Sharon Tate hitchhikes to Los Angeles

Sharon Tate hitchhikes to Los Angeles in a flashback that turns a chance ride out of Dallas into an origin story for her acting ambition. The encounter is brief, but its delayed payoff gives the roadside exchange unusual weight: Ace Woody’s prediction that she might act opposite Tony Curtis becomes a greeting she eventually delivers to Curtis himself.

The Road Out of Dallas

The scene is set outside Dallas, Texas, four years before the later events of the book. A rodeo cowboy driving a dirty white 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, with a horse trailer behind it and a dusty brown horse inside, spots a young woman hitchhiking on the highway. She is Sharon Tate, though the passage initially presents her as a blonde traveler. Her pink T-shirt, miniskirt, bare legs and feet, large white sun hat, and canvas duffel bag make her conspicuous against the road; the cowboy sees her well before he reaches her and pulls over.

The first exchange establishes both the practical circumstance and the distance ahead. The cowboy asks whether she needs a ride, and Sharon says she does. He turns down Merle Haggard singing about Tulare Dust and asks where she is going. Her answer is California. The cowboy points out that it is a long way, while Sharon acknowledges the distance and asks him to help her get there. At this stage she does not give him her full reason for traveling west. The scene lets the destination arrive before the ambition behind it.

A Six-Hour Conversation

The ride lasts about six hours. Once she is comfortable with the cowboy, Sharon explains that she is going to Los Angeles to become an actress and work in movies, or at least television. She had held back because the dream seemed clichéd and implausibly grand coming from a Texas beauty-pageant winner; she knew that other people might regard it as foolish, and her father already did.

Ace Woody does not share that judgment. He argues that someone as good-looking as Sharon would be foolish not to try for a career in pictures, and tells her he likes her chances. He distinguishes her prospects from those of his cousin Sherry, whom he imagines trying to become the next Sophia Loren: to him, Sharon’s own ambition does not seem like a fantasy. He even pictures her acting opposite Tony Curtis. His confidence is not presented as a professional guarantee, but as an immediate, personal vote of faith from a stranger who has listened to her explain what she wants.

The Parting and Its Payoff

When the ride ends, Sharon does not wait for Ace to offer her the back seat as a place to sleep. She retrieves her duffel bag and hugs him goodbye. He watches her walk away barefoot into the dark. Just before she is out of earshot, he calls after her with a final reminder: “‘member what I said—when you’re actin’ opposite Tony Curtis, you tell ’em hello for me.” Sharon turns and calls back, “Sure thing, Ace, see ya in the movies,” then waves and continues on her way.

The narrative later closes the loop. When Sharon makes her motion-picture debut opposite Tony Curtis in the comedy Don’t Make Waves, she tells Curtis, “Ace Woody says hello.” The remembered greeting converts the cowboy’s casual prediction into something concrete: Sharon has reached the screen role he imagined, and she carries their roadside encounter into her new professional world. The payoff is modest rather than a claim that Ace caused her success; what the scene establishes is that his encouragement mattered enough for her to remember and pass along.

Ambition and the Book’s Hollywood

The flashback gives Sharon’s career a beginning grounded not in a studio office but in a long ride, a stated ambition, and a stranger’s response. Her hesitation reflects the gap between wanting a screen career and fearing that the desire itself will sound naïve. Ace’s encouragement does not erase that uncertainty; it answers it directly, treating her aspiration as worth attempting. The later greeting gives the scene its narrative shape: a prediction is made, the traveler departs, and a film debut years later returns the words to their intended recipient.

Set beside Rick Dalton’s career story, Sharon’s episode also offers a distinct view of Hollywood’s changing fortunes. Rick feels the sting of Marvin Schwarz’s blunt account of his declining prospects, and later studies his altered appearance as Caleb DeCoteau, recognizing the industry’s newer style and Marvin’s description of him as an Eisenhower-era actor in a Dennis Hopper Hollywood. Much later, Rick tells Trudi Frazer that actors are lucky, recalling the work, colleagues, travel, and life his career has brought him. Sharon’s roadside scene does not resolve Rick’s anxieties or directly intersect with his story; instead, it supplies a contrasting strand in the book’s portrait of acting. It shows a young woman approaching the industry with a hope she is embarrassed to disclose, and a small moment of encouragement that survives long enough to be spoken again on a film set.