No one was more frank and sometimes chagrined than Johnny about his multiple marriages, some of which ended very expensively. The first of his wives, and the mother of his three sons, was Joan Wolcott. Theirs was apparently a mutually unhappy marriage that lasted from 1949 until 1963. Next came Joanne Copeland, whom he married shortly after his “quickie” divorce from Joan Wolcott in 1963 and divorced in 1972, for which she received cash and artwork worth about half a million dollars and an annual $100,000 in alimony for the rest of her life. Wife number three was former model Joanna Holland. She and Johnny were married on September 30, 1972, just over a month after his divorce from Joanne Copeland was finalized. Joanna Holland filed for divorce from Johnny on March 8, 1983, and, thanks to California’s community property laws, walked away from the marriage with $20 million in cash and property. Last but not least came Alexis Maas, who was thirty-five when she married sixty-one-year-old Johnny Carson on June 20, 1987. They never divorced.
Without a doubt the greatest tragedy of his life was the death of his son Richard, who was killed on June 21, 1991, at the age of thirty-nine, when his car plunged down a steep embankment off of Highway 1 near San Luis Obispo, California. Johnny devoted the final segment of his first Tonight Show following the accident to a touching, deeply personal tribute to his son.
Johnny’s retirement as host of The Tonight Show in 1992 wasn’t necessarily intended to be his permanent retirement from show business. He strongly hinted at first that he might return to television if a new project excited or inspired him enough. But except for a handful of appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman and a 1993 NBC tribute to Bob Hope, his retirement turned out to be a permanent one after all. The notoriously private, semireclusive king of late-night spent the last years of his life quietly enjoying his home in Malibu. He was sleeping there on March 19, 1999, when he was awakened by severe chest pains. He was rushed to Santa Monica Hospital and underwent emergency quadruple-bypass surgery, from which he recovered.
But on January 23, 2005, at 6:50 a.m., Johnny Carson died of respiratory arrest at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after struggling for years with emphysema. He was seventy-nine. Out of respect for the wishes of his family, his body was cremated, and no public service was held.
From Francine
Johnny emerged from the tunnel into the waiting arms of his parents, an aunt, and his son Richard. As ecstatic as he was to be free of his perpetually struggling body, he found it almost jarring to be in an atmosphere of such peaceful, sacred bliss. He’s commented many times that he never realized how depressed he was throughout his most recent lifetime until he came Home and rediscovered happiness. His depression came from the difficult series of conflicts he charted for himself for what he quickly announced will be his last incarnation, compounded by the mutually challenging themes of Controller and Loner. He became legendary for being an unparalleled host to a wide variety of people, but off-camera there were very few people whose company he enjoyed or with whom he felt comfortable—in fact, left to his own devices he much preferred socializing as little as possible. He enjoyed the power he came to wield over countless careers, but it made him even more guarded and untrusting, knowing he was often “liked” for the doors he could open. He was fiercely loyal, but quick to sever a relationship over a perceived slight. He loved being loved but was, in his words, “a disaster” when it came to intimacy. Because of all those conflicts that he watched himself act out at the Scanning Machine and the depression he’d struggled with for so long, he devoted many months, in your time, to Orientation before he was ready to resume and fully appreciate his life on the Other Side.
His chosen passion here is astronomy, which he teaches and researches. He also enjoys sailing, tennis, and singing, at which he always wished he were more gifted on earth. Here at Home he has a beautiful baritone voice and loves performing with Rock Hudson, who was also a frustrated singer on earth, but who excels at it in his life here. He lives alone in a house he says is a precise duplicate of his house in Malibu.
One of his great regrets from his last incarnation was his “completely unfair, utterly inexcusable” temporary estrangement from his son Richard, for which he takes full responsibility, and he’s deeply grateful for the friendship they now enjoy.
Sharon Tate
One of the most beautiful, and by all accounts sweetest, rising stars in Hollywood in the 1960s, Sharon Tate was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 24, 1943. She and her two younger sisters, Patti and Debra, were army brats, the daughters of officer Paul Tate and his wife, Doris. Frequent army moves (six different cities in seven years) affected Sharon in two profound ways: she learned to form friendships quickly and to maintain those friendships long after the Tates had relocated again, and she developed a strong bond with her family that lasted throughout her life.
Her beauty came naturally—she won her first title, “Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas,” at the age of six months. Although her early intention was to become a psychiatrist rather than an actress, she found success in her teens as a beauty pageant contestant and model, and the lure of Hollywood began tempting her. Her first official onscreen appearance happened serendipitously. Eighteen-year-old Sharon was walking down the street, when a choreographer for an upcoming Pat Boone special approached her and asked if she’d be willing to make a brief appearance on the show. She was thrilled, and her parents gave their permission, on the condition that a guard be posted all night outside the door of the hotel room where she’d be staying. The condition was met, and Pat Boone serenaded the young, spectacular Sharon Tate on national television in 1961.
Another promotion and reassignment sent Colonel Tate and his family to Italy in 1962. The film of Ernest Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man, starring Paul Newman and Richard Beymer, happened to be shooting near the Tates’ new home in Verona, and Sharon and some friends went to visit the set. Sharon quickly caught Richard Beymer’s eye, and in the course of the casual dates that resulted, he gave her the business card of his agent, the powerful Hal Gefsky, and encouraged her to get her inevitable show business career off the ground.
The Tate family returned to America, Sharon headed to Hollywood, and Hal Gefsky eagerly signed her, joining forces in carefully developing her skills and grooming her for stardom with Filmways chairman Marty Ransohoff. Finally Gefsky and Ransohoff decided that Sharon was ready for her official debut and cast her for a major role in the 1965 film Eye of the Devil, starring David Niven, Deborah Kerr, and David Hemmings. Sharon had begun a relationship with hairdresser-to-the-stars Jay Sebring in 1964, and the two of them traveled together to England and France, where the film was being shot.
In 1966 Ransohoff was casting and coproducing a film called The Fearless Vampire Killers with Polish director Roman Polanski. Polanski had his heart set on hiring up-and-coming actress Jill St. John for the female lead, but Ransohoff convinced him to hire Sharon instead. Polanski and Sharon were less than enchanted with each other when they first met, but as filming in Italy progressed, their relationship evolved into a serious romance.
Next for Sharon came a mediocre beach comedy called Don’t Make Waves with Tony Curtis, in which her wardrobe consisted primarily of a bikini. She was mortified by the film and began referring to herself sarcastically as “sexy little me.” Compounding her unhappiness was the fact that she was away from Polanski, who was still in Italy doing postproduction work on The Fearless Vampire Killers. But she did appreciate and continue to treasure the one positive aspect of her work on Don’t Make Waves—she and Tony Curtis maintained a close friendship for the rest of her life.
Don’t Make Waves was followed by yet another movie that valued her beauty more than her acting ability, a script based on one of the bestselling books of all time, which she considered “trashy”—Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. Sharon rose to the occasion, gave it her best, and managed to stay out of the war zone the set of the film became. Morale had seriously deteriorated as the cast went from believing th
ey were working on an important, prestigious film to feeling as if they were trapped in a doomed, unsalvageable embarrassment.
The good news and bad news turned out to be that the eagerly anticipated drama known as Valley of the Dolls was greeted as an unintentional laugh riot when it debuted on November 14, 1967. It became a cult classic, and it’s probably the film for which Sharon Tate will always be most remembered. She was featured in Esquire, Playboy, and countless movie magazines around the world, and Playboy officially declared 1967 as “the year Sharon Tate happens.”
While Sharon was filming Valley of the Dolls, Polanski was busy shooting his greatest commercial success, Rosemary’s Baby. They reunited in London when their respective films were finished, and on January 20, 1968, the couple the world press had proclaimed as the epitome of “rich hippies” were married, Sharon in a white minidress and Polanski in what was described as “Edwardian finery.” Sharon’s “big hang-up,” as Polanski called it, was his refusal to promise monogamy, but she was utterly devoted to him and was quoted as saying, “We have a good arrangement. Roman lies to me, and I pretend to believe him.”
Back in Los Angeles, Mr. and Mrs. Roman Polanski were celebrated and embraced by a crowd that was diverse, dazzling, and without a doubt the cream of the crop in Hollywood. Sharon in particular loved that their leased house in Beverly Hills was invariably filled with friends, and friends of friends, and everyone felt comfortable, casual, and welcome there.
She went back to work in the summer of 1968 on a Dean Martin film called The Wrecking Crew, was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Newcomer Award, and was deeply appreciative that her career finally seemed to be on the rise. In late 1968 she was ecstatic to learn that she was pregnant, as a result of which, on February 15, 1969, she and Polanski moved into a home Sharon called her “love house,” a place she admired every time she visited her friends Terry Melcher and Candice Bergen there—a private gated property above Beverly Hills in Benedict Canyon at 10050 Cielo Drive.
In March 1969, despite Polanski’s concerns about Sharon traveling during her pregnancy, she left for Italy to film a comedy with the legendary Orson Welles called The Thirteen Chairs, while Polanski headed to London to direct The Day of the Dolphin. In their absence, friends Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger house-sat on Cielo Drive. Sharon visited Polanski in London when she finished work on The Thirteen Chairs, but returned to Los Angeles alone on July 20, 1969. Polanski promised to come home on August 12, in time for the birth of their baby, and asked Frykowski and Folger to stay at the Cielo Drive house with Sharon until then.
On the evening of August 8, 1969, Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, and Wojciech Frykowski went to dinner at the popular El Coyote Restaurant, arriving home at around 10:30 p.m. Their bodies were discovered the next morning by Sharon’s housekeeper, all of them slaughtered in what would become one of the most notorious and horrific crimes of the twentieth century. Charles Manson and his “family” were ultimately tried and convicted of the insanely senseless murders and sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. And to add to the long list of resulting tragedies, the crimes and those who committed them were so sensational and endlessly publicized that the exquisite Sharon Tate became more famous for the way she died than for the kind, sweet, generous, and gifted way she lived. She was buried on August 13 at the Holy Cross Cemetery near Los Angeles, holding her infant son in her arms.
From Francine
Sharon was met on the Other Side by a very short older woman with gray-blonde hair, who I believe is her grandmother, and by throngs from Home and from her twelve past lives. She is as cherished here as she was on earth for being an especially gifted, thoughtful friend, and there was widespread relief at how much at peace Sharon was despite such an obscene end to what she says will be her last incarnation. Her Spirit Guide, Amelia, escorted her to the Scanning Machine, from which she walked away filled with light and understanding about her life and death.
She charted herself to be beautiful and talented enough to acquire fame and the respect of her peers, and to be a substantial enough person to make friends easily and make a strong impact on those who knew her, which served her intended purpose—Sharon Tate is an excellent example of a spirit who never intended to live a long life and who knew that her death would somehow serve a greater good. If she had been less famous and less adored, her death would have been far less widely publicized, determination to solve the murders would not have been so intense, and dozens more lives would have been needlessly taken by the Manson family if Sharon hadn’t been among the victims.
She’s adamant about the fact that if her lifetime had continued, she would have left Roman Polanski. Her prolonged times away from him made her realize that, because she couldn’t trust him as a husband, she could never rely on him to be the kind of father she believed every baby should have. She also realized that as a result of her having been slightly in awe of him, she tended to feel inferior when she was with him, and she was a stronger, healthier, happier woman when they were apart.
Sharon lives with a small group of friends in a green two-story house surrounded by a stand of tall pines. She spends most of her time in the Waiting Room in the Towers, caring for the babies who are about to enter a fetus on earth. She has a calming, reassuring way with them and would have been a wonderful mother. She visits a friend in your dimension named Shirley or Sheila as well as her sister Debbie, and she wants Debbie to know how proud she is of her for carrying on their mother’s work as a victim’s advocate.
She was the first to greet her parents and her sister Patti when they came Home, and the four of them are rarely seen apart, as devoted to each other here as they were during their lifetimes.
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood’s movie career began at the age of four and ended too soon in an accidental drowning when she was forty-three. Her birth name was Natalia Zakharenko, and she was born in San Francisco on July 20, 1938, to Russian immigrants Nikolai Zakharenko, an architect, and his wife, Maria, a ballet dancer. (Natalie’s sister, Svetlana, was born eight years later, in 1946, and became known as Lana Wood, an actress and producer.) Nikolai and Maria changed their surname to Gurdin while Natalie was an infant. The family soon moved north to Santa Rosa, where Maria, determined to make her beautiful four-year-old daughter a star, took Natalie to an audition for “extra” work on a Don Ameche film called Happy Land, which was shooting locally. “Natasha Gurdin” (Natasha is the diminutive of Natalia) was cast in the uncredited role of a little girl who drops her ice cream, which was all the encouragement Maria needed to insist that the family move to Hollywood to pursue her child’s destiny as an actress.
Maria happened to be right. Warner Bros. quickly changed Natasha Gurdin to Natalie Wood and cast the seven-year-old as a German orphan in Tomorrow Is Forever with Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert, which was immediately followed by The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Rex Harrison and directed by the esteemed Joseph Mankiewicz. Next came the classic Miracle on 34th Street, in which she played the little girl who doubted Santa Claus, securing her reputation as the favorite new child star in Hollywood. By the age of sixteen she’d appeared in twenty films, working with some of the biggest names in the business.
Natalie Wood was one of the few child stars who made a graceful transition into the teen years, and at the age of sixteen she was cast in a role that brought her her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress: costarring with up-and-coming superstars James Dean and Sal Mineo in 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause. Eager to reach adulthood offscreen as well, she dated the film’s director, Nicholas Ray, twenty-five years older than she, moving on from him to actor Scott Marlowe and from Marlowe to a rising rock-and-roll star named Elvis Presley. And then along came Robert Wagner.
Natalie told the story that when she was ten years old, she saw the handsome eighteen-year-old actor walking down a hallway at Twentieth Century Fox; she turned to her mother and announced, “I’m going to marry him.” On he
r eighteenth birthday she went on her first date with Robert Wagner, who was twenty-six by then, and they were married on December 28, 1957. They separated in 1961 and were divorced in 1962, but that was far from the end of their story.
Natalie was then cast in The Searchers, a John Ford western starring John Wayne. Natalie still found time to graduate from Van Nuys High School in 1956, which paled in comparison to the Golden Globe Award she won in 1957 that proclaimed her “New Star of the Year (Actress).” After a role in 1958’s Marjorie Morningstar opposite Gene Kelly, Natalie starred in one of her most memorable films, Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass, with the wildly popular Warren Beatty, which earned her a second Academy Award nomination. She established herself as a versatile talent in 1961’s film version of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story and a year later in Gypsy. Her third Oscar nomination came in 1963 for Love with the Proper Stranger opposite heartthrob Steve McQueen.
Her professional life was clearly thriving in the early 1960s, but she was losing her struggle to successfully balance marriage and a career. The strain became worse when her marriage went through a rocky patch, and Natalie filed for divorce. She then found herself in a string of box-office failures and, during the summer of 1966, after slipping into a deep depression, she overdosed on sleeping pills in what she admitted was a failed suicide attempt.
By the time 1969 rolled around she’d not only recovered, but was beginning to thrive again. She starred in the highly acclaimed Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice with Robert Culp, Elliot Gould, and Dyan Cannon, and she married Richard Gregson, a successful British producer and agent, whom she’d dated for two years. Their daughter, Natasha, was born on September 29, 1970, and Natalie seemed to have found the stable family life she’d been looking for since childhood. Sadly, in 1971, she reportedly overheard an inappropriate and unmistakably intimate phone conversation between her husband and her secretary. Feeling doubly betrayed, she fired her secretary and filed for divorce.