Polanski’s 1969 romancing was ‘vulgar’ -editor

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON (Reuters) – Roman Polanski made “tasteless and
vulgar” advances on a Scandanavian model shortly after his wife
Sharon Tate was murdered in 1969 by the Charles Manson clan, a
New York editor told a London court on Wednesday.

Lewis Lapham, editor of U.S. magazine Harper’s, is the
source of a passage in the July 2002 edition of Vanity Fair
over which the film director is suing the magazine’s
publishers.

Polanski, 71, is fighting the case via video link from
Paris, because if he came to Britain he would risk extradition
to the United States where he is wanted after pleading guilty
to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

He cannot be extradited from France, where he was born.

The Vanity Fair article alleges Polanski propositioned a
woman at Elaine’s restaurant in New York on his way to his
wife’s burial in Los Angeles. Both sides in the case now agree
Polanski was at Elaine’s several weeks later.

“Mr. Polanski pulled up a chair between myself and Beatte
Telle and began to talk to her in a forward way … began to
praise her beauty, romance her,” Lapham, 70, told the court.

“At one point he had his hand on her leg and said to her ‘I
can put you in the movies. I can make you the next Sharon
Tate.’

“I was impressed by the remark, not only because it was
tasteless and vulgar, but also because it was a cliche.”

Financier Edward Perlberg, Vanity Fair’s second witness and
the boyfriend of Telle in 1969, said he was also at the
restaurant and recounted what she told him after they left.

“He touched me with his hand, and said that I should come
to Hollywood and he would get me a screen test and he would
make another Sharon Tate of me,” Perlberg, 66, quoted her as
saying.

“I though this was generally creepy. I think the words that
he was a twerp, or to that effect, were used.”

Vanity Fair’s lawyer, Thomas Shields, confirmed that Telle
was still alive. She has not been called as a witness.

ACCOUNTS QUESTIONED

Polanski’s lawyer, John Kelsey-Fry, questioned details of
Lapham’s and Perlberg’s accounts of what happened at Elaine’s,
and wondered if Polanski would be capable of “the most
astonishing, asinine chat-up line in history.”

He also asked whether Lapham would apologize to Polanski
after admitting the alleged incident did not happen while the
director was on his way to Tate’s funeral but weeks later.

“Certainly I would apologize for that,” he said.

But Lapham stuck by the gist of the story. “My recollection
is very vivid of his approach to Beatte. I was astonished by
the remark ‘I could make another Sharon Tate of you.”‘

Shields opened the third day of the libel case by
questioning Polanski’s reputation.

Details of Polanski’s private life, including having sex
with a woman within a month of Tate’s death, have peppered
proceedings in an occasionally emotional trial.

“It is the defendant’s case that the claimant actually has
no reputation to protect in this country at all.”

Polanski argues the case is not about his sex life, but the
account of a callous approach to a woman so soon after Tate’s
death and the use of her name to try and seduce her.

Lapham said he did not see Hollywood actress Mia Farrow
that evening. She gave testimony on Tuesday that she was with
Polanski at Elaine’s in late August, that he was distraught and
discouraged the advances of two young women there.