Jay Sebring... Cutting to the Truth: A tribute to a forgotten "name" Manson victim, and an indictment of media frenzy

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-plus

Pop quiz: Name one other person besides Sharon Tate who was murdered by the Manson family at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles on August 9, 1969.

Anthony DiMaria, director of the copiously well-documented and archived Jay Sebring… Cutting to the Truth, begins with a collection of screaming headlines from the event that marked the end of the ‘60s to some. Repeatedly, the words “Sharon Tate and four others…” pop up. 

Jay Sebring (Sebring Family Collection/1010 Films)

In fact, the ground-breaking Hollywood men’s hair stylist Sebring, DiMaria’s uncle, was one of the “others” (the other “others” being coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Polish filmmaker Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent, a teenager who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time).

Why the murder of a beautiful, pregnant starlet (married to “name” director Roman Polanski) would be the “hook” for the coverage, is not exactly a mystery. But the unfortunately named Cutting to the Truth makes a case that, in real terms of Hollywood influence and potential, Sebring was the “name” victim in the massacre.

Indeed, if Quentin Tarantino had extrapolated beyond the events in his movie, he’d have had to show us an eventual billion-dollar men’s hair styling empire with Sebring’s imprimatur. (Tarantino appears in Cutting to the Truth almost as an afterthought, touting Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood as a rare cinematic attempt to present the victims as real people).

Somebody else will have to make the Abigail Folger story. But DiMaria, familial bias notwithstanding, does a good job of showing just how important Sebring was in Hollywood as the “stylist to the male stars” (which included Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda and Jim Morrison), “men’s hair stylist” being a profession that essentially didn’t exist before him. It’s rumoured he was the template for Warren Beatty’s bed-hopping hair-stylist in Shampoo (though Beatty refused to comment for this doc).

Sebring and client Bobby Darin (Sebring Family Collection/1010 Films)

Seldom veering far from the events in 1969, Cutting to the Truth tells the story of a willful, undersized teen from Alabama named Tom Kummer, who lied his way into the Navy in the ‘50s, was just as rebellious there as at home, and was inspired by the boring Navy haircuts to create a “look” for men that he could sell with pure chutzpah (and the help of then-celebs like Vic Damone who spread the word via compliments on their haircut).

He was the subject of newspaper and magazine articles as “the guy who gave $100 haircuts,” had walk-ons in shows like Batman, appeared on panel shows like To Tell the Truth. 

And by the time of his murder, “Sebring” was a pioneering brand of franchises and hair products in an industry that would someday be worth billions. The doc wraps itself around a sales-pitch film for investors that Sebring had recently made with Peter Lawford.

But Jay Sebring… Cutting to the Truth works on a level beyond simply the director giving props to his all-but-forgotten uncle. Its more visceral message is that, “the dead have no rights.” Well before Manson was named and arrested, the media of the time had only the victims to put on trial. Sebring’s finances were put under scrutiny, with suggestions (in reputable publications) that he was in debt to the mob and was the real target of the killers. His sex life was on trial. 

And there was the real-life soap opera of his past and then-present relationship with Tate, who’d married Polanski on the apparent rebound.

DiMaria is a man on a mission with old clippings, taking lurid passages from news articles (including Time magazine) and debunking them with official autopsy reports and such. In one scene, he shocks Quincy Jones (a onetime Sebring client) by showing him officially that none of the stuff he’d believed about his old stylist was true.

Clearly, this is a cause that has consumed DiMaria for years. He appeared at Manson’s parole hearings before the killer’s death in 2017 and had been interviewed himself many times. And some of the interviews are with people who have since passed – including Damone (2018), Dennis Hopper (2010), Dominick Dunne (2009) and Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (2015), the latter of whom is heard on a recorded message declining to take part in the documentary.

But DiMaria is true to his conviction that the Manson family were turned into “rock stars” while the victims were forgotten. He gives Charlie and company as little screen-time as possible, while creating his tribute and fleshing out the scene and people that were there on that infamous night. 

Jay Sebring… Cutting to the Truth. Directed by Anthony DiMaria. Starring Jay Sebring, Vic Damone, Quincy Jones. Available on demand on Tuesday, Sept. 22.