Celluloid Heroes: Part I
 
or: You Can See All the Blood 
as You Walk Down Hollywood Boulevard
 
(With apologies to The Kinks)
David McGowan 
January 20, 2002 
(McGowan is the author of Understanding the F-Word: American Fascism 
and the Politics of Illusion)
 
"Radio and television are psychological warfare." 
Herbert Mullin, falsely accused and convicted Santa Cruz serial 
killer and the son of a highly-decorated WWII Army Captain 
I couldn't help noticing that Black Hawk Down has now gone into 
general release. When I first heard about this film, I assumed that 
it would be a shameless glorification of a reprehensible, 
imperialist, oil-driven U.S. military operation that was itself 
shamelessly glorified as a humanitarian mission to feed the hungry. 
  But I was wrong. 
 As it turns out, the movie is much more than that. It is 
also, for instance, a shameless glorification of a convicted child 
rapist and sodomizer. And, lest we forget, it is one of the most 
obvious pieces of government-sanctioned, pro-war propaganda to come 
out of Hollywood since .... you know, I think we may have to go all 
the way back to Behind Enemy Lines on this one. 
 But at least that film didn't romanticize the military 
exploits of a child molester. For the record, the 'hero' of Black 
Hawk Down, Ranger John Grimes, was given a deceptive name-change by 
the filmmakers following a request from the Pentagon's PR people. It 
seems the Ranger's real name was John Stebbins – who is currently 
serving a 30-year-sentence for an attack on a child under the age of 
12. Stebbins' ex-wife told the New York Post: "They are going to make 
millions off this film in which my ex-husband is portrayed as an All-
American hero when the truth is he is not." (1) 
 He sure looks like one up there on the silver screen though. 
How could he not be when he is being brought to screen-life by 
Hollywood hunk Ewan McGregor? Far be it from me to suggest that the 
larger-than-life hero up there is actually a convicted pedophile. 
That would be like, say, suggesting that the hero played by Brad Pitt 
in that wretched movie about Tibet was actually a Nazi 
seeking 'proof' of Aryan supremacy. 
 Of course, using the magic of Hollywood to transform 
repellent cultural and historical figures into screen heroes is 
standard operating procedure in Tinseltown. It is something that the 
film industry really excels at. We are talking here, after all, about 
an industry that recently gave no less an appalling figure than the 
Marquis de Sade a Hollywood makeover. 
 But the point that I started to make before getting 
sidetracked is that the repugnant piece of celluloid known as Black 
Hawk Down is a painfully transparent piece of propaganda – its 
release coming precisely at a time when the Bush team is beginning to 
drop broad hints that Somalia could be very highly-placed on the list 
of nations about to suffer from Sudden Aerial Bombardment Syndrome – 
all in the name of fighting terrorism, of course. 
 Expansion of the war into Somalia could prove to be a tough 
sell with the American people though. Despite being conditioned and 
encouraged to have famously short memories, there is always the 
danger that some of us might remember those graphic images of a 
Special Forces operative being drug through the streets of Mogadishu. 
Good thing then for the Washington crowd that this film came along at 
such an opportune time – and amid a clamor of cravenly gushing 
reviews. 
 What better way to sell a war than on the nation's theater 
screens? According to an article in the Online Journal, "Many who 
have seen the film report leaving the theater feeling angry, itching 
to 'kick some ass.'" (2) Nothing like some emotionally-charged 
propaganda to fire up the people for a war of 'revenge' against a 
nation of people depicted as barbarians. 
 But wait a minute, you say. This film can't be deliberate 
propaganda. Production on this movie had to have begun long before 
September 11, long before there was a 'War on Terrorism.' The timing 
of the movie must then be just a bizarre and fortuitous coincidence – 
just like the timing of all the other war and 'spy' films flooding 
the nation's theaters is just a coincidence. 
 The release of the aforementioned Behind Enemy Lines, just as 
real-life Special Forces operatives were being sent behind 'enemy' 
lines, was surely just a coincidence. Likewise for Spy Games and, so 
as not to leave out the little ones, Spy Kids. And Collateral Damage 
(Ahhnuld takes on the terrorists), We Were Soldiers (Mel Gibson helps 
rewrite the Vietnam War), Hart's War (Bruce Willis helps rewrite 
WWII), The Farm (aka the CIA's training center in Langley, Virginia), 
Bad Company (more of the same), Spy Kids 2, The Accidental Spy, I 
Spy, and the further adventures of fictional 'spies' James Bond and 
Jack Ryan. 
 And it is obviously just a coincidence that the television 
networks are quickly filling timeslots with spies as well, having 
premiered no less than three new series glorifying and romanticizing 
the exploits of the CIA just weeks after what was purportedly the 
most massive intelligence 'failure' in U.S. history. 
 We know that this was a coincidence because these new series 
were obviously 'in the can' long before 'the agency,' as CBS refers 
to it, had any inkling that it would be thrust into the limelight in 
September as it suddenly earned a much more visible role in 
formulating U.S. foreign and military policy, and a much larger 
budget. 
 As a brief aside, I just realized that I wrote "U.S. foreign 
and military policy" as though those were two separate and distinct 
concepts. Sorry. I have no idea what the hell I was thinking. 
 Anyway, the point here is that we know that the CIA's crack 
counterterrorism experts had no hint of the impending attacks because 
if they did they would have heroically risen to the task of saving 
the lives of the doomed inhabitants of the World Trade Center towers, 
just like they do every week on TV. 
 And that, of course, didn't happen. 
 So it had to be just uncanny timing that brought these new 
shows to America's television screens at the precise time that the 
much-maligned CIA was desperately in need of something to burnish its 
image. 
 And in a not-so-shocking development, the CIA is now openly 
participating in the crafting of its image for both the big and small 
screens. This is in stark contrast to the old days, when the 
intelligence community covertly participated in crafting its image – 
and the images of just about everything else, for that matter. Like 
the Hollywood crowd is fond of saying, it is the agents who wield the 
real power in Tinseltown. 
 With military and intelligence types overrunning both the big 
and small screens, some might be tempted to ponder whether there 
isn't a coordinated psychological warfare campaign being waged 
against the American people to condition them to support a serious 
expansion of the 'War on Terrorism.' In retrospect, some skeptics in 
the crowd might even wonder whether the country hasn't been being 
primed for a major war for quite some time. 
 We have been, after all, bombarded with Steven Spielberg's 
masterful work of flag-waving war-glorification we all know and love 
as Saving Private Ryan. Some have noted, by the way, that Spielberg's 
films are structured to resemble nothing so much as Nazi propaganda 
films of the 1930s. Not unlike, for example, the films of Leni 
Riefenstahl – the master propagandist for the Reich who gave the 
world Triumph of the Will. If you aren't familiar with Riefenstahl, 
you will be soon: she's about to get a Hollywood makeover courtesy of 
actress/director Jodie Foster. 
 But that's beside the point ... sort of. 
 We also had to endure that wretched bit of historical 
revisionism known as Pearl Harbor, which was made by the very same 
Jerry Bruckheimer who is now offering us Black Hawk Down. Before 
Pearl Harbor, he gave us Enemy of the State and a godawful cable 
television series by the name of Soldier of Fortune, Inc. 
 One of Bruckheimer's earlier works was the feature-length 
recruiting film, Top Gun, that was released not long before the 1990s 
dawned as the decade in which it would become a rather routine 
practice for America's 'top gun' pilots to bomb the piss out of 
various defenseless nations that are selfishly hoarding their oil 
reserves. 
 In those days, Bruckheimer was working with co-propagandist 
co-producer Don Simpson – who opted out of the partnership when he 
was found dead in his home, allegedly the victim of a drug overdose 
or of natural causes, depending on who is telling the story. 
Simpson's personal physician and apparent drug supplier had likewise 
been found dead, in Simpson's poolhouse, and likewise was said to be 
the victim of a drug overdose. Shit happens. 
 In Hollywood, shit happens all the time. Since shortly after 
its emergence circa 1915 as the entertainment capital of the world, 
Hollywood's streets have been littered with the bodies of those who 
have died under, shall we say, questionable circumstances. 
 In September of 1920, Olive Thomas - a beautiful and very 
young actress with everything to live for - purportedly killed 
herself by overdosing on, of all things, mercury. One year later, 
actress Virginia Rappe turned up dead at a party hosted by silent 
film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. In February of the next year, 
1922, producer William Desmond Taylor - a former British military 
officer whose life is shrouded in mystery to this day - was found 
shot to death. 
 In 1923, matinee idol Wally Reid was found dead in a padded 
cell at the mental hospital to which he had been confined. Reid was 
just thirty years old. His death was attributed to his morphine 
addiction, though how he would have fed that habit in a mental 
hospital remains a mystery. His widow then starred in an anti-drug 
film that she had lobbied for. The film was produced by Thomas Ince – 
a partner of D.W. Griffith, who gave the Ku Klux Klan a rather 
notorious Hollywood makeover in Birth of a Nation. Ince caught a 
bullet to the head in November of 1924 while attending a private 
party aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht (though it was claimed 
that Ince died of natural causes, a story propagated primarily by 
Hearst's own newspapers). 
 And so began a tradition of unsolved and/or covered-up deaths 
that plagues Hollywood to this day. And the funny thing is that if 
you scratch beneath the surface of virtually any of these untimely 
deaths, you find the same cast of characters that you find lurking 
about the fringes of any self-respecting political 'conspiracy 
theory' – namely Mafioso, native and imported fascists, drug 
traffickers, and intelligence operatives. 
 As another brief aside, I just realized that I 
wrote "Mafioso, native and imported fascists, drug traffickers, and 
intelligence operatives," which is kind of like saying "Larry, Curly, 
Moe, and the Three Stooges." 
 The bodies continue to pile up in Hollywood to this day. 
Recent additions include: Robert Blake's wife, who acquired some 
unwanted bullet holes in her head; William Shatner's wife, who ... 
uhhh ... drowned ("we've got you covered, Captain"); singer Aaliyah, 
whose plane - flown by a Florida-trained pilot with drug connections -
went down because it was reportedly overweight, despite the fact 
that much of the band's equipment was reportedly left behind ("can we 
move some of this equipment out of here? - we have to make room for 
all these drugs"); and comedian Phil Hartman, whose shooting death 
was covered up with a murder/suicide story that had more holes in it 
than an Al Queda tunnel complex. 
 But here I have digressed at some length. 
 The point I was trying to make is that a psywar campaign has 
been in effect for quite some time now to condition the American 
people for what has been occasionally billed as World War III. The 
operative strategy has been to romanticize and glorify World War II, 
creating a kind of perverse wartime nostalgia. Hence we have seen the 
likes of Pearl Harbor on the big screen, Band of Brothers on the 
small screen, and literary masterpieces like The Greatest Generation 
in the bookstores. 
 And those works of 'art' are just the tip of the psywar 
iceberg. The media has become so besotted with images of heroic 
military and law enforcement personnel that the World Socialist Web 
Site recently felt compelled to commend an otherwise forgettable film 
simply because: "its protagonists are not generals or admirals, Navy 
Seals, Green Berets, marine commandos, FBI or CIA agents, state 
troopers or municipal police officers, sheriffs or deputy sheriffs, 
prison wardens or guards, secret service or Treasury agents, customs 
inspectors, immigration investigators, federal marshals, judges, 
bailiffs, parole or probation officers, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms 
inspectors, Internal Revenue criminal investigators, Fish and 
Wildlife Service special agents, or any other fictional 
representatives of law enforcement." 
  They seem to have left out federal prosecutors, district 
attorneys, judge advocate generals, and .... well, I think you get 
the idea. 
 As for the spy trade, there have historically been two 
primary representations of intelligence operatives in our propaganda 
entertainment media, both of them grotesquely disinformational and at 
least one of them crafted by the spooks themselves. That would be the 
notion of the intelligence operative as a dashing, cultured, romantic 
hero. The prototype for this version of the fictional spy was largely 
provided by Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond character. 
 Fleming was a British intelligence operative during (and 
after) World War II, when he worked closely with Nazi 'defector' 
Rudolph Hess and a rather notorious character named Aleister Crowley –
a flamboyant occultist, British and probable U.S. intelligence 
operative, and avid German and Nazi propagandist during World Wars I 
and II. Fleming's work is now being carried on by the likes of Tom 
Clancy, a 'former' Naval Intelligence asset and good friend of George 
Bush. 
 The other predominant image of the intelligence community 
that has permeated the media is that of 'the gang that couldn't shoot 
straight' – the spy as a well-intentioned, bumbling fool. On the big 
screen, the Pink Panther films established the model for this 
archetype, along with such television series as Get Smart, which was 
co-created by Buck Henry. Henry also was credited with the screenplay 
for the film Day of the Dolphin – a blatantly disinformational look 
at the work of MK-ULTRA operative John Lilly. 
 Assisting Henry on creating Get Smart, by the way, was Mel 
Brooks, whose most recent endeavor was adapting for the Broadway 
stage his film The Producers – an offensive piece of work that 
trivializes the crimes of the Third Reich and casts Herr Hitler as a 
cartoonish character. Strangely enough, Brooks chose to stage the 
gala premier of his play on April 20, 2001 – the birthday of its 
protagonist. 
 Brooks wasn't the first to present a buffoonish screen image 
of Hitler. Charlie Chaplin did it far earlier – back in 1940 when The 
Great Dictator was released just after the Nazi invasion of the 
Soviet Union. The funny thing was though that Charlie pretty much 
wore the same makeup to play the Fuhrer that he had been wearing for 
the previous twenty years. 
 Chaplin's toothbrush-mustachioed 'Little Tramp' character was 
created and began gracing the nation's silent movie screens just as 
the similarly adorned Adolf Hitler began his climb to power in 
Germany's fledgling Nazi Party following World War I (after, it 
should probably be noted, spending some time in the Pasewalk 
Sanitarium). By the time the real Hitler stepped onto the world 
stage, therefore, the American people were predisposed to view the 
silly-looking character as little more than a joke. 
 Coincidence? Probably so, but I thought I'd throw it out 
there anyway – along with the fact that the two men were born just 
hours apart: Chaplin on April 18, 1889 and Hitler on April 20, 1889. 
That means that .... actually, I have no idea what the hell that 
means, but it seems like it should mean something. 
 Chaplin, by the way, who shared with Ranger Stebbins a well-
known appetite for underage girls, was among the elite guests aboard 
Hearst's yacht the night Ince was killed, may have been present at 
the party of his friend Fatty Arbuckle that ended in the death of 
Virginia Rappe, and was the guest of honor at a 1972 party at which 
Oscar Levant made his last public appearance before being discovered 
dead. 
 Though this warning may be a little belated, I would strongly 
caution everyone out there against attending any parties where 
Chaplin is on the guest list. 
To be continued ......
REFERENCES: 
1. Megan Turner "War-Film Hero is a Rapist," New York Post, 
December 18, 2001 
2. Larry Chin "Black Hawk Down: Hollywood Drags Bloody Corpse of 
Truth Across Movie Screens," Online Journal, January 3, 2002 
3. David Walsh "Four Recent Films," World Socialist Web Site, 
January 5, 2002

2/6/02
dave@davesweb.cnchost.com

This article comes
courtesy of the Center for an Informed America. The original is at:
http://64.4.8.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=2066bbe52c27b0a69136059df1639fcc&lat=1014253018&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fdavesweb%2ecnchost%2ecom%2fwtc12%2ehtml


Celluloid Heroes: Part II
or: The Tangled Web of Charlie Manson

David McGowan
February 10, 2002
"[In Hollywood], everyone's a producer or a hit man."
Douglas Clark, convicted Sunset Strip serial killer and the son of a
Naval Intelligence operative
"I don't know if you guys have ever in your entire life shot anybody,
but it's really fun to do."
Former child actor Carol Bundy, Clark's convicted accomplice,
speaking to the police
It has frequently been said that if you scratch just beneath the
glossy and oh-so-glamorous exterior of the Hollywood dream factory,
you will find the dark and ugly reality that lurks just beneath the
surface. But just how dark and ugly is that reality?
        There is certainly no shortage of recurrent weirdness that
passes for business-as-usual in the land of make-believe that we like
to call Hollywood. For such a small and tight-knit community, the
Hollywood gang has generated more than its fair share of scandal and
sleaze over the better part of the last century.
        Is that merely because, in our celebrity-obsessed culture,
every misstep of the entertainment community is open to such intense
scrutiny? Would we find the same skeletons in the closets of any
other group in the country that was subjected to such unabashed media
and public voyeurism? Is Hollywood merely a microcosm of America
itself, illuminated by the harsh glare of the stage lights?
        If so, then it is truly a strange and scary world that we
live in. Consider, if you will, just a few recent examples of
Tinseltown weirdness:
Actress Margot Kidder, missing for a week, surfaces in the bushes of
a stranger's yard with her head shaved and a few of her teeth
conspicuously absent.
Actress Anne Heche similarly goes missing, only to show up at the
door of a stranger in the middle of nowhere babbling about being
beamed up to the mothership.
Actor/comedian Martin Lawrence decides to stop traffic one day on
busy Ventura Boulevard by wandering into the street, waving a gun and
shouting incoherently.
Actor Robert Downey, Jr. finds himself sleeping in the bed of a
neighbor, with no idea of how he got there.
Dr. Haing S. Ngor, who purportedly survived the killing fields of
Cambodia before starring in Hollywood's version of events there,
doesn't survive the streets of Hollywood; he is gunned down in
February of 1996.
Actor Jack Nicholson decides to blow off some steam by attacking the
vehicle of another motorist with a golf club.
Someone 'falls' to their death from the apartment of actor James
Caan.
Comic actor Eddie Murphy is arrested in the company of a transsexual
prostitute. He/she dies a violent death shortly afterwards, though
the press doesn't pay much attention.
Actor Hugh Grant is arrested while being serviced by Hollywood
prostitute "Divine" Brown. Brown's pimp subsequently surfaces in the
company of a neo-Nazi singer who claims he was offered money by
Courtney Love to kill Kurt Cobain. The would-be assassin turns up
dead soon after telling this story to filmmaker Nick Broomfield.
Actor Brian Keith, the former star of television's Family Affair, is
found with a fatal bullet wound in his head on June 24, 1997. His
death, ruled a suicide, continues a long tradition of Hollywood
notables allegedly shooting themselves in the head. Included on that
list are Herve "Tatoo" Villechaize (September 4, 1993), Del Shannon
(December 8, 1990), Jon-Erik Hexum (October 12, 1984),
Freddie "Chico" Prinze (January 29, 1977), Pete Duel (December 31,
1971), and George "Superman" Reeve (July 1, 1959).
On June 2, 1996, the 35th anniversary of her grandfather Ernest's
alleged suicide, Margaux Hemingway joins the list of Hollywood
personalities whose deaths are attributed to drug overdoses. Margaux
is the fifth member of her family to have their deaths ruled as
suicides. River Phoenix's death on Halloween, 1993, outside of Johnny
Depp's Viper Room, is also attributed to an overdose.
        Nothing unusual about any of that, I suppose. Looking further
back over the sordid history of Hollywood, consider also these
examples of unexplained weirdness (and these examples are, it should
be noted, just the tip of a very large iceberg):
At Marlon Brando's Los Angeles estate, his son Christian shoots and
kills sister Cheyenne's significant other, Dag Drollet, in May of
1990. Christian and his father claim that the shot was fired
accidentally during a struggle for the gun. There is no sign of a
struggle, and Drollet is found in a sitting position with a cigarette
lighter and the remote control for the TV still in his hands.
Attorney Robert Shapiro, who also represented Robert Evans in the
Cotton Club murder case, cops a plea that results in Brando serving
just five years. By that time, Cheyenne is dead, allegedly a suicide
victim. Christian is later considered as a husband by Bonnie Lee
Bakley, before she decides to marry Robert Blake. Five months later,
Bakley is dead.
Actors and actresses like Clara "It Girl" Bow, Frances Farmer, and
the aforementioned Oscar Levant and Wallace Reid find themselves
forcibly confined to mental hospitals. Farmer later tells of being
beaten, raped, locked in a cage, and administered electroshock
torture (oops ... I meant to say electroshock therapy).
Mob enforcer Johnny Stompanato is found stabbed to death in the home
of actress Lana Turner. Turner's young daughter takes the rap, though
she doesn't appear to be physically capable of committing the crime.
Actress Natalie Wood goes missing in the middle of the night from a
yacht while in the company of actors Robert Wagner and Christopher
Walken. She subsequently is found floating in the Pacific Ocean.
Witnesses later claim that she had been in a motel room with Walken
on Catalina Island.
Aspiring actress Elizabeth "The Black Dahlia" Short is found
literally cut in half, with her mutilated remains left on display, on
January 15, 1947.
People close to actress Sarah Miles develop a knack for committing
suicide. There is the roommate who jumps out of the window of their
shared apartment. There is the ex-gardener who owes Miles money and
decides to gas himself. And of course there is the business manager
who is discovered dead in Sarah's motel room and declared to be the
victim of a drug overdose – though there is reportedly blood on his
face and on the bed in which he is found. Miles has purportedly spent
the night in the room of her co-star at the time – Burt Reynolds.
Actress Thelma "Hot Toddy" Todd turns up dead in her car, allegedly
the victim of suicide by means of carbon monoxide poisoning. Blood on
her face, a cut lip and a dislodged tooth indicate that she was
beaten senseless prior to her .... uhhh .... suicide.
Comedian/actor John Belushi is found dead in his room in a West
Hollywood hotel in March of 1982. He is said to be yet another victim
of a drug overdose. His last known visitors, on the night of his
death, are Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. The story of his death,
and tragically short life, are then told in a book by former Office
of Naval Intelligence 'briefer' Bob Woodward.
A number of the people involved with the movie Rebel Without a Cause
die mysterious deaths at young ages – including stars James Dean,
Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo (who is stabbed to death outside of his
apartment on November 12, 1976) and Nick Reid (who is found dead of
mysterious causes on February 7, 1968).
Silent film legend Ramon Navarro is found dead in his home on
Halloween day, 1968. He has been brutally tortured and murdered in
what appears for all the world to be a ritual homicide. Two brothers,
both young male prostitutes, are charged with the crime.
Actor Bob Crane is murdered and it subsequently emerges that he had a
secret life that centered around a passion for hardcore, homemade
porno films.
        Nothing unusual about any of that either, I suppose. But
consider the web spun by the man known as Charles Milles Manson. Now
this is where we really cut to the core of the dark underbelly of
Hollywood. Join me then, if you will, as we embark on a journey that
I like to call "Seven Degrees of Charlie Manson."
        Before doing so, allow me to introduce a few members of the
stellar cast of this strange and twisted tale:
Sharon Tate - the most famous of the Manson victims, and the daughter
of Colonel Paul Tate, U.S. Army Intelligence. Tate was killed on
August 9, 1969, along with Abigail Folger, Steven Parent, Jay
Sebring, and Voytek Frykowski.
Kenneth Anger - former child-star turned underground filmmaker, and
the son of a 'military-industrial complex' engineer who developed
machine-guns for Kellogg during WWII and later worked for Douglas
Aircraft.
Judy Garland - child actor and singer who was kept drugged on a daily
basis from about the age of five, first by her mother, and then by
the studios. Garland was found dead on the summer solstice of 1969,
just seven weeks before the Tate/LaBianca murders.
John Phillips - musician/composer who founded the singing group The
Mamas and the Papas and who was born in a military hospital, the son
of a career Marine officer. John later attended the U.S. Naval
Academy.
Roy Radin - theatrical producer who specialized in staging vaudeville
revival shows. Radin was working with Robert Evans to produce The
Cotton Club when he was shot some twenty-seven times in the head in
1983. Radin began his career while still a teenager by staging shows
in Masonic temples.
The Hell's Angels - the most well-known of the biker gangs that arose
after WWII due to the efforts of returning OSS and military officers.
The Angels were led by Ralph "Sonny" Barger, reportedly an informant
for the Oakland Police Department who was also on the payroll of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Jayne Mansfield - actress/sex symbol who was decapitated, allegedly
in a car accident, on June 29, 1967. According to Jayne's daughter,
Mansfield's parties featured the rich and famous getting naked and
filming themselves. Tate and husband Roman Polanski were reportedly
the producers and collectors of 'fame porn' as well.
Robert F. Kennedy - U.S. Senator and presidential candidate who was
assassinated in Hollywood on June 5, 1968. Kennedy was shot from
point-blank range behind his right ear by Sirhan Sirhan, who was
standing several yards in front of and to the left of the candidate.
Like I said, shit happens.

http://64.4.8.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=a55b5aa9a52d956bf506a229a79d7147&lat=1014336651&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fdavesweb%2ecnchost%2ecom%2fwtc12%2ehtml


Celluloid Heroes: Part II
or: The Tangled Web of Charlie Manson
Continued

Without further ado, we begin this journey - for no
particular reason - with the aforementioned Phil Hartman, who was a
highschool friend of Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who later became a
disciple of Charlie Manson and the attempted assassin of President
Gerald Ford, who was once a roommate of modeling entrepreneur Harry
Conover, whose wife was the infamous Candy Jones, who was 'treated'
by CIA-linked hypnotist William Jennings Bryan, who also 'treated'
the purported Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, whose name was
written repetitively throughout the diaries of Sirhan Sirhan, who was
also 'treated' by Bryan, who served as the technical director on The
Manchurian Candidate, which was directed by John Frankenheimer, at
whose beach house a dinner was held on June 5, 1968 whose attendees
included "Mama" Cass Elliot, Roman Polanski, and Sharon Tate, who was
killed just over a year later by followers of Charlie Manson, whose
music was recorded by Doris Day's son, music producer Terry Melcher,
who lived with girlfriend Candace Bergen at 10050 Cielo Drive the
year before it became a slaughterhouse after being rented by
Polanski, who initially was slated to pen the screenplay for Day of
the Dolphin, which purported to tell the story of Dr. John Lilly, who
was a friend of Timothy Leary, whose Mellon family-owned Millbrook
estate was frequently visited by Dr. Max "Feelgood" Jacobson, who
once 'treated' Judy Garland and who served as the personal physician
of John Kennedy, whose assassination prompted the shelving of the
film The Manchurian Candidate by its star, Frank Sinatra, who was a
frequent companion of fellow 'Brat Packer' Sammy Davis, Jr., who was
an acknowledged member of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, from where
Manson recruited killers Bobby "Cupid" Beausoleil and Susan "Sexy
Sadie" Atkins, who confessed to her cellmates that she had stabbed to
death actress Sharon Tate, who was inducted into witchcraft on the
set of the Polanski-directed film The Fearless Vampire Killers by
Alexander "King of the Witches" Saunders, who received 'training' as
a child from Aleister Crowley, whose followers included Anton LaVey
and fellow Church of Satan member Kenneth Anger, who was the roommate
(and probable lover) of Family member Bobby Beausoleil, who once
appeared in an underground film titled Mondo Hollywood, which also
featured hairdresser and Manson victim Jay Sebring, who was a former
lover of Sharon Tate, who was a friend of a wealthy widow named
Charlene Caffritz, who played host to - and filmed the exploits of -
Charlie and some of his girls, who also lived for a time with Beach
Boy Dennis Wilson, who recorded a song penned by Charlie, who was an
occasional member of the entourage of Mama Cass, who was listed as a
defense witness for Charlie's trial (but never called), as was her
Mamas and the Papas band-mate John Phillips, who was close to
Polanski, Tate, Melcher, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Cass Elliot,
and film producer Robert Evans, who was working with - and very
likely contracted the execution killing of - Roy Radin, whose
assistant was Michael DeVinko aka Mickie DeVinko aka Mickie Deans,
who married - just a few months before her untimely death - Wizard of
Oz star Judy Garland, who as a teen was flooded with phone messages
and telegrams by admirer Oscar Levant, whose dead body was found by
Candace Bergen, who - as a photojournalist for Life magazine -
covered the preempted presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, who
was romantically linked to Marilyn Monroe, who was also linked to
Anton LaVey, who appeared in Kenneth Anger's Invocation of My Demon
Brother (released in August of 1969) along with Bobby Beausoleil,
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who was a guest at the 1968 London
wedding of Sharon Tate to Roman Polanski, who - during a nude photo
shoot - molested a thirteen-year-old girl at the home of Jack
Nicholson, who was a friend of Cass Elliot, as were Robert Evans and
Manson victims Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger, who
provided funding for the Himalayan Academy, which Kenneth Anger
helped form with Timothy Leary, who was at the side of the stage at
the 1969 Altamont concert where - while the Rolling Stones played the
Process Church-inspired Sympathy for the Devil* - a fan was killed on
film by the Hell's Angels, who had been romanticized and transformed
into anti-establishment heroes in the film Scorpio Rising by Kenneth
Anger and the book Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, both of whom
have been accused of making snuff films** for private collectors,
which was also a favorite pastime of Charlie Manson, one of whose
underage recruits was Didi Lansbury, who had written permission to
travel with Charlie from her mother, Angela Lansbury, who starred as
the control agent in The Manchurian Candidate, which was based on the
novel of the same name by Richard Condon, who once served as a
publicist for Walt Disney, who once owned the home where the Manson
Family slaughtered Leno LaBianca and wife Rosemary, who was involved
in the trafficking of drugs, as were many of those in this twisted
saga, including Charles Manson, victims Voytek Frykowski and Abigail
Folger, John Phillips and Kenneth Anger, who was a huge fan of the
dark and violent imagery of the Rosicrucian-inspired, L. Frank Baum-
penned Oz books, which inspired the band The Magick Powerhouse of Oz,
which was led by Bobby Beausoleil, who was also at one time in the
band Love with Arthur Lee, four of whose members later turned up dead
or missing and presumed dead, as did Charlene Caffritz, Cass Elliot
(who allegedly choked on a sandwich in 1974), Dennis Wilson (who
allegedly drowned on December 28, 1983), and Gram Parsons, whose
corpse was stolen and burned at Joshua Tree on the autumnal equinox
of 1973 by his band's road manager, Phil Kaufman, who was a good
friend from prison of Charlie Manson, who met (at Cass Elliot's
house) and received money from victim Abigail Folger, who also funded
Kenneth Anger, who at various times lived with both Jimmy Page (who
purchased Crowley's home and many of his artifacts) and Keith
Richards & Anita Pallenberg, whose home - in 1979 - yielded the body
of a teenager who had been shot to death, as was John Lennon the next
year by Mark David Chapman, who shortly before doing so met with -
and offered a gift of live bullets to - Kenneth Anger, whose films
were cited as a major influence by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe,
who was implicated by witnesses in the Halloween 1981 execution
killing of New York photographer Ronald Sisman (a close associate of
Roy Radin), who was reportedly in possession of a snuff film of one
of the Son of Sam murders, which were allegedly committed by David
Berkowitz, who from prison accurately described the Sisman killing
before it happened and who took the fall for the Son of Sam murders
to cover up the involvement of others, including possibly Roy Radin
and wealthy art dealer Andrew Crispo, who admitted being present at
the site of a ritual murder which was committed by a man named
Bernard LeGeros, who was the son of a State Department official, as
was Pic Dawson, who was a regular member of the entourage of Cass
Elliot, as was a one-time bodyguard of publisher Larry Flynt named
Bill Mentzer, who was convicted of killing Radin and who was
suspected of involvement in numerous other contract murders,
including some of those attributed to David Berkowitz, who
was 'examined' by psychiatrist/hypnotist Daniel Schwartz, as was Mark
David Chapman, who was obsessed with the film The Wizard of Oz and
the book The Catcher in the Rye, which was written by reclusive
author J.D. Salinger, who served in the OSS with Henry Kissinger, who
was a close adviser to Gerald Ford, who once met and shook hands with
Mark David Chapman, who was 'examined' by psychiatrist/hypnotist
Bernard Diamond, who also 'examined' Sirhan Sirhan, who had
connections to the Process Church, as did many of those ensnared in
this sordid web, including Kenneth Anger, John Phillips, Roy Radin,
David Berkowitz and Charlie Manson, who attended a New Year's Eve
party at the home of John Phillips, who wrote the siren song of
the 'Summer of Love,' bringing thousands of hippies and flower
children streaming into San Francisco and into the hands of such
figures as Louis "Dr. Jolly" West, Anton LaVey, Charlie Manson, Bobby
Beausoleil, Timothy Leary and Kenneth Anger, who - just three days
after the suspicious death of Rolling Stone Brian Jones - filmed the
Hell's Angels stomping the crowd at a 1969 Stones concert in London,
just five months before they did the very same thing to the crowd at
Altamont, which was organized by San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli,
whose clients included the widow of Hermann Goering and Jack Ruby,
who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald, the purported assassin of John
Kennedy, whose brother Robert was romantically linked to Jayne
Mansfield, as was Anton LaVey, who served as Roman Polanski's
technical director on the 1968 film Rosemary's Baby, which was set in
New York's Dakota Apartments, where John Lennon was gunned down by
Mark David Chapman, who shared a fixation on The Catcher in the Rye
with failed assassin John Hinckley, Jr., who stalked actress Jodie
Foster, who is working on a film biography of Leni Riefenstahl, who
was met by - and admired by - fellow filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who
laced his film Scorpio Rising with Nazi imagery, including the
prominent use of swastikas, not unlike the one carved into the
forehead of Charlie Manson, who - at the Cielo Drive home of Polanski
and Tate - had a chance meeting with Nancy Sinatra, the daughter of
Frank Sinatra, who was married to actress Mia Farrow, who starred in
the Polanski-directed Rosemary's Baby, which was produced by Robert
Evans, a friend of Henry Kissinger, who was the righthand man of
President Richard Nixon, whose election was ensured by the
assassination of Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, who was yet another
client of Melvin Belli, as were the Hell's Angels and Nazi-
collaborator Errol Flynn, who made two films with Ronald Reagan, who
was an occasional visitor to the childhood home of Candace Bergen,
who - as a photojournalist - chronicled the short-lived
administration of Gerald Ford, who married one of his friend Harry
Conover's 'covergirls,' who later opened the Betty Ford Center, where
various celebrities in and out of this web routinely check in for
tune-ups..
        I could probably go on, but I really have to get back to work
on my screenplay. I'm thinking of trying to break into Hollywood. I
have this great script about a guy who is propelled to the heights of
power through a combination of fraud, arrogance, legal manipulation
and public denial to lead an imperialist military power that
masterfully uses propaganda to turn reality on its head.
        When the man-who-would-be-king first takes office, the public
views him with a considerable amount of well-deserved skepticism. But
then there is an apparent attack upon the state which is used as a
pretext to rally the support of the people behind a reactionary
social agenda and a war of unspecified duration with unspecified
goals. Some suspect that the attack was actually an inside job, but
they are ridiculed by those who scoff at the notion that their
government would attack one of its own institutions.
        Meanwhile, the anti-hero sells the country out to huge
corporate and financial interests and institutes overt police state
measures to keep the masses in line should the people ever begin to
catch on that their collective reality is little more than a grand
illusion. Much later, historians reluctantly admit that the purported
attack was in fact a staged provocation, but by then it is too late.
        I'm almost done with the final draft. I just have to decide
whether to name my anti-hero Adolf or George. Then I'm going to have
my people get in touch with Jerry Bruckheimer's people and close the
deal.
        Of course, I might have to take out some of the plot elements
and replace them with gratuitous, but really cool, special effects
sequences. But it will still be a great movie. Maybe even as good as
the biography of the Marquis de Sade that Kenneth Anger had long
planned to film, in the original castle where deSade's crimes were
committed. But that's another story altogether.
* A number of journalists have written that the killing took place
later in the concert. This is perhaps due, at least in part, to the
deceptive way in which the film of the event, Gimme Shelter (arguably
the most widely viewed snuff film ever created), was edited. In the
film, the killing is deliberately shown out of sequence, making it
appear as though it occurred at the end of the concert. It did in
fact occur while the Stones played Sympathy for the Devil, as can be
discerned from a careful viewing of the final minutes of the video
version of the film. The band, fully aware of what was going on
immediately in front of the stage, played on. <back>
** Thompson, whose legal representation is provided by the same
politically-connected law firm that successfully shielded John and
Patsy Ramsey from prosecution, has been accused by the child
witnesses in the case dubbed the 'Franklin Cover-Up.' Anger was
suspected by police investigators, but was shielded from prosecution
by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, a devoted follower of Aleister
Crowley. Kinsey died shortly after he and Anger visited Crowley's
Thelema Abbey in Sicily.

References
1. Bain, Donald The Control of Candy Jones, Playboy Press, 1976
2. Bowart, Walter Operation Mind Control, Dell Publishing, 1978
3. Bugliosi, Vincent with Curt Gentry Helter Skelter, Bantam Books,
1974
4. Bresler, Fenton Who Killed John Lennon?, St. Martin's Press, 1989
5. Constantine, Alex The Covert War Against Rock, Feral House, 2000
6. Cromelin, Richard "John Phillips; Singer-Songwriter Led the Mamas
and the Papas," Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2001
7. DeCamp, John W. The Franklin Cover-Up, AWT, Inc., 1992
8. Farr, Louise The Sunset Murders, Pocket Books, 1992
9. Fricke, David "Life of a California Dreamer," Rolling Stone #867,
April 26, 2001
10. Gilmore, John and Ron Kenner Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie
and the Family, Amok, 2000
11. Landis, Bill Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger,
Harper Collins, 1995
12. Lee, Martin and Bruce Shlain Acid Dreams, Grove Press, 1985
13. Levenda, Peter Unholy Alliance, Avon, 1995
14. Marks, John The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, Times Books,
1979
15. McGunagle, Fred "The Man Who Killed John Lennon," The Crime
Library, www.crimelibrary.com
16. Moench, Doug The Big Book of Conspiracies, Paradox Press, 1995
17. Sanders, Ed The Family, Dutton, 1971
18. Street-Porter, Janet Scandal!, Penguin Books, 1981
19. Terry, Maury The Ultimate Evil, Barnes and Noble Books, 1999
20. Vankin, Jonathan and John Whalen The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of
All Time, Citadel, 1998
21. Vankin, Jonathan Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes, Illuminet
Press, 1996
22. Wick, Steve Bad Company: Drugs, Hollywood, and the Cotton Club
Murder, St. Martin's, 1990
23. "The John Lennon Assassination," A&E American Justice
24.  "John Lennon: The Final Days," E! True Hollywood Story
25.  "Oscar Levant," E! Mysteries and Scandals