Appendiix-A capsule report - Every Celeb I Remember
Appendix Addition - Every Celebrity I can Remember from the Old Days
I am going to write a little capsule report on every old Celebrity I remember from old Celebrity Centre. They will be in roughly chronological order as I encountered them.
Stephen Boyd - Major actor, well known as top supporting actor in huge Hollywood hit, "Ben Hur". Boyd was the narrator of the film promoting Scientology which was shown at my intro lecture. By the time I got to CCLA in late 1970, he was gone from Scientology. On the film he promotes heavily the wins he got on Grades 0 to IV.
Karen Black Major actress also shown on intro film. She was audited by a woman named Candy who I believe was a Class VIII. When I was brand new my first week I was cleaning in the kitchen and Candy and Karen came out of session and asked me if I could get them some tea. I obliged them and this happened several times afterwards. Karen went on to a big film career and a long career in Scientology. I understand she is now out.
Candice Bergen Her Father was a famous ventooquist. Edgar Bergen, with his 2 famous puppets, Charley Mc Carthy and Mortimer Snerd. Candy was also her auditor. She had blown Scientology just before I arrived. Yvonne called her personally to give her a free ARC break session and she agreed to come but then did not show up. I was filing pc folders in the attic and came across her folder. It was not very thick so she was not around for very long.
Chick Correa He was there from the beginning and is still around. He is a great musical talent, no doubt of that.
Robert F. Lyons He had just starred in a hit movie, Down Hill Racer, about skiers, and was a hot property at that time. He emceed events at the Centre a couple of times. He brought a lot of young actors and actresses down to the Centre, especially young attractive actresses. He had a fairly successful acting career and as far as I know is still in C of S.
Geoffry Lewis He was there from the beginning. He was never a leading man but was getting top roles in the movies and on TV as a supporting actor. He would talk to people who were just rank and file. Once I told him I saw him on a Mission Impossible TV episode and he was glad to hear it had come out and thanked me for letting him know. He was and is a very cool guy.
Mario Feninger The first time I ever came to the Centre, he was performing as solo classical piano virtuoso. He would always play a piece or two by the Italian Baroque composers, Dominico and Alessandro Scarlatti (a Father and Son) and then he would finish with Chopin. He played about as good as humanly possible. I am surprised he was not better known than he was. He was right up there with the top pianists but not as famous. He usually wore a black cape to the Centre, the nights he played. I think he is still alive, if he is, he must be pushing 100. He is an amazing guy!
Amanda Ambrose She was an African American singer and performer and Jazz was her specialty. She was in a lot of shows put on by CCLA and in some non Scientology musical productions. She had a bit of a run in with Yvonne in 1973 and the two were at odds with each other. I read that she just died, I believe earlier this year.
Milton Katselas He was a movie director and ran a very successful acting school in Hollywood. He did a lot of FSM work, bringing a lot of aspiring actors and actresses to intro lectures. He was a good personal friend of Yvonne's and ate a lot of meals as a guest at the exec table. He visited LRH on the Apollo in late 1972 and made friends with him. I read that he just died earlier this year I believe, the same as Amanda.
Ernest Lehman He was a big name Hollywood Director who had won many awards for major film productions. He was a private man and just came in for his auditing, chatted briefly with a couple of people and left. He showed up regularly maybe 5 days a week for a long time, maybe as long as a year and a half. He never spoke and did not want it broadcast that he was a Scientologist but apparently he was wining with his auditing because he kept coming in and buying intensive after intensive.
Flo Allen and Flo Barnett - These were behind the scenes people, I believe, who were very important in Hollywood and knew all the big names. Flo Barnett became David Miscavige's Mother In Law. When Yvonne was in her terminal disease of brain cancer, I believe Flo Barnett accompanied her to Flag in Clearwater. In the early 80's she left the Church and started going to David Mayo's Advanced Ability Centre in Santa Barbara. This was a big thorn in the side of David Miscavige. Not too long afterward she was found dead by gunshot wounds, the death was ruled a suicide.
Beverly Carter Bev and I became very close friends. She was not a big star but she was an actress and had bit parts in a few movies. In one of the Love Bug Movies, I think the second one, She is dressed in something like a cheerleaders uniform and is standing up on a ladder and yells out, "Let the Race Begin" and then she drops the starter's flag. That was her entire part. She once appeared on the Johnny Carson show and also in a Jimmy Stewart show where she played a cigarette girl. She and a friend wrote an episode of Fantasy Island which was accepted and they received $7,000. Bev's biggest claim to fame was that when she was 25, before Scientology, she was dating Rod Serling, the originator of the Twilight Zone. He was much older than her, maybe around 45 and she said he proposed to her to marry him but she turned him down because of the age difference. Yvonne and the execs targeted the celebrities they wanted to be brought on lines and Bev was targeted to bring in Rod Serling. She made an effort to contact him but nothing ever came of it.
Shelly Winters An aging Hollywood icon at the time, similar in fame to Judy Garland. One of the Flo's brought her in and she ate dinner with the staff one night. I was there in the mess hall and she gave a little speech. That was it, she never came back.
Anne Frances She was a well established actress, leading lady type, and at that time had a hit TV series going about a lady cop. Again, one of the Flo's brought her in and she actually routed on to the Communication's Course. One time she needed a person to bullbait her and someone was sent to get me because I was well educated and had worked for IBM. They felt I would be more real to her than one of the younger kids in the course room. I bull baited her for a short time, maybe 10 minutes and she got a pass. We chatted about two minutes about some movies she had been in and that was it. She did graduate the course and gave a success speech which I saw but she was too busy and they could never get her back to do the HQS Course.
Richard Kiel - Jaws - Before I was in Scientology, in the late 1960's, I was working for IBM and we were on site at Jet Propulsion Labs in Altadena, CA very near the Rose Bowl. This guy, Larry whom I knew said he went looking at Ford cars at a dealership in a district of Los Angeles called Highland Park and his car salesman was a guy who was 7'2" tall and was a talkative and friendly guy. Much to my surprise, this guy showed up at Celebrity Centre about 3 years later when I was on staff and I think he had just done his first James Bond movie where he played an evil henchman working for the main bad guy in the movie and his name was Jaws since he had been fitted with metal teeth to play his role in the movie. He went through the comm course and graduated and routed onto HQS and was wining there and it looked like he was going all the way with Scientology and then one day he was not there and he was gone for good. I never found out what happened and could only guess that he might have divulged that he was dealing drugs or engaging in some squirrel practice or something and was ordered to immediately route out. He was there one day and gone the next and nothing was ever said about what happened.
Two Rock Bands - David Bowie and Edwin Bear - First David Bowie's band showed up in a bus probably in 1971 when I was new in Treasury. The band members were the strangest looking people I had ever seen. They were all male, so to speak but some of them were wearing stilleto type heeled shoes which made them about 4" taller than they were. Some were wearing women's clothes and some kind of Gothic clothes and the hair styling was more toward a feminine look. They did some study, just sitting down at the tables and studying some LRH books and doing little demo's and after dinner they began rehearsing their music. I did not care for their sound nor their looks but I was not very hip. They were all polite and respectful of the people there. The next morning they were around for the 9:00 to 12:00 study period and then they packed up and left on their bus after lunch, never to return.
Edwin Bear - I remember about a year later, in 1972, a bus pulled up with Canadian license plates and with all kinds of painting done by hand on the sides of the bus, proclaiming this was the singing group, Edwin Bear or Edward Bear or whatever it was. They were more conventional lookding than the Bowie Group. They also stayed for about one day and then left. They rehearsed and I believe a couple of them went on study. Next day, the bus drove off never to return.
Wings Hauser AKA Wings Livingryte WIngs came on lines as a yougster around 22 in around 1972. He performed regularly at events at CCLA and was really a character. His real name was Gerald Hauser and his Father was Dwight Hauser who had some fame or sorts, but it was not in the entertainment business but was in land development or local politics or something like that. Wings had a lot of personality and charisma and he was a very macho guy but behind it all, he had a good heart. Yvonne kept telling us that he would be the next Elvis, or maybe even bigger. He did launch a fairly successful movie career where he starred in B movies where he usually played the bad guy in inner city police type dramas. He also made a lot of appearances on TV specials. I remember a TV movie starrring Cybil Shephard, where he was playing her lover. Also, he was the bad guy on Walker, Texas Ranger in one episode as was Geoffrey Lewis, for that matter. I understand that he is retired now and is no longer in C of S to my understanding.
Diana Canova Her mom was Judy Canova, a well established actress and comedian who did many movies and had a Nation Wide radio show for years when I was a little kid. Yvonne asked me to come to an opinion leaders meeting in late 1975 when the Centre was on La Brea Blvd. in Hollywood. I believe I had a session at ASHO that day, doing Grade V, Power, and I was totally blown out. My good friend Bev Carter was supposed to be there but she didn't show and I happened to sit next to Diana Canova. She was young, around 23, and beautiful. I found out Judy Canova was her Mom and we had an animated lively discussion before the meeting started - don't forget, I just came from a Power Processing session and was totally blown out. After the meeting, I sought her out and we talked some more. I even asked her for a date but she told me she was seeing somebody and was practically engaged. I've read that she stayed in C of S for a couple of years and then left the Church and currently she doesn't have much to say that's good about her time there.
John Travolta There was a big Convention of Scientologists at the Anaheim Convention Centre in mid 1976. Quentin and Diana Hubbard both came and spoke there. It was a one of a kind event. Each person was given a name tag and wrote in their name, their Org and the last service they had completed. I had just barely heard of John Travolta at the time. There was a rave TV series, Welcome Back Kotter, which co-starred Travolta but I never watched it. Travolta was getting a lot of press and I decided to watch it. It also starred Gabe Kaplan who I knew and liked very much from the old Steve Allen show which I watched regularly. Travolta was young, handsome, had charisma and told jokes well. Anyway, he was the featured speaker at this 1976 event and spoke for a long time on the stage how Scientology had helped him both in life and with his career. He was not much like the Travolta which emerged as a smooth mature star just a year or two later. He was very much like his character Tony Manero in his huge hit film, "Saturday Night Fever" which came out a year or so later. A LINK WITH AN OLDER GENERATION - Once Travolta became Scientology's biggest celebrity, I read a lot of articles on him and found out that before he hooked on with Welcome Back Kotter he had been doing some dancing and singing work in a musical on Broadway in New York City. He described working with Patty Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, America's biggest singing group during all of the 1940's. I'm sure some of you remember the song, "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B", the number one song from 1941. Anyway, I was and am a great fan of the old Andrews Sisters and John mentioned that he had been working with Patty Andrews and she gave him some real good advice which helped him get the Welcome Back Kotter job. Patty Andrews is still living and is well into her 90's.
I could go on for ever with this stuff but I am going to knock it off right now to go to bed. I woke up at 5:00 AM and just added the Wings Hauser, Diana Canova and John Travolta segments and am now going back to bed. I may have a little more of this in me, maybe a few more nationally known Celebrities plust some local Scientology celebrites such as Dick Glass, the Eloquent Elephant or even Ray Mithoff, who with his brother Bob, had a hill-billy guitar struming comedy team. There is also Omar Garrison, the author, a non Scientologist who wrote many pro Scientology books.
Lakey
