Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [134]
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 associates, 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 crap for him. Elvis came out and said, 'Fuck those people! There's no way I'll ever get involved with that son-of-a-bitchin' 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 psychoanalysis? It's always the beginning of the big win when celebrities—song-writers, actors,