PART IV.
Chapter 13.
The Celebrity Strategy.
MORE THAN FIFTEEN years since the death of Lisa McPherson and over seventeen since Scientology won tax exemption, the church"s embattled legal history seems, at least on the surface, a thing of the past. Most people today do not think of scandal when they think of Scientology; they think of celebrities, and this is the fruit of a carefully plotted marketing and PR strategy. Compared with all the other tactics the church has tried (many of them eventually abandoned), this one has reaped lasting, even unparalleled success.
Recruiting the famous has long been a central strategy of the Church of Scientology, dating back more than half a century to a program known as Project Celebrity, which Hubbard launched in 1955 with the specific aim of converting luminaries in the arts, sports, management, and government-people he dubbed "Opinion Leaders"-in hopes that they"d become disseminators of church doctrine. As he stated in Scientology"s Ability magazine, "There are many to whom America and the world listens. It is obvious what would happen to Scientology if prime communicators benefiting from it were to mention it now and then."
Hubbard drew up a list of high-profile targets, urging Scientologists to choose one of them as their "quarry." They included Ernest Hemingway, Edward R. Murrow, Marlene Dietrich, Howard Hughes, Pablo Pica.s.so, Greta Garbo, Jackie Gleason, Cecil B. De Mille, and the publisher of Time magazine, Henry Luce, among others. Hubbard issued precise instructions: "Having been awarded one of these celebrities, it will be up to you to learn what you can about your quarry and then put yourself at every hand across his or her path." And he implied that it wouldn"t be easy, since the celebrities were "well guarded, well barricaded, over-worked, aloof quarry." But if Scientologists succeeded in bringing one in for an auditing session, Hubbard promised, they would be rewarded with a small plaque.
No one on Hubbard"s original list ever became a Scientologist. But his hopes of drawing in high-profile members never waned. By the late 1960s, with Scientology controversial in both the United States and abroad, Hubbard began to refine Scientology"s appeal to the elite by opening special churches, known as Celebrity Centres, to cater to artists and other prominent individuals, as well as their friends, family, and any other members of their entourage. In 1969, Yvonne Gilham, one of Hubbard"s top Sea Org lieutenants, came to Los Angeles to open the first Celebrity Centre in a former appliance store on West Eighth Street, near MacArthur Park. The small organization hosted c.o.c.ktail parties, open mike nights, and poetry readings, and though it was located in a seedy part of town, it soon became a fashionable hangout for artsy Scientologists and their friends. "It was as close to a bohemian Scientology center as you could imagine," said Nancy Many"s husband, Chris, a former Scientology executive who began working at Celebrity Centre in 1970. "None of the staff wore uniforms; everyone had long hair. It had that hippie vibe that people responded to at the time."
It helped that Hubbard made a direct appeal to artists, whom he described as "a cut above" ordinary people; an artist was "a higher being who builds new worlds," as he wrote in his book The Science of Survival. They were "rebels against the status quo" who could, with the right enhancement, accomplish "peaceful revolution." Before long, said Chris Many, Celebrity Centre became the most successful org in Los Angeles, with hundreds of staff and several thousand people enrolled in courses and auditing.
Gilham, an Australian with irrepressible charm, had a unique talent for hooking new members by way of a method some former Scientologists called "admiration bombing": she showered church initiates with such overwhelming praise and attention that they couldn"t help but come back for more. This fawning worked particularly well with the two celebrity groups that L. Ron Hubbard wished to target: first, up-and-coming young actors and other artists who were battling insecurity as they attempted to make a career in Hollywood, and second, established, if somewhat faded, stars who were hoping to rejuvenate their reputation. Both groups could in turn reach out to their friends in the entertainment business, helping to brand Scientology not only as the "Now Religion," the image the church cultivated in the late 1960s, but also as a ticket into the rarefied world of Hollywood.
One struggling young actor drawn into Scientology in the late 1960s was Bobby Lipton, the brother of Peggy Lipton, an actor who was then starring in the hit TV series The Mod Squad. Though he was not a celebrity, Lipton, as he later told Premiere magazine, basked in a certain "reflected glory" at Celebrity Centre because he had a famous sibling. Meanwhile, he struggled to afford the price of Scientology"s services. To help defray the cost, Lipton agreed to proselytize among other actors, including his sister, whom he ultimately brought into the fold.
Peggy Lipton tried to interest her boyfriend, Elvis Presley, in Scientology, according to one of Presley"s a.s.sociates, Lamar Fike. "One day, in L.A., we got into the limousine and went down to the Scientology center on Sunset, and Elvis went in and talked to them," Fike later recalled. "Apparently they started doing all these charts and c.r.a.p for him. Elvis came out and said, "f.u.c.k those people! There"s no way I"ll ever get involved with that son-of-a-b.i.t.c.hin" group. All they want is my money."" Though Lipton stayed in the group for a number of years, Presley, said Fike, "stayed away from Scientology like it was a cobra."
But many others in Hollywood were curious. Scientology, a fundamentally narcissistic philosophy that demonizes doubt and insecurity as products of the "reactive mind," is a belief system tailor-made for actors. The Training Routines that are part of early Scientology indoctrination have been compared to acting exercises: students are taught to "duplicate," or mirror, a partner"s actions; project their "intention," or thoughts, onto inanimate objects; experiment with vocal tones, the most dominant being a commanding bark known as "tone 40"; and deepen their ability to "be in their bodies" without reacting to outside stimuli. In auditing, Scientologists re-create scenes from past lives. Some processes focus directly on members "mocking up," or visualizing themselves, in different scenarios.
Scores of famous, once-famous, and soon-to-be famous people drifted through Scientology in the late 1960s and 1970s, among them Candice Bergen, Rock Hudson, Leonard Cohen, writer William"S. Burroughs, the screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Van Morrison, and Carly Simon, as well as the future Top Gun producer Don Simpson and the still-undiscovered Oliver Stone. "That"s the sign," the church noted in an issue of The Auditor magazine. "Remember twenty years ago when artists were taking up psychoa.n.a.lysis? It"s always the beginning of the big win when celebrities-song-writers, actors, artists, writers, begin to take something up."
Most artists dabbled only briefly in Scientology: Rock Hudson reportedly had a single unsuccessful auditing session. Others spent a significant amount of money on courses and auditing before opting out. Don Simpson, for example, said in a 1993 interview that he"d invested $25,000 in Scientology in the 1970s before he realized that, though nearly Clear, he"d seen very little improvement in his life. "At that point, I realized it was a con," he said.
Yet there were others who embraced Scientology. The jazz musician Chick Corea, who joined the Church of Scientology in the late 1960s, referred to L. Ron Hubbard as an "inspiration" and claimed that Scientology was a major influence on his music. Karen Black, an Academy Awardnominated actress who starred in such films as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, maintained that Scientology helped her portray characters more authentically.
But Scientology"s biggest catch of the 1970s was John Travolta, who was just twenty-one when he joined the church in 1974. Newly arrived in Los Angeles, he was in many ways the ideal quarry: sensitive, naive (a mediocre student, Travolta left high school after tenth grade), and p.r.o.ne to frequent bouts of depression. He"d been given a copy of Dianetics while shooting his first movie, The Devil"s Rain. Soon after, he paid a visit to Celebrity Centre.
There, like many initiates before him, Travolta found a ready-made community. He also found guidance, in the form of officials like Chris Many, who counseled the actor during the early stages of his career. "We"d talk about film and TV and what he wanted to do next, and how Scientology could help him achieve his goals," Many recalled. Travolta would later credit Hubbard"s techniques with helping him overcome his crippling fear of rejection. "My career immediately took off," the actor wrote in a personal "success story" published in the book What Is Scientology?
But Travolta was cautious when it came to promoting Scientology in the broad way that L. Ron Hubbard had envisioned. "I talk about it when it"s appropriate," the actor told the writer Cameron Crowe in a 1977 interview, adding that he realized that many people got "upset" by the idea of Scientology. "Only if [people] ask me, do I talk about it."
And it wasn"t just Travolta who was reticent. "There was a lot of skittishness among the celebrities to talk about Scientology," said Many, who became the captain, or executive director, of Celebrity Centre in the mid-1970s. "That was really the great irony in all of this. Hubbard"s whole idea was to help artists become more successful and influential so they"d disseminate Scientology on a wide scale. But since Scientology was looked at as a cult at this time, there was a lot of concern, particularly among actors, that being vocal about Scientology might have a negative impact on their careers."
Celebrities did prove willing to promote Scientology"s social agenda, however, which could often be done without ever mentioning the church. The use of social reform groups to spread L. Ron Hubbard"s ideas had long been an integral part of Scientology, and was in fact one of the original objectives of the Guardian"s Office. Since the late 1960s, the church has disseminated its philosophy through a number of organizations with hidden ties to Scientology, notably Narconon, a program that treats drug addiction and promotes Hubbard"s holistic detoxification regimen, the Purification Rundown.
Created in 1966 by William C. Benitez, a former inmate at Arizona State Prison, Narconon was intended to help people break addictions without the use of alternative drugs like methadone. Benitez had reached out to Hubbard after reading his book The Fundamentals of Thought, and in 1970 the founder of Scientology helped incorporate Narconon as an organization that would use his purification program in the secular world. Over time, it would also a.s.similate core elements of Scientology teaching, including study technology, the TRs (Training Routines), and Hubbardian "ethics."
By the late 1970s, the Narconon program was being implemented in prisons across the United States, and a number of drug treatment centers had opened in the United States and abroad to administer it. Narconon was headquartered in Los Angeles, where it won the support of celebrity Scientologists, notably the former professional tennis player Cathy Lee Crosby, best known as the blonde co-host of a popular TV stunt show, That"s Incredible!
In the fall of 1980, Crosby, an adamant anti-drug crusader, appeared before the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control to decry Americans" increasing reliance on chemical substances of all sorts. Without mentioning their Scientology connection, she extolled the virtues of Narconon and the Purification Rundown. "I did the program myself," she boasted, admitting that she"d once been a "dabbler" in drugs but had quit, with the help of the Purification Rundown. "It was so fantastic, I wanted to get it out into the world."
A few weeks after she delivered this testimony, Crosby"s friend Robert Evans, the former head of Paramount Pictures, pleaded guilty in a New York federal court for cocaine possession. In lieu of prison, Judge Vincent Broderick sentenced Evans, the producer of films like Chinatown and The G.o.dfather, to one year"s probation and added a provision whereby his criminal record would be expunged if Evans used his "unique talents" to create a sixty-second TV spot, to be aired within a year, that would discourage young people from using drugs.
Crosby suggested a campaign called "Get High on Yourself," which would enlist a diverse group of celebrities to appear in various ads as so-called drug-free heroes. This concept was a public relations cornerstone of Narconon, which Crosby and her manager, a former Celebrity Centre employee named Kathy Wa.s.serman, had made their pet project.
Evans latched onto Crosby"s idea and set about planning the spots, which would feature prominent people talking "about the pleasure, and glamour, of life on a natural high," as Time magazine later described the ads. Among the dozens of celebrities recruited to sing the "Get High on Yourself" jingle-in pop, rock, country, and gospel versions-were Paul Newman, Bob Hope, Cheryl Tiegs, Bruce Jenner, Carol Burnett, Magic Johnson, Ted Nugent, Burt Reynolds, Muhammad Ali, and John Travolta. Only a few, like Crosby and Travolta, were Scientologists. But Scientologists were integral to the spots, which were taped in one six-hour session, serving as go-fers and a.s.sistants to the stars who took part in the campaign.
This strategy had always been part of the plan, said Nancy Many, who was then president of Celebrity Centre, working in tandem with her husband. One of her functions was to help identify and meet high-profile targets and strategize ways to bring them into the church, often with the help of fellow members. "The lower-level celebs, people like Cathy Lee Crosby, always knew the higher-level celebs, which is why people who were not big stars in real life became very important to Scientology," Many said.
Once a target had been identified, staffers would research the person to pinpoint his or her "ruin," then, based on this knowledge, they customized an approach. They might also drill the Scientologist friend or family member on how best to make the pitch to the star. The goal, said Many, was not always to convert the A-list star, but simply to "safe-point" him or her, which would be helpful as Scientology was so often a target of criticism or ridicule. Quite a bit could be accomplished simply by having a Scientologist work for a celebrity, she said, noting that the powerful talent agent Sue Mengers once had a Scientologist working on her staff, as did several other agents and managers in Hollywood.
This was the subtle approach that Scientologists used at the taping session for "Get High on Yourself," where "every single celebrity was a.s.signed a Scientologist," said Many, who was in attendance. "They didn"t know we were Scientologists, and I don"t think Bob Evans ever knew we were Scientologists. They were told we were volunteers who came in to help out and make sure the celebrities had what they needed." No one bothered to ask where the volunteers came from. "This was like a meet-and-greet for mega A-listers. They were so busy talking to one another, they didn"t even notice."
Many"s designated celebrity was the actor Henry Winkler, a star of TV"s Happy Days. Over the course of the day, she served as his stand-in, fetched him coffee, and chatted him up. The idea was not to disseminate (the Scientology term for proselytize), she said, but simply to get to know the celebrity. This covert approach didn"t yield much-Winkler had brought his son to the taping, and the two spent most of their time hunting down sports stars to get autographs.
Nonetheless, she felt confident that if she ever met Winkler at a party-a "chance meeting" she would set up beforehand, through the efforts of an acquaintance of Winkler"s-the actor would remember her. "From there, you could start a conversation. It might take a few meetings, but the goal was to gradually get the celebrity to talk with you and then feel safe enough to really start opening up to you," she said. "At that point you"d be able to find the person"s ruin and make the case that Scientology could help."
Evans" sixty-second commercial led to what he described as "the largest anti-drug media blitz in television history." Airing in September 1981 on NBC, the spots became part of a network-sponsored "Get High on Yourself Week," during which the television commercials were broadcast every hour during prime time.
Having used the stars to get the message out, Crosby and her manager, Wa.s.serman, created the Get High on Yourself Foundation to raise money for the prevention of drug abuse. Over the next year, the foundation reportedly raised $6 million through various fundraising events, though where the money went was never made clear. Narconon was a distinct possibility, however, as by 1982, some of the same "drug-free heroes" who"d promoted "Get High on Yourself," including Henry Winkler, were now unwittingly promoting Narconon through partic.i.p.ation in celebrity softball games and other events that Crosby and Wa.s.serman helped organize, sponsored by a Beverly Hills group called Friends of Narconon.*
Robert Evans did no more promotion but later described "Get High on Yourself" as one of the singular accomplishments of his career. "To this day," said Nancy Many, "I don"t think anyone knows that Scientology had anything to do with that campaign."
The unsuspecting recruitment of the non-Scientologist Robert Evans by the Scientologist Cathy Lee Crosby in order to promote a keystone of Scientology"s agenda was a perfect example of L. Ron Hubbard"s strategy in practice. David Miscavige would also embrace this approach, and celebrities like Tom Cruise would later have a profound effect on non-Scientologists like Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, who started a private school in Los Angeles that employed Hubbard"s study technology.
But Miscavige had far grander plans for his celebrity members, whom he saw less as high-value trophies than as weapons to be deployed when needed to sh.o.r.e up Scientology"s image and draw attention away from any negative church story or scandal. "Dave didn"t like to keep them in the closet," said one former church senior executive. "His view was that celebrities should be out there, proselytizing. And if you didn"t talk, you were betraying the cause."
Miscavige himself was a relentless promoter, cooler and less eccentric than L. Ron Hubbard; not as managerially gifted, he was far more adept at generating buzz. Under his leadership, Scientology"s brand would become flashier, if in some ways less substantive, abandoning long-term advertising and PR strategies like the television ads (which Miscavige deemed too expensive) for the book Dianetics in favor of more elaborate schemes: the church tried to promote Hubbard"s book by sponsoring a Formula One racecar, for example, a venture that caused a minor scandal when the car"s driver, Mario Andretti, said he was upset with the Scientologists for plastering his car with the Dianetics logo without his permission. The church also became a sponsor of Ted Turner"s Goodwill Games in Seattle, joining such mega corporations as Sony and Pepsi. Scientologists also turned some twenty books by L. Ron Hubbard into bestsellers between 1985 and 1990, reportedly showing up en ma.s.se at major booksellers like B. Dalton and leaving with armloads of purchases.
But no branding strategy worked as well as having celebrity sponsors, and to nurture these valuable a.s.sets, Miscavige elevated them to a position far above any other members of the church. This didn"t sit well with many Sea Org members, like the Manys, who left Celebrity Centre, and later the Sea Org, around 1982 to become public Scientologists.
"When Hubbard was still running the church, celebrities were parishioners and the Sea Org members were the elite," explained Nancy Many. Now it was the celebrities who were put on a pedestal and given top-flight auditors and other perks previously unheard of in the church. Travolta"s auditors, for example, were on call to fly to the set of any movie he was shooting. If he or another well-known celebrity was sick, auditors trained in a special healing technique called a "touch a.s.sist" would be summoned to his or her home. In later years, celebrities needing a driver, or a nanny, could find one through Celebrity Centre, which, upon request, acted as an unofficial human resources department, placing upstanding Scientologists from Los Angeles in the employment of high-profile members who requested such a.s.sistance. Celebrities were afforded a special entrance into Celebrity Centre, a private VIP lounge, and special auditing and course rooms far away from the rank and file. "We gave them Scientology on a silver platter, and in exchange, we wanted their undying loyalty and love, and only glowing words when they talked about Scientology," said Karen Pressley, who replaced Chris Many as commanding officer of Celebrity Centre. "They were absolutely expected to get out in the media and say something positive, particularly if there was bad press around Scientology."
But this approach evolved over time. In the beginning, Miscavige was more concerned with simply retaining Scientology"s high-profile members. Put off by the scandals and lawsuits, not to mention the purges of the early 1980s, artists, as well as ordinary members, had begun to drift away. One them was John Travolta, who in an August 1983 interview with Rolling Stone admitted that although he continued to find Hubbard"s teachings "pretty brilliant," he had not had any auditing in over a year. "I don"t agree with the way the organization is being run," he said, pointedly taking aim at Scientology"s new leaders.
For the ascendant David Miscavige, John Travolta, if not quite heretical for his unscripted comments, was dramatically "off-Source"-the most severe judgment the hierarchy could make against an individual, just short of declaring a person suppressive. And yet, losing Travolta would have been profoundly embarra.s.sing for Scientology, particularly since the church had used the actor as part of its internal promotion machine (sometimes without Travolta"s full cooperation) for years: reproducing his photograph on posters and quoting from his "success stories" in various pamphlets and other publications.
So he and others were approached, in a widespread effort called the Celebrity Recovery Project, by selected church officials and offered free auditing and other perks, all in hopes of bringing them back into the fold. "What people began to realize was that having a famous person as a member was a double-edged sword," explained the former Sea Org executive Bruce Hines, who audited Travolta and several other celebrities. "They could be great promotion but, if they went sour on Scientology or did something bad, they could be horrendously bad publicity."
To stave off this potential problem, the church had Travolta and other lapsed stars like Edgar Winter and Van Morrison go through the False Purpose Rundown, a targeted form of counseling that addressed a person"s failures or weaknesses-their "evil purposes." Promoted as clarifying-somewhat akin to making oneself "right with G.o.d"-the process, said Hines, gave a person a new sense of power and control, as well as a conviction that Scientology, which had helped him or her achieve this state, "worked." At which point, the star "would not only feel born again, but also feel a pressing need to make up for the damage" he or she had caused. Travolta, by Hines"s recollection, was given the False Purpose Rundown several times during the 1980s, during which time he began to show renewed commitment, most publicly by testifying from the audience during the Larry Wollersheim case in Los Angeles. "It is very important for me to express my satisfaction with the results of being involved with Scientology these last eleven years," Travolta later told the press gathered in front of the Los Angeles Criminal Courts building. "It works one hundred percent for me."
"When you look at that statement, it is very telling," noted Karen Pressley. "He offered a defense of the church, and of the tech, which "worked" for him"-not coincidentally, at around the same time Celebrity Centre began issuing to members bright yellow T-shirts with bold black lettering on the front, stating SCIENTOLOGY WORKS, as a form of advertising. "Travolta linking Scientology to his success steered the subject away from Scientology being all about spirituality or mental health and toward the idea of its being something that could deliver measurable career results," she said. "That was the way he and other celebrities recruited other actors into the group."*
Pressley, who"d written the pop song "On the Wings of Love" with her husband, the composer Peter Schless, was considered a "celebrity Scientologist" when she joined the Sea Organization in 1986. Her mission was to bring more celebrities into the church, and the pressure to do so, she said, became increasingly intense after Miscavige a.s.sumed leadership of the RTC in 1988. A special org board was set up in Celebrity Centre with the names of individual targets and where they stood in the recruitment process. As church officials were compiling these lists, David Miscavige was refining a much larger strategy: to establish the Church of Scientology as the alternative religion of the stars. Central to this plan was Celebrity Centre itself, which had long ago moved from its low-rent quarters in downtown L.A. to a far more elegant address at 5930 Franklin Avenue, in the shadow of the Hollywood Hills.
Celebrity Centre"s new home was an ornate, cream-colored Norman revival castle with fanciful turrets and bal.u.s.trades; built in 1929, it was known as the Chateau Elysee. Its original owner, Eleanor Ince, the widow of the silent film producer Thomas Ince, had built the place as a luxury residence for her friends, many of them retired movie stars. By the 1970s, however, the Chateau had fallen on hard times and was scheduled for demolition when the Church of Scientology bought it, and the surrounding three-acre property, in 1973, for $1 million in cash. Over the next twenty years, the church poured millions from its own reserves into renovating the Chateau, newly landscaping the formal gardens, and transforming the entire property into a kitschy Versailles.
Inside the manor, crystal chandeliers sparkled against a rococo tableau heavy on the gold leaf, trompe l"oeil paintings, and ceiling frescoes. In the lobby, decorated in Louis XIV style, a bronze bust of L. Ron Hubbard stood opposite a white piano that would have made Liberace feel at home. In addition to these ornate finishes, Celebrity Centre boasted thirty-nine hotel rooms, several theaters and performance s.p.a.ces, a screening room, an upscale French restaurant, a casual bistro and coffee bar, tennis courts, and an exercise room and spa done in elegant black and white tiles. On the roof of the Chateau, an enormous neon sign, visible from the Hollywood Freeway, proclaimed SCIENTOLOGY in large gold lettering.
Into this gaudy palace, a structure was put in place to lure, acquire, service, and ultimately profit off not only the A-list stars, whose faces and endors.e.m.e.nts graced the posters in the lobby, but also the many young hopefuls aspiring to stardom. To attract the up-and-coming, ads were placed in Variety, Backstage, and theHollywood Reporter, promoting Scientology as a form of professional development. "Want to Make It in the Industry?" one asked. "Learn Human Communications Secrets in the Success Through Communications Course." Another ad pitched a seminar package whose topics included how to get an agent, how to write a screenplay, and how to break into soap operas. All seminars, the ad was careful to say, included booklets by L. Ron Hubbard on "Targets and Goals, Public Relations and more," and would feature talks by "special guest celebrity speakers."
Students who showed up to take the seminar found it to be a variation on a self-improvement course. Getting an agent was only a peripheral topic. "The guy who teaches the course on getting an agent never even had an agent," said Art Cohan, an actor and acting coach who studied at Celebrity Centre for several years. "It was a good promise, though-everyone comes to Hollywood hoping to get an agent. Celebrity Centre would get you in there with these ads, they"d sit you in a seminar and give you a few basic truths, and the students would walk away thinking, Wow, maybe they have the key!"
Cohan, who left Scientology in 1998, now runs the Beverly Hills Playhouse, one of the premiere acting schools in Los Angeles. Founded by the late acting coach Milton Katselas, a longtime Scientologist, the Playhouse had provided a home in the 1970s and 1980s for the young George Clooney, Mich.e.l.le Pfeiffer, and Alec Baldwin, among many others. It was also an unofficial feeder to Celebrity Centre, particularly during the 1990s and early 2000s, when roughly one-fifth of the school"s approximately five hundred students were studying Scientology. Among them were the actress Anne Archer and her husband, the producer Terry Jastrow; Priscilla Presley; Nancy Cartwright, the voice of The Simpsons" Bart Simpson; Kelly Preston, who later married John Travolta; and Jenna Elfman and her husband, Bodhi, who, like Giovanni Ribisi, another student of Katselas"s, had grown up in the church.
When Cohan arrived at the Playhouse, in 1992, nearly everyone on the staff was a member of the Church of Scientology, and some met regularly with Celebrity Centre staff to discuss which students might be targeted that particular week. If a student had problems or showed insecurity about an aspect of his or her career, Playhouse staff members, in exchange for credits toward free auditing or courses, would suggest the person read one of Hubbard"s books, or, even better, take a course at Celebrity Centre to stay "on purpose." Cohan himself was introduced to Scientology this way and admits that he later used the same technique on others. "The indoctrination is if you pay for this auditing and get rid of this negativity, then you can really think clearly," he chuckled. "Actors are really vulnerable in Los Angeles. Anything they will think will work, they will try."
One of the actors who joined Scientology through the Beverly Hills Playhouse was Jason Beghe. A handsome thirty-four-year-old who"d grown up in Manhattan and attended the elite Collegiate School, Beghe began studying with Katselas in 1993. By then, Katselas"s advanced cla.s.ses, of which Beghe was a part, were filled with students who were Scientologists. Some received partial scholarships for serving as cla.s.s "ethics officers," taking notes on which students were late, who seemed tired, who might be having a problem. The great Katselas himself, whom students revered as a G.o.d, kept a photograph of L. Ron Hubbard on his desk.
Curious about the church, Beghe asked his friend Bodhi Elfman to give him a few books about Scientology. Elfman obliged and gave Beghe the primer What Is Scientology? Beghe found the book"s description of the Purification Rundown intriguing. "And that Clear thing sounded good too," he said. The next day he approached Elfman. "Take me to that castle," he said, referring to Celebrity Centre.
At the Chateau Elysee, a cadre of eager Sea Org members greeted Beghe; they seemed to be waiting just for him. And in fact, this may have been the case, for unlike many newcomers, Beghe, whose visit had been arranged by Elfman, was a valuable target: a working actor with a recurring role on the nighttime soap Melrose Place. He spent most of that day at Celebrity Centre, touring the grounds, talking to the staff, and otherwise being "admiration bombed," which, he confessed, worked. "Even the most successful artists are extremely insecure about their career," he said. "Everybody is your best friend over there; they just love you to death."
Within a few days, Beghe had invested $50,000 in Scientology, paying up front for the Bridge all the way to Clear. "I figured I could do this in five or six months," he said. Soon Beghe was skipping auditions to take Scientology courses. Within a year or two, he had ascended farther up the Bridge than John Travolta. "I was as gung-ho as you can get," he said. "David Miscavige called me the poster boy for Scientology."
But as Beghe, who reached OT 5, became more involved in Scientology, he was also expected to promote it. Internally, that meant providing the voiceover for a Sea Org recruiting film, which was shot at Golden Era Studios, the Scientology-owned production facility on the International Base. He also made about half a dozen ads for the various "career development" workshops at Celebrity Centre and led one of those seminars himself. Though he recognized the seminars as good PR, Beghe was reluctant to say some of the things he was pressured to say, which included attributing all of his success-by 1997, Beghe had landed a role on Chicago Hope and costarred with Demi Moore in the film GI Jane-to Scientology. "You sell a little piece of your soul when you tell that lie," said Beghe, who left Scientology in 2007. "You tell yourself it"s for a good cause ... but a part of you knows you"re full of s.h.i.t."
Nonetheless, Beghe did as he was told, and he was not the only one speaking the party line. By the late 1990s, celebrity Scientologists had begun promoting Scientology"s social agenda like never before. John Travolta, for instance, became a key booster of Applied Scholastics, an organization created in the early 1970s to help introduce Hubbard"s study technology to the general public. The actor"s claim: that Hubbard"s study technology had allowed him to realize a lifelong dream of becoming a jet pilot.
Kirstie Alley, who"d struggled with a cocaine problem before joining Scientology in the late 1970s, championed Narconon. In several interviews in the 1990s, she confessed to having checked into a Narconon detox center not long after arriving in Los Angeles in 1979 and credited the program with "saving her life" by helping her get off drugs* (something Alley"s auditors from the late 1970s and early 1980s strenuously deny-indeed, they say, she never enrolled in the Narconon program).
A long roster of Scientologist celebrities took up the charge against psychiatry. The screenwriter-director Paul Haggis, for example, who"d joined Scientology in 1975, was one of a number of boldface names on the membership rolls of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which was founded in 1969 by the Guardian"s Office to combat "mental health abuse." By the 1990s, it had become a powerful anti-psychiatry lobbying force, taking on such pharmaceutical giants as Eli Lilly, and, with help from its celebrity sponsors, bringing Scientology into the national conversation over the effectiveness, and possible misuse, of psychiatric drugs, particularly with regard to children diagnosed with ADD or ADHD-conditions CCHR, and Scientology, maintained were fraudulent.
Beghe also joined the CCHR board of commissioners. And he was expected to attend the annual Celebrity Centre gala each August, an invitation-only event, closed to the general Scientology membership. The highlight of the evening was Miscavige"s speech, which stroked the celebrities for their importance to society and also urged them to move up the Bridge. This was not a hard-sell speech promoting a product, such as a new series of books, but rather a call to action. "Sometimes he would push the importance of being a field staff member and how vital it was for celebrities to talk about Scientology to their friends," recalled Karen Pressley. "Other times he would challenge them to engage in important personal projects."
This included spreading Scientology"s message beyond Hollywood. It helped that the church"s roster now included the legal a.n.a.lyst Greta Van Susteren and her husband, the powerful Washington lawyer John Coale, as well as the singer Sonny Bono, who had studied Scientology in the 1970s and 1980s and was elected to Congress in 1994. Having a presence in Washington had always been a priority of the church, and Bono became a vocal advocate for Scientology-related causes in the House of Representatives. He was particularly instrumental in helping the Church of Scientology fight a number of copyright-infringement cases, notably one against the Internet service provider Netcom, on which a Scientology critic had posted some of the church"s secret doctrine.
Bono also joined several other members of Congress in appealing to the U.S. trade representative, Charlene Barshevsky, to put pressure on Sweden, which had allowed public access to Scientology doctrine, costing the church millions of dollars in lost income, its leaders claimed. Swedish law permitted free access to any published work, regardless of copyright. Nonetheless, Barshevsky threatened to put Sweden on a U.S. government watch list of countries that violated international trade agreements unless it complied. In October 1997, under pressure from Congress, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the State Department, and the Commerce Department, Sweden agreed to pa.s.s tougher copyright-protection laws that would stop the infringement of Scientology"s secret doctrine.
But if anyone helped get the church"s message across in Washington it was John Travolta. No longer the reticent star, Travolta had spent much of the 1990s promoting Scientology outright. ("I never defended Scientology," he told an interviewer from Playboy, adding that he felt more of an urge to "enlighten others about it.") By the late 1990s, Travolta had become an outspoken supporter of Scientology"s ongoing campaign against the German government, which had been investigating the Scientology movement since the early 1990s. Germany was notably hard on groups it suspected of cultlike activities, and it viewed Scientology as a threat to its system of democracy. German Scientologists claimed to have been fired from jobs and prevented from joining political parties because of their affiliation with the church. Some claimed their children had been turned away from local kindergartens.
In response to these reports, Travolta"s attorney, Bertram Fields, wrote an open letter to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, which was published in January 1997 in theInternational Herald Tribune and reprinted in several U.S. papers, including Hollywood"s own Daily Variety. It was signed by thirty-three other well-known entertainment and industry figures, including Dustin Hoffman, Goldie Hawn, Oliver Stone, Gore Vidal, and the chief of Warner Bros., Terry Semel, and drew an a.n.a.logy between the mistreatment of Scientologists in Germany and the n.a.z.i persecution of the Jews.
Several weeks later, the U.S. State Department released its annual human rights report, which, in careful language, detailed German Scientologists" claims of "government-condoned and societal hara.s.sment." Though the report did not directly take the German government to task for human rights abuses, it was notably in-depth, dedicating six paragraphs to describing the various measures that had reportedly been taken against German Scientologists.
That April, Travolta met President Bill Clinton at a volunteerism summit in Philadelphia, where Travolta was stumping for Scientology"s Applied Scholastics program. As the actor later recalled, Clinton-possibly to curry favor with Travolta, who was preparing to play a Clintonesque character in Primary Colors-offered his help with Scientology"s problem in Germany.
In the months ahead, Clinton deputized his national security advisor, Sandy Berger, to serve as the administration"s point person for Scientology. In a meeting with Travolta and Chick Corea, Berger, according one former administration official, briefed them on the administration"s position regarding Germany "in exactly the same manner he would a senior senator."*
But this flurry of promotion-surely what L. Ron Hubbard would have envisioned for his "opinion leaders"-was only a prelude. Miscavige had a vision far more comprehensive than Hubbard"s and a Hollywood star willing and able to see it through. This was a celebrity whose Scientologist beliefs and, ultimately, his public persona, were shaped not by Hubbard but by David Miscavige. What happened would bring unprecedented attention to both the star and to Scientology, though not in the way either would have hoped.
Chapter 14.
The Seduction of Tom Cruise.
ON THE FACE of things, Tom Cruise, who joined the Church of Scientology in 1986, was an unusual recruit. Twenty-four years old, he was certainly not "up-and-coming" or insecure, the two qualities that had defined John Travolta when he joined the church in 1974. To the contrary, Cruise was already a movie star, fresh off Top Gun fame and soon to be one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood. Handsome, wholesome, with his big-toothed grin, he exuded the sort of thumbs-up self-confidence that made him both a s.e.x symbol and a role model-"guys want to be like him and girls want to be with him," the Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer said.
Privately, however, Cruise was a seeker. A devout Catholic for most of his life, he"d lived an itinerant and at times semi-impoverished childhood, moving frequently with his mother and three sisters after his parents divorced when Cruise was twelve. Cruise"s father, Thomas Mapother III, was an abusive "bully," as Cruise later called him, p.r.o.ne to drunken, and often violent, tirades. As he grew up, Cruise struggled with dyslexia. A diligent worker, he"d managed to overcome his disability, but in Hollywood friends wondered if Cruise"s intense drive was a foil for something deeper. Cruise"s costar in Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman, later recalled that the actor hated to be alone. "I think he desperately needed a family," he said.
Cruise found it, and much more, through Scientology. His introduction to the church came through the actor Mimi Rogers, whom Cruise met in 1986 and married a year later. Five years older than Cruise, Rogers was the daughter of one of the church"s most powerful mission holders, Phil Spickler, and was herself a highly trained auditor who, prior to launching her acting career, had opened what is known as a "field auditing" practice in the San Fernando Valley with her first husband, Jim Rogers.
Field auditors are licensed to use Hubbard"s technology by a Scientology group called I-HELP, which, like the WISE business a.s.sociation, charges its members a fee and also receives 10 percent of their gross profits. Like psychotherapists, field auditors charge by the hour. Many have created thriving practices outside the organized church.
The Rogerses" practice, called the Enhancement Center, was based in Sherman Oaks, California, and was seen as an exclusive and discreet setting for initiates to learn about Scientology. It employed auditors with the highest level of training, people who "didn"t go in for the high-pressure sales tactics that were common at orgs like Celebrity Centre," said Nancy Many. Not surprisingly, many actors and other celebrities preferred this environment, and among the Enhancement Center"s clients were Sonny Bono, who"d been introduced to Scientology by Rogers, and Kirstie Alley, who was one of Rogers"s closest friends.
By the time Rogers met Cruise, she and her husband had divorced, and Frances G.o.dwin, a friend and longtime Scientologist, was running the Enhancement Center, which maintained an air of exclusivity. But as the 1980s wore on and David Miscavige solidified his hold, small groups like G.o.dwin"s came under pressure to feed clients to Celebrity Centre, where the church could reap more of a profit from their involvement.
Cruise, described by former Enhancement Center employees as "very intense and very bright," was also fiercely private. "He came to resolve some personal problems and he was uncomfortable with the idea of people knowing-as I think most people would be when they"re trying to discover something," recalled one former auditor. Cruise enrolled at the center under his real name, Thomas Mapother IV, and for a year no one outside the field auditing group knew of his involvement. But word eventually leaked out, at which point tremendous pressure was put on the Enhancement Center to "turn him over," as this auditor put it, to Celebrity Centre. Ultimately, the group did, about two years after he first joined, said Karen Schless Pressley, president of Celebrity Centre at the time. In accordance with Miscavige"s policy, Pressley reported this development to her superiors, who reported it to the officials in the RTC.
According to Miscavige"s onetime aide-de-camp Mark Fisher, when the leader learned that Scientology had landed the biggest celebrity whale in its history, he immediately focused on what this could mean for the church. As Fisher recalled, Miscavige told his staff, "This guy is so famous, he could change the face of Scientology forever."
Miscavige called for Cruise"s auditing folder. When it arrived, he declared Cruise"s field auditor had made certain "errors." To fix them, Cruise would need to go through an "auditing correction program" administered by the Religious Technology Center, through Celebrity Centre, where every aspect of Cruise"s experience would be controlled, a not uncommon situation for high-level stars. Though the celebrities remain unaware of it, their entire involvement in Scientology is scripted, former officials say, to ensure the stars see the movie, so to speak, that Scientology wants them to see.
In Cruise"s version of this drama, Greg Wilhere, one of Miscavige"s senior lieutenants, was dispatched to Los Angeles to serve as Cruise"s new auditor. Wilhere was also Cruise"s handler, hanging out with him and easing him into the world of Scientology while shielding him from any negative information-"entheta"-about the church.
The tall, confident Wilhere, a Scientologist since the early 1970s, was the ideal choice for the job. He had worked as a steward for L. Ron Hubbard aboard the Apollo and had a wealth of stories about the Commodore. He was also, like Cruise himself, something of a clean-cut jock: prior to joining Scientology, Wilhere had played football for Villanova.
"Greg isn"t an intellectual heavyweight," said Chuck Beatty, a former Scientologist who"d worked under Wilhere, "but he"s an ultra-smooth communicator. He knew the Hubbard viewpoint, he knew all the ways to handle black propaganda against Scientology, he was impeccably dressed, polite to a fault-he was like a J. Crew model, a real sports-hero type, but also a walking showpiece for Scientology. So he was someone a guy like Tom Cruise would look up to."
Furthering the plot, Pat Gualteri, an official at Celebrity Centre, was a.s.signed to be Cruise"s course supervisor. Gualteri too had worked with L. Ron Hubbard. He was also a decorated Vietnam vet. This came in handy, as Cruise was beginning to prepare for his role as the wounded Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July.
"Celebrities, and certainly someone like Tom Cruise, are completely ignorant of the strategy that has been put in place to hook and control them," said Nancy Many. "And the manipulation is different for everyone. With Tom Cruise, here was a guy who needed to portray a Vietnam vet; Pat survived the Tet Offensive. Who better to help Tom get through his basic courses? From the church"s perspective, it was a win-win."
After a few months, Wilhere invited Cruise to Int. This, noted Fisher, had been the plan all along, but Miscavige hadn"t wanted to overwhelm Cruise too soon. The Gilman Hot Springs compound was still so secret that many ordinary Scientologists didn"t know of its existence, let alone its location.* Sea Org members recruited to work at the base were sworn to maintain confidentiality; a stint on the Rehabilitation Project Force was the punishment if they divulged the compound"s clandestine location.
Extensive planning and preparation went into Cruise"s first visit in the summer of 1989. The base had been given a mini-facelift: buildings painted, bushes pruned, walkways cleared. Staffers, briefed that a "special VIP guest" was coming through, were instructed to be on their best behavior, refrain from smoking and cursing, and work on projects that could easily be explained, were the special guest to ask. Those who were aware that the visitor would be Tom Cruise were instructed not to talk to the star nor look at him, and to respond to any question he might ask by addressing him as "Mr. Cruise."
Miscavige and Cruise met over lunch on the Star of California, a three-masted, rudderless clipper ship the Sea Org had built for L. Ron Hubbard, which was situated in the scrubby hills overlooking the Int campus. The actor was a "cool guy," Miscavige told his staff afterward, and seemed dedicated to Scientology, if also nervous about how this might affect his reputation. Cruise was so uncomfortable with being "known" as a Scientologist, in fact, that he walked around in sungla.s.ses and a baseball cap at the base. Miscavige sought to rea.s.sure him. Over the next several days the movie star and the leader of his church, twenty-eight and thirty years old respectively, hung out together, touring the base on dirt bikes, watching movies at the base"s screening room (Miscavige was an avid Top Gun fan), and going skeet shooting.
It had come up in Cruise"s auditing, explained Fisher, that Cruise, the action hero, was afraid of guns. To remedy the problem, Miscavige ordered Fisher to prepare the rifle range, where L. Ron Hubbard used to enjoy taking target practice. "DM brought him up there and they hung out and shot skeet for a few hours until Tom got more and more comfortable with guns," he recalled. Cruise was so grateful, Fisher said, he later sent Miscavige an automated clay-pigeon launcher to replace the handheld one he ordinarily used.
Miscavige then ordered the entire rifle range redone in preparation for Cruise"s next visit. For three days prior to it, said Fisher, members of the Sea Org worked around the clock, landscaping the grounds, installing the skeet shooter, and building a bunker. "All so that Tom Cruise would be impressed," Fisher added. "And he was."
That Miscavige seemed so smitten with the actor was shocking to longtime a.s.sociates like Fisher, who noted that although the leader of Scientology had always recognized the strategic value of bringing celebrities into the church, "he"d never cared about them personally. His view toward these people was that they were dilettantes," said Fisher. "They didn"t work for the church; they didn"t promote the church aggressively. They weren"t "real" Scientologists, like we in the Sea Org were. But something in DM changed after that meeting with Cruise."
Miscavige soon convinced the actor to do all of his Scientology courses, training, and auditing at the base, which, encircled by high stone walls and protected by armed guards-including one known as "Eagle," who was installed as a lookout on a hilltop-offered Cruise a clandestine environment in which to study Scientology away from the glare of Hollywood. Before long, he"d begun keeping his Porsche and his Range Rover SUV at the base, flying back and forth in a helicopter from Los Angeles on weekends. "From A to Z his entire experience was orchestrated so that he"d have the best time possible in Scientology, and you could tell he bought into everything," said the exSea Org member Bruce Hines, who worked with Cruise on his basic communication drills. "He had that dedicated glare you get after reading Keeping Scientology Working dozens of times, and getting tested on it."