Polanski's Victory Over "Vanity"

Fri., Jul. 22, 2005 9:45 AM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Roman Polanski may have been promiscuous in his past, but he's by no means "tasteless and vulgar."

The legendary director won his libel suit against the publishers of Vanity Fair when a jury ruled Friday that the magazine was in the wrong when it printed a salacious story accusing him of trying to seduce a young model while on the way to the funeral of his murdered wife, Sharon Tate.

The panel, composed of nine men and three women who deliberated for up to four and a half hours before reaching their unanimous verdict, awarded Polanski nearly $90,000 in damages, plus legal fees, in London's High Court.

"It goes without saying that, whilst the whole episode is a sad one, I am obviously pleased with the jury's verdict today," the Polish-born filmmaker said in a statement.

The victory came despite the best efforts of defense attorneys to paint Polanski as a "fugitive from morality." The magazine's lawyers also claimed Polanksi "had no reputation to defend."

The Chinatown helmer sued Vanity Fair and its parent company, Cond? Nast, for a July 2002 piece that quoted an editor of Harper's magazine as saying Polanski made "tasteless and vulgar" sexual advances toward Scandinavian beauty Beatte Telle at Elaine's restaurant in New York in August 1969, just days after the eight-months-pregnant Tate and four of her friends were murdered by the Manson family.

The trial turned on the magazine's concession that it had the date wrong for the supposed seduction and that it did not occur during Polanski's brief stopover in New York as he returned from London to California for Tate's burial. The admission came after Polanski's lawyer, with the help of some testimony by Mia Farrow (who starred in his 1968 horror classic Rosemary's Baby), proved the auteur didn't dine at Elaine's until three weeks later.

Polanski, 71, testified via satellite from his home in Paris Monday that he was in "a state of shock" after reading the tawdry allegations.

An unprecedented ruling by England's highest court permitted him to beam in his testimony to Britain in order to avoid being extradited to the U.S. on a decades-old rape charge.