Celebrity, Law and Sensationalism
The Arrest of Roman Polanski
By: Joanna Arcieri
Issue date: 10/8/09 Section: Entertainment
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Polanski was born in 1933 to Polish immigrants in Paris; his family returned to Krakow in 1936 and were forced into the Krakow ghetto in 1939. While Polanski escaped the ghetto in 1943 at the age of 10, his mother was killed in Auschwitz. Beginning in the 1960s, Polanski established himself as a great filmmaker in Poland and France with such films as Knife in the Water (1962). His Hollywood breakthrough came in 1968 with Rosemary's Baby. It was the year after his initial Hollywood success when Polanski's wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant by followers of Charles Manson in 1969. Before Tate's murderers were discovered, the media-at its unbiased best-accused Polanski for the murder, thus establishing Polanski's tense relationship with the media.
Of course no other incident has affected Polanski's life and career than his 1977 arrest and guilty plea for unlawful sex with an underage minor. Judge Laurence Rittenband resided over the case and the trial quickly became more about the media frenzy than actual justice. In the 2008 documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Rittenband is described as a conflicted and sometimes corrupt judge obsessed with maintaining a certain media image. Rittenband would often hold press conference in his chambers to discuss the trials proceedings and kept a scrapbook of his previous celebrity trials. This action only increased the media hype surrounding the Polanski trial, which because of the directors heritage also attracted attention in France and Poland. Soon the trial was not only affecting Polanski's life but the victims, Samantha Geimer as well. Her name was leaked to the press and her family was scrutinized by the media. Geimer has since said: "The judge was enjoying the publicity. He didn't care about me, he didn't care about Polanski. He was orchestrating some little show that I didn't want to be in." When it was decided that Polanski would serve prison time in 1978-in spite of the family's plea that he not be imprisoned and court documents proving that Polanski was not a threat to society-the director left the country and has never returned. Both Roger Gumson, the prosecuting attorney, and Doug Dalton, the defense attorney, admitted that Polanski was treated unfairly by the court and are not surprised he left the country.