Roman Polanski sexual-assault case

The Roman Polanski sexual-assault case appears in the diaries not as a sustained account but in two sharply different social settings: first as a newspaper headline reporting an arrest, then as a passing reference at an Oscars gathering, where Polanski was described as out on bail. Together, the entries place a serious criminal case inside Warhol’s rapid, selective record of current events and celebrity encounters.

The headline and arrest

On March 12, 1977, Warhol recorded that Bob Colacello was at the office looking through photographs for their photo book when Vincent Fremont brought in the newspaper. Its headline announced that a movie director had been charged with rape. Warhol identified the director as Roman Polanski and noted the allegation involved a thirteen-year-old girl whom Polanski had taken to a party at Jack Nicholson’s house.

Warhol’s account continued with the reported sequence that the girl’s parents contacted police the following day and officers searched Nicholson’s house. The entry also says Anjelica was arrested for cocaine. The diary gives no further detail about the investigation or the case’s legal proceedings; its focus is the news as it arrived in the office and the events connected to the party.

A later reference at the Oscars

At a later Academy Awards gathering, the case returned in a brief update: Polanski was present and, as Warhol put it, out on bail. The entry places this mention among observations about guests, awards, and Hollywood relationships, rather than treating it as a separate discussion of the allegations or their aftermath.

The surrounding notes include Brenda Vaccaro’s distress at seeing her former fiancé Michael Douglas with his new wife, and Warhol’s comment on the age difference he perceived in some Hollywood marriages. Within that busy social register, the Polanski case surfaces as an unresolved legal circumstance carried into a public celebrity gathering.

The diary’s treatment of the case

The two entries offer different kinds of information. The March report preserves the newspaper headline, the allegation’s basic circumstances, and the arrests Warhol associated with the police search. The later entry supplies only the status that Polanski was out on bail. Neither passage develops the case beyond those observations, and the diaries do not provide an outcome.

That brevity is part of the record’s form: the case appears alongside office business, headlines, entertainment news, and social encounters. Its recurrence links a news report to a later appearance in Hollywood society, without converting Warhol’s diary into a full account of the legal case.