Inside Scientology (39 page)

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 assimilate 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 Godfather,
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 Wasserman, 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 assistants 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 assigned 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, 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.
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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 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
S
C
I
E
N
T
O
L
O
G
Y
W
O
R
K
S
,
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."
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