by Tony Ortega
But there was a side to working for the Enquirer that bothered Paulette. The focus on celebrities and inside information about them had her editors asking her to do things that made her uncomfortable.
When Orson Welles fell ill and was hospitalized for a while, Paulette’s editor wanted her to sneak into the facility and interview him. When she said she didn’t want to bother the man, her editor tried to talk her into it by explaining that people recuperating in hospitals are usually lonely and are happy to be interviewed. She refused.
She also balked when she was asked to visit the Pennsylvania family of Mary Jo Kopechne, who had died in 1969 when the car she was in was driven into a pond by Ted Kennedy. The family later talked to another reporter, but Paulette didn’t mind losing the story to another writer.
Not that she didn’t hate missing a scoop. At one point, she tried to get John G. Husted Jr. to tell his story. He was relatively unknown at the time, but through her research Paulette had learned that he had been engaged to Jacqueline Bouvier before she broke off the engagement and married John F. Kennedy. In a letter, Husted told Paulette he wasn’t interested. Years later, when he did give an interview about Jackie, Paulette was irate.
Another time a big story eluded her, Paulette had asked an old friend for an interview with Betty Ford. The friend was a former classmate from Brandeis who had become the First Lady’s press secretary. With that advantage, Paulette was hoping she could get the first story about Betty’s battle with breast cancer—but her friend blanched, and called it a “disgusting” subject. Sure enough, Betty later gave an interview about it to someone else.
When Yul Brynner fell ill and was hospitalized, the Enquirer wanted Paulette to interview him. They told her to find out which Manhattan hospital the actor was in. She went into the coffee shop of a major hospital, waited until there were no other customers, and then, on a whim, she told the woman behind the counter that Brynner was there. Yes, the woman replied, and told Paulette that he was on the 14th floor and had checked in under the name “Robbie Lee.” Paulette went to the 14th floor, but then suffered a pang of conscience. The first show her parents had ever taken her to after her adoption was a production of The King and I. So rather than bother Brynner, she called in the tip to the newspaper. The Enquirer flew someone else from Florida who bribed nurses for information. (Paulette still got paid because she’d located Brynner.)
In general, celebrity interviews made Paulette squirm. Dick Clark was condescending. Marlon Brando mumbled. Throughout his interview, he stood sideways to her and never met her gaze.
After Paulette introduced herself by phone to Paulette Goddard, the actress thought she was being mocked and refused to believe that Paulette’s name was the same as her own as she slammed down the receiver. June Havoc believed in ghosts. Vicki Carr’s family had risen up from ditch diggers (that interview Paulette enjoyed greatly). Lillian Carter, Jimmy’s mother, was a pain in the ass and gave her 10 minutes after Paulette’s long trip to Plains, Georgia. But then, struggling to find something to talk about, she discovered that Lillian loved professional wrestling – the bloodier, the better. It made for a great story.
Al Hodge had been “Captain Video” in the early 1950s in television’s infancy, but by the 1970s he was broke and in poor health. Paulette found him working as a security guard at Cartier. None of his old shows were still in existence (recordings of them had been sold for scrap), so he couldn’t cash in on the 1950s nostalgia craze starting to take hold. Paulette loaned him money after writing about him, even though she knew he’d probably drink it up. She even brought him around to parties, and she treasured an engraved ashtray that he gave her as a gift—until someone broke it. Hodge died in 1979 at only 66.
When Pat Boone talked about finding God, he would go into a strange trance-like state. After Paulette’s story about him ran, she came up with an idea for a book. At the time, the early 1980s, celebrities finding God was a hot topic, and she proposed a book that she and Boone could do together. She wanted to call it “Jesus Christ’s Superstars,” but he liked “Hotline to Heaven.” They disagreed on terms, and the project never got off the ground.
Another born-again celebrity she profiled was Graham Kerr, the “Galloping Gourmet.” Her Enquirer story was titled “I GAVE AWAY MY 3 MILLION FORTUNE FOR CHRIST.” Kerr was one of the few people she interviewed whom she told about her struggles with Scientology. He was sympathetic, and he and his wife Trena clasped her hands and held a prayer circle.
The celebrity Paulette ended up chasing the longest was Jackie Onassis. When Jackie’s husband, the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, died in 1975, the Enquirer became obsessed with her, vowing to write something about her in every issue. Paulette was sent to interview her butcher (Lobel’s), her hairdresser (Mr. Kenneth), the store where her secretary consigned Jackie’s clothes (Encore), and Paulette was asked to get information about Jackie from her psychiatrist, Dr. Marianne Kris.
Kris had also treated Marilyn Monroe. Paulette took the assignment, but rather than ask Kris about Jackie, which she knew would be futile, she instead discussed her own life so she could write a story about what it was like to get therapy from such a famous figure.
For years, Paulette tried to get close to Onassis for the Enquirer, and followed her to a formal event at the Hotel Pierre. The Enquirer paid the astounding amount of $450 for Paulette’s ticket. For that kind of money, Paulette knew she had to take her best shot at getting Jackie alone for a talk. When she saw the former First Lady head for the restroom, Paulette followed her in.
She knew it might be her best chance to actually talk. So, there in the woman’s room, she made her play, asking if she could interview her. “No, thank you,” Jackie said sweetly in her breathy way, and walked out of the room.
It was the closest she came to an actual conversation. So Paulette then just had a good time at the gala, and ended up dancing with Sargent Shriver, who called her “a cute little monkey.” Paulette still ended up with a big story when she noticed that Jackie’s supposed friendly relationship with the Kennedys was just a put-on. The Enquirer’s headline for her piece was, “JACKIE SNUBS THE KENNEDYS AT A SOCIETY PARTY AND THEY SNUB HER BACK.” And the evening was also memorialized for her in another way: A photo of Jackie, with a dressed-up Paulette in the frame, ended up on the cover of the June 8, 1976 issue of the New York Post.
Paulette had better luck getting close to a celebrity when she decided to pull a hoax on the great hoaxer himself, Allen Funt. At the time, Paulette had been doing some articles with Alan Abel, a professional prankster, and they thought it might be fun to trip up Funt. So they presented him with a birthday cake and wouldn’t leave even though it wasn’t actually his birthday. It wasn’t a brilliant gag, but Funt took it good-naturedly.
And then, to Paulette’s surprise, he asked her out. He was nearly 30 years her senior, but she thought, initially, that he was fun to be around. But as she and Funt dated, wherever they went, people would find a way to come up to him and say, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera.” When they would go to a restaurant, the waiter would bring over a note from another table: “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera.” Before long, it drove Paulette nuts. But Funt took it with a smile—whoever sent the note always thought it was the most clever thing in the world. Funt knew he couldn’t escape it, and never would.
He also couldn’t escape Paulette’s constant talk about Scientology and became appalled by what he heard. Funt wrote a check for $10,000 to one of Paulette’s attorneys to help him fight Scientology – and Paulette worked hard to keep Funt’s name out of her depositions for fear that he would be subpoenaed and harassed.
She and Funt dated occasionally for about six months. Her fling with writer Jerzy Kosinski was even more short-lived. She had sent him a copy of her Medical Detectives book, and the Polish novelist suggested they get together at a Sixth Avenue French restaurant where he was a regular. They dated a few times, but it soon ended. She went out occasionally with Ira Levi
n, author of Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Boys from Brazil. She also dated some of the men she met in law enforcement.
In 1979, Paulette had purchased a new bed, only to learn that Scientologists ran the store that sold it to her. Taking no chances, she called people she knew at the FBI, and an agent came over to sweep the mattress for listening devices. After a few dates he ended up sleeping with her on it. Later, when his indiscretion was discovered, he was fired.
He wasn’t the only man who lost his head around Paulette. She repeatedly found herself considering opportunities of the most unusual sort. Perhaps none stranger than a man who, a few years before the mattress incident, had formed an attachment for her because she had saved his son from Scientology.
After the publication of The Scandal of Scientology, for years Paulette was sought out by parents who were panicked because their children had joined Scientology or were considering it. In some cases, Paulette would get personally involved, and this time, she had talked a young man out of joining without much trouble. He was only in the very first stages of fascination for L. Ron Hubbard’s ideas, so Paulette was able to turn him away from it with only about an hour of conversation.
The young man’s father was grateful. And rich. His name was Mitch and after Paulette helped him out with his son, they became occasional tennis partners at the Grand Central Station courts, and he would take her to lunch at the Metropolitan Club, where he was a member. He enjoyed hearing her stories not only about fighting Scientology, but also about her childhood and how she got to America.
Another time, he took her to an expensive lunch spot and they were seated at a cramped table near the kitchen. And there, with other diners so close they couldn’t help but overhear, Mitch asked her to have his child. He would spend at least a million dollars supporting her and the baby over the years if she agreed.
She didn’t know what to say before she managed to get out “That’s interesting.”
“I’ll say that’s interesting,” said one of the men seated nearby in the cramped dining room.
“I was talking about the sauce and not the conversation,” she said, and they all laughed.
But Mitch wasn’t kidding. His own wife was past childbearing years, he explained, and his grown son – the one Paulette had talked out of joining Scientology – was a disappointment to him. He wanted another child and would support Paulette if she would agree to it.
She turned him down. She found out later from his son that Mitch had changed his last name to hide the fact that he was actually Jewish. Paulette suspected he had chosen her because of her childhood stories and to assuage his guilt over changing his name. But Paulette wanted to be a writer, not a mother. And she wanted to make her own money, not get it from a man.
17
‘You must be one hell of a woman’
In August 1981, Paulette Cooper picked up her 18th lawsuit from Scientology. She was in Los Angeles on assignment for the Enquirer, and planned to visit the American Psychiatric Association convention at the Bonaventure Hotel to look for stories. While she was in town, she heard from some of her sources – a Redondo Beach couple named Curt and Henrietta Crampton, who had lost their daughter to Scientology.
The Cramptons told Paulette that Scientology was planning a celebrity auction at the Hollywood Palladium. It alarmed them that Scientology had advertised the auction without a reference to the church. Several Hollywood actors, including Carol Burnett, had agreed to donate items.
The proceeds of the auction would benefit the Fifield Manor, the French chateau on Franklin Avenue that had been one of the locations raided by the FBI four years before – by now it had been renamed after becoming the newest location of Scientology’s “Hollywood Celebrity Centre.”
The Cramptons and Paulette were certain that Burnett and the other celebrities had no idea they were supporting the Church of Scientology. Paulette began making phone calls to the actors and their agents, informing them who was really behind the event.
The Cramptons told Paulette they were going to stand outside the event at the Palladium and hand out literature, and they asked her for a recommendation of what to distribute. She told them about Eugene Methvin’s 1980 article in Reader’s Digest that she’d been interviewed for. They made copies, and the day of the auction the Cramptons stood outside the venue and handed them out.
Paulette didn’t attend the event at all. But the church moved fast, slapping a lawsuit on the Cramptons at the Palladium, and served papers on Paulette at the APA convention, finding her between talks that she was attending. Scientology claimed that the trio’s sabotaging attempts had ruined the auction. Several celebrities had backed out after phone calls from the Cramptons. And after spending $40,000 to put it on, Scientology had only taken in $13,000 in donations.
The lawsuit would generate days more of depositions for Paulette, who had already been through weeks of questioning over the life of all of her lawsuits.
While Paulette’s legal cases grinded on, Mary Sue Hubbard lost her appeal that year. In a footnote to the written decision that would send Mary Sue to prison, the panel of three judges acknowledged that all along, Scientology had complained that it was being put on trial because of its beliefs.
That simply wasn’t true, the judges pointed out. “The crimes charged here are not ‘ideological offenses.’ Those who formulate conspiracies to obstruct justice, steal government property, burglarize, bug, harbor fugitives from justice, and commit and suborn perjury before the grand jury have no constitutional right under the first amendment to conceal the documentary evidence thereof...freedom of religion is not endangered but encouraged when criminal conspiracies are suppressed that attempt to hide behind religion.”
Calling itself a church (while telling its members that Scientology was an exact science of the mind, not a belief system) had been very effective against criticism. But now, gradually, word was getting out about Scientology’s actual methods.
Paulette Cooper and Mike Flynn had met at a rally in Clearwater in 1979. Now, three years later, they returned to the town for a spectacle. In May 1982, the city of Clearwater held five days of hearings about Scientology and its takeover of the city’s downtown. The hearings were televised locally and ran from May 5 to May 10. Flynn had been hired to represent the witnesses and put them on, one by one.
A former executive at the Flag Land Base testified that the complex brought in between $400,000 to $1 million each week from the Scientologists coming to take high-level courses. Another former member testified that Scientology often made health claims that were bogus. Others talked about the incredibly long hours and low pay of church employees, and that secrets they gave up in interrogations were later used against them as blackmail. Children suffered some of the worst conditions of all, the commission was told.
On Saturday, May 8, Flynn brought in Paulette to testify.
“I don’t know how you could survive what you have survived, and I think you must be one hell of a woman,” Paulette was told by Charles LeCher, the city’s mayor. “I don’t know how you even—you can trust anybody anymore. A man that you might meet that he is one of them and trying to get you again.”
LeCher was a city commissioner who had been selected to be mayor on April 12, 1978 when Gabe Cazares resigned. LeCher had been re-elected in 1981. He asked Paulette how she managed to support herself while she had been a defendant in so many different lawsuits.
“I work day and night to support the lawyers,” she said a bit acidly. “I figured out just recently that it’s cost over fifty thousand dollars for legal fees on the suits.”
Paulette then began to tell her story. That she was a freelance magazine writer who had written hundreds of stories—only two of which were about Scientology. She said that the church was telling the people of Clearwater that it had turned over a new leaf and it was behaving better than it had when the FBI raided five years earlier. If Scientology had changed, Paulette noted, “I certainly haven’t noticed it...The e
ighteenth lawsuit was just served on me last week.” Like the others, it was more about causing a nuisance than anything else.
“I am being sued now repeatedly by individual Scientologists who, in some cases, I don’t even know. Suits for supposedly distributing literature at functions I didn’t even attend,” she said.
Up to this point, she had spent nineteen days doing depositions for Scientology litigation, and had four more scheduled in just a couple of weeks. The harassment that had started in 1969 with the publication of her Queen magazine story was still ongoing. Even today, she was still getting harassing phone calls, and so were her parents.
In the past, one way the church tried to smear her was to exaggerate or mischaracterize her legal situation. Letters about her being the subject of investigations by the district attorney or the state attorney general would get sent to the Justice Department or the IRS.
Her mother was still getting visits by operatives. Just a few months earlier, Stella Cooper had been approached by a woman in a beauty parlor as Stella was getting her hair done. The woman said she had a son, and she was curious about Stella’s daughter, who sounded perfect for her son to ask out. Stella was shrewd enough to know that the woman was trying to set Paulette up with a Scientologist, and she left the salon. Shaken, she called Paulette and told her about it. Paulette briefly referred to the incident as she continued to detail her harassment for the Clearwater commission.
Despite that incident, and some problems she’d had with canceled flights in her travel writing career, 1982 was much better than previous years, she said. But she wanted the commission to know what it had been like to speak out about Scientology in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when very few people were doing so.
