Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(58)
Prather also counseled him using some of the basic processes of Scientology. “I went outside my body,” Travolta later said. “It was like the body was sort of on its own and I was outside walking round it. I got real frightened, and she said, ‘Oh my goodness, you’ve gone exterior.’ ”
When he returned to Los Angeles, Travolta began taking the Hubbard Qualified Scientologist Course at the Celebrity Centre with about 150 other students. He confided to the teacher, Sandy Kent, that he was about to audition for a television show, Welcome Back, Kotter. After roll call, Kent instructed everyone to point in the direction of ABC Studios and telepathically communicate the instruction: “We want John Travolta for the part.” At the next meeting, Travolta revealed he had gotten the role of Vinnie Barbarino—the part that would soon make him famous. “My career immediately took off,” Travolta boasted in a church publication. “I would say Scientology put me in the big time.”
Gillham adored Travolta and constantly told him he was going to be a star. To prove it, she gave him Spanky.
Although Travolta craved fame, he was taken aback by the clamor that came along with it. Spanky managed his relationship with his fans. She went to the tapings of his television show, accompanied him to his many public appearances, and persuaded Paramount Pictures to buy a large block of Scientology auditing for his birthday. She was his liaison with the church—in Scientology language, his terminal (“any person who receives, relays or sends communications”). She also became a conduit between the rising young star and other Scientologists in the industry, such as Paul Haggis, who gave Spanky a spec script for Welcome Back, Kotter to pass on to Travolta (it was never made).
Travolta generously credited the church for advancing his career and giving him the poise to handle his burgeoning celebrity. “You always have the fear, ‘Success is terrific now, but will it last forever?’ ” he observed in one interview. “When you hit it quickly, you don’t know where it will go.… Scientology makes it all a lot saner.” He introduced a number of fellow actors to Scientology, including Forest Whitaker, Tom Berenger, and Patrick Swayze, as well as the great Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. (Travolta’s friend Priscilla Presley was the only one who actually stuck with the church.) Spanky Taylor was a visible reminder of Travolta’s increasing devotion to Scientology, as well as the church’s investment in his fame, which could be jeopardized by the indiscreet behavior of a talented but entitled movie star.
[page]When the FBI raid on the Church of Scientology took place on July 8, 1977, Taylor was six months pregnant and living with her husband, Norman, in the squalid Wilcox Hotel. Norm was an executive in the legal bureau. Early on the morning of the raid, he frantically called Spanky and told her to get over to Yvonne’s office right away to get the loaded gun she had been given by a friend, which she kept in her desk. By the time Taylor arrived, there were FBI agents everywhere—more than 150 of them at two Scientology buildings, the Advanced Org and Chateau élysée. It was the largest FBI raid in history, and it went on all day and night. They brought battering rams and sledgehammers to break the locks and knock down walls. In addition to the 200,000 documents they were carting off—many of them purloined by Guardian’s Office operatives from government workplaces—they found burglar tools and eavesdropping equipment. Taylor dutifully made her way through the chaos to Yvonne’s office and slipped the gun into her purse. She didn’t allow herself to think how crazy it was to be carrying a weapon past all these lawmen.
Outside the gates, reporters were clamoring to get in. Just then, a school bus pulled up, full of kids from a religion class at the Pacific Palisades high school. Taylor recalled with alarm that they were coming to take a tour that she had previously arranged. The wide-eyed teens watched as Taylor explained to the teacher that this wasn’t the best time for the tour. (They never rescheduled.)
Within the church, the explanation for the raid was that some Scientologists were being charged with stealing the Xerox paper they used when they had copied the reports on the church in government files—in other words, it was just another example of jackbooted government goons twisting the Constitution in order to crack down on religious freedom. But when the indictments came out the following year, the scale of Operation Snow White was plainly exposed. Eleven Scientology executives, including Mary Sue Hubbard, were indicted in Operation Snow White. Her husband was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, although it had arisen from his original plan.
Saturday Night Fever premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in December. Travolta had spent five months training for the film, running two miles a day and dancing three hours a night. He recognized the opportunity that the film provided, and he supplied a singular, electrifying performance. But when he walked down the red carpet past the fusillade of camera flashes, he looked dazed. “When I got out of the limo in front of Grauman’s, I was dumbfounded, I didn’t know how to take it,” he said in a televised interview at the after-party. “It was like a fantasy, it was like a dream tonight.” He was twenty-three years old, now an international star. He was also the most conspicuous Scientologist in the world, after only L. Ron Hubbard himself. And who is to say that Scientology didn’t help make his dreams come true?
YVONNE GILLHAM HAD fallen ill. She complained of headaches and was losing weight. She wanted desperately to go to Flag, where she could get the upper-level auditing she thought could cure her, but she was told there wasn’t money for that. Instead, she was sent on a mission to Mexico with her husband, Heber Jentzsch, an actor and musician who later became president of the church, a largely ceremonial post. They had married five years earlier. On her fiftieth birthday, October 20, 1977, while still in Mexico, Yvonne suffered a stroke. Jentzsch sent her back to Los Angeles, while he completed the tour. After that, her daughter Janis, one of Hubbard’s original Messengers, received a beautiful suitcase from her. Inside there was a letter, but it made no sense. Janis tried to find out what was wrong, but no one would say. Her sister, Terri, went to the Sea Org berthing and found Yvonne lying in her room unattended. Finally, she was sent to a hospital, where doctors found a tumor in her brain, which had caused the stroke in the first place. It would have been operable if she had come to them sooner, the doctors said.