Polanski's 1969 romancing was 'vulgar' says editor

Roman Polanski

LONDON - 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.

Lewis Lapham, editor of US 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.

- REUTERS