Rosemary's Baby

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Rosemary's Baby is a 1967 horror novel by Ira Levin which deals with Rosemary, a housewife in New York City who is a native of Omaha, Nebraska. She was originally Rosemary O'Reilly, and came from a staunchly Catholic, Irish-American family with which she has had little contact since her civil marriage to Guy, a non-practising Protestant and aspiring actor. The film dealt very little with the issue of Rosemary's religion and her family back home, although the subject was given generous treatment in the book.

The novel was a best-seller, and was adapted as a 1968 feature film directed by Roman Polański which starred Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes as the newlywed couple, and Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer as their shifty neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet. Gordon won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film.

This film was Robert Evans' first big hit running Paramount Pictures. He was closely involved in the production, and numerous times had to deal with Mia Farrow's precarious relationship with then-husband Frank Sinatra. Farrow and Sinatra divorced soon after the film was completed.

A sequel titled Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby aired as a made-for-TV movie in 1976 starring Patty Duke as Rosemary Woodhouse, and Ruth Gordon reprising her role of Minnie Castevet.

Another sequel, called Son Of Rosemary written also by Ira Levin was published in 1997. There were rumours that they would shoot this novel too, but it never came to happen, though the book did appear to have been specifically written with the possibility of turning it into a film, in that Cassavetes, Gordon and Blackmer's characters did not appear. (All three actors were deceased at the time of the book's publication.) Levin dedicated this book to Mia Farrow.

[edit] Plot summary

The story follows Rosemary Woodhouse, a somewhat naïve young woman, and her husband Guy, an aspiring actor, after moving into a New York City apartment next door to enthusiastic, oversolicitous neighbors. The couple want to have a baby; on the night they plan to try to conceive, she has dizzy spells and passes out, experiencing a dream or vision that she is being raped by a demonic presence.

A few weeks later, she finds out that she is pregnant. Guy lands a small but noticeable part in a play when the man who was originally cast goes suddenly and inexplicably blind. For the first three months of her pregnancy, Rosemary suffers agonizing abdominal pains, loses weight instead of gaining it, and craves meats such as "blue" steak (barely seared on both sides), and raw chicken liver.

Guy is cast in a sitcom that gets him even more attention, so that a number of film studios are eager to sign him up. Following clues left to her by an older friend, who goes into a coma and dies before revealing the whole story, Rosemary comes to suspect that her neighbors are part of a Satanic cult with designs on her as-yet-unborn child, and that her husband is working with them in exchange for his career advances.

An increasingly disturbed and unstable Rosemary becomes convinced that her neighbors plan to use her child as a sacrifice to Satan. The efforts of her husband and neighbors to dissuade her from this idea are in vain; until the end, where she's revealed to have been almost exactly right.

[edit] Movie trivia

• Polanski originally wanted Robert Redford to play Guy, but Redford was currently filming Downhill Racer (1969). Jack Nicholson had also been briefly considered for the role of Guy. Polanski originally offered the role of Guy to Warren Beatty, but he turned it down saying it wasn't big enough. Burt Reynolds also reportedly turned down the role of Guy (http://www.notstarring.com/movies/rosemary-s-baby).

• It has been rumored that Anton LaVey appears in the film as Satan and was an unofficial technical advisor [1]. According to some sources, this rumor originated when it was discovered that actress Sharon Tate, who was later murdered by the Manson Family, was involved in the films production [2]. LaVey, however, did not play the role of Satan during the rape scene of Rosemary's Baby (in fact it was actor Clay Tanner) and no technical advisor was used.<ref>"Imdb Entry Clay Tanner"</ref><ref>"The Church of Satan by Micheal Aquino p. 17"</ref><ref>"Imdb entry for Anton Lavey"</ref><ref>"Imdb Entry "Rosemary's Baby" ".</ref><ref>Castle, William "Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants off America"</ref>

• Jane Fonda was offered the role of Rosemary but turned it down to film Barbarella (1968) in Europe. Tuesday Weld was second choice (and Polanski's preference) but refused to test for the role (http://www.notstarring.com/movies/rosemary-s-baby).

• In the movie, Rosemary meets a neighbor, Terry Gionoffrio, in the laundry room. She stares at her and then apologizes saying, "I thought you were Victoria Vetri, the actress." Terry responds by saying, "a lot of people think I'm Victoria, but I don't see the resemblance." In fact, the actress who played Terry is Victoria Vetri (credited as Angela Dorian), the actress and 1968 Playmate of the Year. This scene is described as "one of the in-jokes of the movie" (http://www.filmsite.org/rosem.html).

• Tony Curtis played the voice part of Don Baumgard, when Rosemary calls him on the phone to inquire about his condition. Reportedly, Mia Farrow did not know that the actor on the phone was her good friend Tony Curtis. Polanski wanted it to be kept secret from her so as to enhance the impression in the scene of Rosemary's confusion. In the scene, Mia Farrow truly shows confusion, as she tries to recall why the voice on the phone sounds so familiar.

• The use of the color red, possibly symbolizing The Devil weaves itself throughout the story-- Among the examples are the various red clothes of the Castevets, the red pen Rosemary uses to mark the calendar, the red wine offered to the couple by the Castevets, Hutch taking out a red handkerchief after discussing the tannis root and Guy entering the room where wearing a red scarf (just after Rosemary mentions his closeness with the Castevets), and Rosemary wearing a red pajama set the night she is drugged by her husband and raped by the devil.

• Some make comparisons of the film's satanic cult elements to the true-life torture and murder of Sharon Tate (Polanski's wife) by the Charles Manson cult followers, just one year after the movie's release. [3] Tate, who was pregnant at the time of her murder, was two weeks away from her due date.

• Maurice Evans played Rosemary's concerned friend "Hutch" who is hexed and murdered by the coven. Evans played Samantha's warlock father on the TV sitcom Bewitched. The sitcom would make several coy references in 1968-1969 to Rosemary's Baby as a new movie about witches "which show us as quite evil" (http://www.harpiesbizarre.com/reversereferences.htm).

• Outside shots of the movie's Bramford apartment building were in fact The Dakota, the future home of Mia Farrow's friend John Lennon, and his wife and son, Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. Ironically, the Manson Family had named their murder spree "Helter Skelter", after the song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Beatles song "Dear Prudence", which, like "Helter Skelter", was also a track on the Beatles' White Album, was written about actress Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence. Twelve years after the release of Rosemary's Baby, John Lennon was assassinated outside The Dakota. The spot where Lennon was killed--the front entrance tunnel of the building--is shown in several shots.

• Alfred Hitchcock was the first choice to direct this film. Producer William Castle assumed the film would be right up his alley as it contained elements that routinely appear in his prodcutions - a thriller film concerning paranoia, claustrophobia, and a blond damsel in distress ^{[citation needed]}. But Hitchcock was a devout Catholic, and was appalled at the blasphemous nature of the story and refused to have anything to do with it. Roman Polanski almost declined making the film as well since, when he was unfamiliar with the story when he began reading the script, and was puzzled why they sent him such a "pedestrian soap opera" project to him ^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] References

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[edit] Editions

• ISBN 1-56849-065-8 (library binding, 1991)
• ISBN 1-56865-470-7 (hardcover, 1997)
• ISBN 0-451-19400-4 (mass market paperback, 1997)
• ISBN 0-451-21051-4 (paperback, 2003)
• ISBN 3-926048-30-1 (hardcover)

[edit] External links

• Rosemary's Baby at the Internet Movie Database
• Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby at the Internet Movie Database

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