Inside Scientology

by Janet Reitman

  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, Wasserman, 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 participation in celebrity softball games and other events that Crosby and Wasserman 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 shore 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 masse 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 assets, 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 assist" 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 assistance. 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 embarrassing 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 God"—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 inv
olved 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 assumed 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 balustrades; 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 spaces, 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 endorsements 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, Michelle 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 classes, of which Beghe was a part, were filled with students who were Scientologists. Some received partial scholarships for serving as class "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 god, 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 sho
t 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 shit."

  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.