TASTEARBITER
W H E N T H E E Y E K N O W S
HATAMI
As I waited for a table, I noticed a slightly disheveled elderly man slumped in a chair. He was dressed in a well-loved cardigan, dark pants, and the kind of medical shoes with velcro straps that diabetics wear to protect their sensitive feet. He appeared to be the stereotypical Bohemian type. He wasn’t wearing a beret but he could have been. Perhaps he was a poet or a former art history or philosophy professor at the Sorbonne. He was looking down at his sad shoes and was clearly the source of great consternation for two middle-aged garçons who were alternately arguing loudly with each other and yelling into the telephone. Was the old man waiting for a taxi or had he fallen ill during dinner and waiting for paramedics to arrive?
As I was seated at a table directly across from him, I was given a front row seat to the incident unfolding before me. A woman dining alone at an adjacent table had also been watching the proceedings with a worried look on her face. When the waiter came to take my order, I asked him what was happening. He explained the old man couldn’t pay his tab.
He had apparently claimed that someone would come and take care of it for him but since that had not transpired in a timely fashion, the restaurant had called the police. I was shocked at the prospect of witnessing this older man be taken away by the police so I accosted the garçon and offered to look after his tab. He reluctantly accepted my offer as the amount was quite considerable and he somewhat gave me the impression that I had just been fooled by a con artist.
I decided to approach the older man and sat next to him. He thanked me for my kindness and generosity. I told him it was a pleasure of mine. He said that he was a photographer. He said his name was Hatami and he had photographed multiple celebrities throughout his career including the Beatles, Coco Chanel, Steve McQueen and Sharon Tate. Not only was he a close personal friend of Tate but he also was her personal photographer responsible for numerous photo shoots.
On March the 23rd 1969, Shahrokh Hatami happened to be at Sharon Tate's home on Cielo Drive when Charles Manson knocked on the door looking for Terry Melcher, a music producer associated with the Beach Boys at the time. Hatami opened the door and came face to face with Manson while Tate was sitting in her living room. Hatami explained that Melcher had moved out and that he was no longer living in the house which was now occupied by Tate and her husband, film director Roman Polanski. Less than five months later, Sharon Tate would be brutally murdered by Manson's followers. Having seen him that fateful day, Hatami had later become a crucial witness for the prosecution, helping to identify Manson at trial.
After Hatami left the restaurant and being back at my table, the waiter came by and asked if I was ready to order. I told the waiter the older man was a famous photographer with an illustrious career. Seemingly unmoved and unimpressed by this revelation, the waiter who had tried to discourage me to help Hatami quietly said; “you know, Roman Polanski comes here all the time". Shahrokh Hatami passed away in November 2017, he was 89.
