve, Gailey’s older sister Kim would inform their mother of what had happened at Nicholson’s home earlier that evening, and Susan would inform the police.
The next morning, Detective Philip Vannatter - later a player in the O.J. Simpson case - would arrive at his desk to find a fresh report, detailing how patrol officers responded to a call the previous evening about a San Fernando Valley teen who’d been raped by Roman Polanski. After consulting prosecutors in the district attorney’s office, Vannatter was granted a warrant to search the hotel where the filmmaker had been staying.
Upon spotting Polanski in the Beverly Wilshire lobby, though, the detective decided to make an arrest.
En route to Roman’s suite, the filmmaker attempted to dispose of a quaalude - marked Rorer 714. “Why don’t you drop it into my hand instead of the floor?” Vannatter asked, and the search was on.
After raiding Suite 200, police searched Nicholson’s Mulholland abode. There, once again, was Anjelica Huston. Upon an impromptu search of her purse, though, police discovered a gram of cocaine… and the actress was cuffed.
She later agreed to testify for the prosecution in exchange for the dropping of the drug possession charge, and in her 2014 memoir Watch Me, Huston would simply write off the rape she’d found herself a bystander to as just Roman’s “business,” adding, “.. and I can say that with some happiness.”
Roman’s so-called “business,” however, would become a media sensation.
While Polanski never denied having sex with the thirteen-year-old, he’d maintain it was entirely consensual and the farthest thing from rape. And as fast as Roman had been arrested, media outlets clamored to dig up dirt on the victim at the center of it all. Reporters for the National Enquirer, amongst an array of European tabloids, would brand the thirteen-year-old a “liar” and “Lolita,” in addition to Susan Gailey - falsely construed as a domineering stage mom trying to make a buck.
Spearheaded by Polanski’s attorney, Douglas Dalton, questions of Samantha’s sexual history and past drug use would arise - lawyers insinuating the teen must’ve been a heavy user considering she took the quaalude the filmmaker had offered her, and furthermore pushing Roman’s “consensual” narrative by emphasizing Gailey’s sexual activity with her boyfriend.
As the misplaced blame intensified, the young girl’s attorney, Lawrence Silver, penned a letter to the judge presiding over the case - Laurence J. Rittenband - urging him to accept a deal in which Polanski would plead guilty to a lesser charge of “unlawful intercourse with a minor,” mostly for the safety of his client.
And on August 8th, 1977, Roman Polanski pleaded guilty.
The new focus of the case, though, would rest on the filmmaker’s sentencing - and that would depend on what the probation officer, Irwin Gold, saw fit.
In the bizarre September 1977 report, Gold would gush about Polanski and his ability to overcome tremendous adversity throughout his life - in addition to his supposed creative genius. And in the most troubling excerpt, the officer would praise Hollywood, claiming that not since “Renaissance Italy” had there been such a gathering of creative minds “in one locale” - and Roman was one of the key players.
To conclude the obvious love note, Gold attached a psychiatric evaluation suggesting Polanski wouldn’t be able to deal with the “stress” of prison, and support was echoed through additional positive letters of reference from several famous friends - producers, past employers, and actress Mia Farrow, who’d been attached to Polanski’s next project:
Judge Rittenband dismissed the report as a joke.
All the while his fate was being decided, Roman continued to grab headlines. From brawling with a paparazzo to receiving a standing ovation from celeb pals at a Tinseltown eatery, to finally being photographed tossing back drinks at an Oktoberfest celebration as he was supposed to be working on a Dino de Laurentiis-produced remake of The Hurricane…
… Rittenband had enough.
Shortly before Christmas, Polanski would begin an imposed ninety-day mental evaluation at Chino, checking out just forty-two days later on January 29th, 1978. Staffers unanimously agreed probation would best suit the filmmaker, but the judge saw the urging as just another “whitewash” of Roman’s crime, and wanted Polanski to finish serving out his sentence.
Dalton told his client the news, and after one last night of partying with Nicholson, Roman bought a pair of oversized sunglasses and darted off to LAX, catching the last seat on a London-bound British Airways flight. By the following morning’s hearing, he’d be in France…
… all to avoid a measly forty-eight more days in the pen.
III. Abroad
Nearly forty years to the day he fled, the legal consequences of Polanski’s stupidity continue to haunt him.
Five days after the director skipped town, Rittenband called a press conference to reveal his plans to sentence Polanski in absentia, turning Roman from one of Hollywood’s most sought after filmmakers to America’s most wanted fugitive.
As a legal tug-of-war continued stateside, though, Roman began work on his next project, an adaptation of the 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbevilles - the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who is raped by an older man… amongst other things clearly appeasing Polanski’s interests.
It would later be nominated for six Oscars.
And as fast as the filmmaker’s case grabbed headlines, it took a backseat to decades of accolades and star-studded casts. While his attorneys would make efforts every few years to resolve the saga, prosecutors refused to entertain the idea until Roman returned to America. He opted to stay abroad.
The next time he’d find himself in cuffs would be 2009.
En route to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award at a Swiss film festival, Polanski was busted at Zurich airport on September 26th, 2009. The arrest came on the heels of a request made four days earlier by L.A. investigators, asking that Swiss authorities apprehend the filmmaker.
Despite the long-awaited break in the case, though, the legal battle would continue and conclude with the filmmaker being released from custody the following July - leaving his comfy Swiss chalet behind to continue working the Cannes Croisette.
IV. Young Girls
In a 1979 interview with Martin Amis, Polanski reflected on the arrest that started it all:
“I realize, if I have killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls - everyone wants to fuck young girls!”
While the veracity of his theory is up for debate, support wasn’t lost on the director in the aftermath of his crime. Despite his European exile, the filmmaker’s ability to court Hollywood’s biggest names hasn’t slowed down, ranging from Harrison Ford to Kim Cattrall, Sigourney Weaver to Adrien Brody, Ewan McGregor to Jodie Foster, Helena Bonham Carter to Christoph Waltz - and Ben Kingsley, a lot.
And then there was that big win at the 2003 Academy Awards, met by a standing ovation:
And how could we forget that little petition in 2009?
In the wake of the Roman’s Zurich bust, a lengthy list of filmmakers, stars, and other Hollywood-types signed a petition urging for Polanski’s freedom in the name of art… or something like that. Here are some of the names:
- Woody Allen
- Alejandro Inarritu
- Isabelle Huppert
- Wes Anderson
- Darren Aronofsky
- Jonathan Demme
- David Lynch
- Martin Scorsese
- Monica Bellucci
- Pedro Almodovar
- Guillermo del Toro
- Xavier Dolan
- Wong Kar Wai
- Tilda Swinton
- Jerry Schatzberg
- Julian Schnabel
- Alexander Payne
- Harmony Korine
- Natalie Portman
- Ethan Cohen
- Mike Nichols
- Harrison Ford
- Harvey Weinstein
- John Landis
- Terry Zwigoff
- Steven Soderbergh
- Michael Mann
- Adrien Brody
- Diane von Furstenberg
- Salman Rushdie
- Terry Gilliam
Just to list a few! I personally wouldn’t mind if Faye Dunaway gave them the same piss treatment she gave Roman.
But the support wasn’t limited to just signatures. In an interview with The Atlantic, Gore Vidal branded Polanski’s victim a “young hooker.” Meanwhile on The View, Whoopi Goldbergtried to twist our definition of “rape”:
And of course Johnny Depp rushed to the director’s defense:
As if we really needed another reason to hate him.
Surprisingly, Hollywood’s rare voice of reason came from Scientologist Kirstie Alley:
JUST FOR THE RECORD….RAPE IS RAPE…this is one HOLLYWOOD STAR who does not CELEBRATE or DEFEND Roman Polanski..his ART did not RAPE her
— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) September 30, 2009
THERE is NO SUCH THING AS CONSENSUAL SEX with a 13 year old girl..it is RAPE and Polanski is a Coward. HE made 2 bad choices RAPE and FLEE
— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) September 30, 2009
and GOOD MORNING FIRE ANTS..FIGHT FOR WHAT U BELIEVE IN..stand up for CHILDREN and their security..can’t agree with people who CONDONE RAPE
— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) September 30, 2009
now HERE is a MOVIE.a Director who is still revered and defended after RAPING a 13 year old girl.who still is awarded Movies highest honors
— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) September 30, 2009
and what makes ANYONE think this was his ONLY offense? Pediphiles NEVER strike once..may ONLY be CAUGHT once..guarantee not 1st offense
— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) September 30, 2009
you can always tell when you have pediphiles on line..they covertly defend the perpetrators..YOU are not unseen and you are NOT forgiven
— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) September 30, 2009
we are NOT in the barter business of trading BRILLIANT movies in exchange for heinous crimes against children..NOT the point. NOT HOLLYWOOD
— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) September 30, 2009
Even a broken E-Meter is right twice a day!
And Alley would also be spot on about thirteen-year-old Gailey not being Polanski’s only offense, let’s take a look at his rap sheet - shall we?
V. A Very Polanski History
In response to the filmmaker’s 2009 arrest, and unsettling wave of Hollywood support, another Polanski victim came forward: Charlotte Lewis.
In 2010, the actress revealed in a press conference - led by none other than Gloria Allred - that she’d been assaulted by the filmmaker when she was just sixteen years old, auditioning at the time in Polanski’s Paris apartment for his 1986 film Pirates. After plying her with champagne, Roman told the teen: “If you’re not a big enough girl to have sex with me, you’re not big enough to do the screen test.“
She claimed the director told her that’s how all of his leading ladies scored their roles, and tales of his depraved behavior didn’t end there.
In 2002, the filmmaker sued Vanity Fair after the magazine recounted an instance in August 1969 in which Roman groped a Scandinavian model at a Manhattan restaurant, promising to ”make another Sharon Tate“ out of her. At the time, he’d been en route to Tate’s L.A. funeral.
Immediately, attorneys for the magazine fired back that the filmmaker was a liar and ”fugitive for morality.“ However, Polanski claimed the story was an ”abominable lie“ that dishonored his memory of his late wife.
Whatever memory that might be, though, is questionable at best.
Prior stories of the short-lived marriage paint a picture of endless emotional abuse on Polanski’s part, with the director often berating his wife - branding her a ”dumb hag“ on one occasion - and when Sharon realized she was pregnant, Roman was the last to find out… the actress fearing his reaction.
At the advice of friends, Tate waited until she was too far along for an abortion - but Roman would still demand one anyways. After his wife refused, he decided to sleep with one of her friends: Michelle Phillips.
And even after Tate’s brutal death, Polanski wouldn’t take a break from sex… or young girls.
To drown his sorrows, Roman would hitch it out to Gstaad, Switzerland - describing it in his autobiography as the ”finishing school capital of the world with hundreds of fresh-faced, nubile young girls of all nationalities.“ The same book would brag of threesomes with teenagers, unsurprising considering further stories of a fling with an air hostess less than four weeks after his wife’s burial, and introducing a teenage Tatum O'Neal to his porn collection.
Yep, Vanity Fair really shat on his memory.
Roman would nonchalantly dish on these experiences, whilst slamming Samantha Geimer, in a 1984 interview:
What a class act.
VI. What’s Next?
As for the end to this saga, it doesn’t appear to be in sight - well, until Roman drops dead at least.
This past week, a judge ruled against a request from Geimer to end the forty-year legal battle, and the presence of a third Polanski victim just complicated things a hell of a lot more. But if one thing’s for certain, we’re only just scratching the surface of the filmmaker’s many crimes, and it’s safe to say there’ll be a few more revelations to come.
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