Roman Polanski has definitely seen better days.
This photo of the famed director with his stunning wife, Sharon Tate — taken just weeks before she was brutally murdered by the Manson Family — is about to hit the auction block just as Polanski is let out on bail after being jailed for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
A Swiss court decided yesterday that Polanski will be set free on $4.5 million bail but will remain under house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad while the Justice Ministry decides whether to extradite him to Los Angeles to be jailed for a 1977 statutory-rape conviction.
Prosecutors have 10 days to appeal the decision, but said they would likely move before then, meaning Polanski could be freed in a matter of days.
The move comes as Christie’s announced that the photo of Polanski and his actress wife — taken in 1969 by famed London-scene photographer David Bailey — was going up for sale on Dec. 7.
The print — which measures 33 1/4 by 33 inches — is expected to take in between $8,000 to $12,000 at Christie’s final sale of the fall season.
Tate was 8½ months pregnant when followers of Charles Manson broke into her Los Angeles home in August 1969 and murdered her and four others in one of the most shocking crimes in American history. She was just 26.
Polanski — who had become a star director the year before with the thriller “Rosemary’s Baby” — was not home at the time.
Polanski, now 76, later pleaded guilty to plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and Quaaludes and then raping her in 1977. He fled the United States the day he was set to be sentenced and has lived in France ever since.
Swiss authorities unexpectedly arrested him on an international warrant on Sept. 26 when he landed in Zurich to receive a lifetime-achievement award at a film festival.
The director of “Chinatown” and “The Pianist” had been held pending a decision on extradition, and the bail ruling came as a surprise.
“The 76-year-old appellant is married and the father of two minors,” the court said. “It can be assured that as a responsible father, he will, especially in view of his advanced age, attach greater importance to the financial security of his family than a younger person.”
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office had no comment.
Polanski’s sister-in-law, French actress Mathilde Seigner, was elated over the news. “He’s a 76-year-old man — he isn’t 40,” she told Europe 1 radio. “Of course, he wouldn’t escape. It’s absolutely absurd to imagine it.”
When asked about Polanski being tried in the United States, she said, “I think if he has to do it, he has to do it.”