Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  As early as 1991, Michael admitted to the black musicians and producers who worked on Dangerous that he had gone too far with the cosmetic surgery and said, almost apologetically, that he wished he could reverse the process. That was impossible, so he continued to try to fix the fixes, submitting to the knife again and again until he seemed to some an alien life form.

  “He came in approximately every two months,” said Hoefflin’s former associate Dr. Wallace Goodstein, who recalled multiple nose jobs, cheek implants, eyelid surgery, and the cleft implant. “It was about ten to twelve surgeries in two years (during the 1990s), while I was there.”

  Michael pitted doctors Hoefflin and Klein against each other, and in the process probably only exacerbated his problems. Hoefflin had for years enjoyed the status and the perks he derived from accompanying Michael on tour, billed as “Mr. Jackson’s special traveling companion and personal physician.” By around 1990, though, Klein succeeded in convincing Michael—at least temporarily—that he didn’t need any more plastic surgery (particularly on his nose) and that he should rely on subcutaneous fillers instead. The danger of repeated surgical procedures, Klein warned (correctly), was that when enough blood vessels in the face were cauterized the blood stopped flowing and the skin eventually turned black and withered away or even fell off in pieces. “I remember times when Michael told Arnie he wanted to have a surgical procedure done, and Klein told him no,” Marc Schaffel said. “Arnie would call the doctor and say, ‘Don’t do it.’” Hoefflin (a man who mentioned his “genius IQ” at nearly every opportunity) countered by telling Michael that the massive injections of collagen he was receiving from Klein were worsening his lupus. He continued to get the injections, though, and to schedule surgeries with Dr. Hoefflin. How many of those procedures actually took place remains an open question. In the mid-1990s, four of Dr. Hoefflin’s nurses sued him for sexual harassment, alleging, among other things, that the plastic surgeon had handled and mocked the genitals of celebrity patients who had been placed under anesthesia. The nurses also claimed that for several years their employer had been staging elaborate hoaxes in which the doctor placed Michael Jackson under general anesthesia but only pretended to perform an operation. Jackson would wake up with his nose bandaged, the nurses said, convinced there had been a “touch-up” on his already tiny proboscis. Hoefflin denied the story and claimed not only that he had won a dismissal of the lawsuit, but also that he had received a letter of apology from the attorneys who had filed it and “a substantial sum of money” from the former colleagues he had countersued. Whether that was true or not remained in doubt, as records in a related case stated that each of the women who sued Hoefflin had received $42,000 in compensation. However that lawsuit had been settled, Hoefflin continued to serve as one of Michael Jackson’s doctors.

  Neither Hoefflin nor Klein wanted their work on Jackson detailed in public. In 2003, when the Santa Barbara County sheriff’s department served search warrants on each doctor’s office, deputies were informed that all records relating to Michael Jackson had been removed and that neither the doctors nor their attorneys would reveal where those records were now being kept.

  By the time of his criminal trial in 2005, any number of psychologists who had never met Michael Jackson were diagnosing him on TV as suffering from “body dysmorphic disorder,” a psychological condition in which a person loses all sense of how he or she is seen by others. Yet according to Deepak Chopra, Michael was acutely aware of what vitiligo had done to his appearance and “had, as a result, a very, very poor image of his body. He was almost ashamed of it. That’s why he would cover it up. Why do you think he wore a glove and all that stuff. He would not go into the swimming pool in his own house with his clothes off. He would just jump into the pool at the last moment, you know, take his robe off, but he was ashamed that people would look at all the blotches on his skin.” Jackson wept when the editor of Us Weekly told an interviewer that she could no longer put Michael Jackson on the magazine’s cover because people found looking at him depressing.

  Around the same time, London’s Daily Mail published an interview with Professor Werner Mang, director of the renowned Bodensee Clinic in Lindau, on the German-Swiss border, a man who boasted of building his reputation by “making beautiful noses” for celebrity clients. In 1998, Mang said, Dr. Hoefflin had asked him to perform “reconstructive surgery” on Michael Jackson’s nose. Mang flew to California for a consultation and discovered that the skin on Jackson’s face was “parchment-thin,” while the tip of the entertainer’s nose was “unstable.” He had fixed the latter problem, Mang said, by using some of Michael’s ear cartilage to shore up the nose he was in danger of losing altogether. A couple of days later, David Letterman joked that Michael was now “deaf in his left nostril.”

  Hoefflin denied Mang’s story and if the Swiss surgeon really had tried to save Michael Jackson’s nose, he failed. Dr. Mark Sinnreich recalled Michael’s first visit to the orthopedic surgeon’s Florida office in 2002: “I had him take off his mask . . . It looked almost like he had two blow holes. No nose.”

  Michael made do with prosthetics. He kept them in his closet at Neverland, a big jar of fake noses—various shapes and sizes—surrounded by tubes of stage glue. “He told me they were for disguises,” recalled Adrian McManus, one of his maids at Neverland Ranch. All Michael was disguising at this point, though, was what at least six rhinoplasty surgeries had left him with: a pair of nostrils surrounded by a rim of shriveled, shrunken, discolored cartilage. He had been a skilled makeup artist since his teens, and in fifteen minutes at the mirror could create an appearance that fooled most people. Plastic surgeons had been speculating on TV since as early as 1990 that the tip of his nose had been replaced by a prosthetic of either bone or plastic. By about 2001, though, the way his nose was changing from year to year—sometimes from week to week—gave him away.

  Michael salvaged something from this personal disaster. At least now he could have the nose he had always wanted—Bobby Driscoll’s. The most famous child star of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Driscoll had for years been an icon of Jackson’s who rivaled Shirley Temple in importance. Bobby was the first actor Walt Disney ever put under contract, to play the lead character in 1946’s Song of the South. His best-known role would be as Jim Hawkins in Disney’s 1950 version of Treasure Island, but for Michael Jackson the most important part the boy had ever played was for Disney’s 1953 animated film Peter Pan. Driscoll provided the voice of Peter Pan in the movie, but it was his work as the animators’ “reference model” that captivated Michael. He admired the child actor’s slim, athletic physique, straw-colored hair, and light spray of freckles, but what he adored was Driscoll’s perfectly pyramidal, slightly upturned nose. It was a feature so unusual that it looked as if it belonged on the face of a pixie or some other preternatural creature, perfect for Peter Pan and, Michael believed, perfect for him, too. He began to appear in public with his Bobby Driscoll prosthetic right around the time Invincible was being released. There is footage from 2002 of Michael standing amid an enthralled crowd outside the Virgin Records store in Times Square in New York, arms open and hands extended as if embracing the applause and adoration that flows like a gust of wind through the scene, his chin lifted, Barack Obama–style, as he stands in profile to the camera, his Bobby Driscoll nose raised to the sky as if being displayed not just to those present, but to all of creation, seeming to declare in that moment, “I am Peter Pan.”

  Along with the acquisition of his nose, Michael had become a student of Bobby Driscoll’s sad and lonely life. He knew all about the disappointments the young actor had suffered when the film part he had been promised as Tom Sawyer failed to materialize, and how crushed Bobby Driscoll had been when he met with Walt Disney after the release of Peter Pan and was told by his employer that he was probably more suited these days for roles as a young bully than for the part of an appealing protagonist. Nothing about Bobby Driscoll’s life made Michael identify with him more tha
n learning that the young actor’s contract with Disney had been canceled immediately after his sixteenth birthday, because, according to a studio press release, the severe case of acne he had developed made him unwatchable. Michael knew all about how the teenage Bobby Driscoll had bounced around after that between various Los Angeles–area high schools, teased and tormented by other kids as a has-been who had played a bunch of cornball parts in hokey family films. He knew that Driscoll had begun to experiment with heroin when he was seventeen, was busted for possession of marijuana at the age of nineteen, then arrested for assault with a deadly weapon after he pistol-whipped a pair of hecklers, and incarcerated in 1961, at the age of twenty-four, in the California Institution for Men in Chino. Michael described for friends how, upon his release, Bobby tried to reinvent himself as an adult actor named Robert Driscoll, but met with little success. Michael had even researched Driscoll’s 1965 relocation to New York, where he tried to find work on the Broadway stage and, failing that, joined Andy Warhol’s Greenwich Village art community, the Factory. Driscoll’s collages and cardboard mailers were considered outstanding by some people (and would be exhibited at the Santa Monica Museum of Art) but never earned him more than a few pennies, and Bobby was flat broke by the time he left the Factory in late 1967. A few months later, shortly after Driscoll’s thirty-first birthday, two boys playing in a deserted East Village tenement found his lifeless body, but there was no identification on it, and photographs circulated through the neighborhood failed to turn up even a single person who recognized the dead man. The anonymous corpse was buried at Potter’s Field. “His own family didn’t know that he was the one in the pauper’s grave with a heroin overdose,” Michael would marvel. “He was a Disney giant, the voice of Peter Pan.” And yet look what Bobby had come to. Michael had promised Shirley Temple that he would open a museum for child stars some day, and that the boy who had played Peter Pan would be given a featured display. In the meantime, though, all that was left of Bobby Driscoll, besides those early Disney films, was the nose on Michael Jackson’s face.

  Michael Jackson onstage in the early days of the Jackson 5. A star was born, particularly when Berry Gordy got the Motown machine primed. (Mirrorpix)

  Those kids wouldn’t be so popular if they didn’t have a damn midget as their lead singer! The Jackson 5 circa 1966, in a publicity shot from their “chitlin’ circuit” days. Clockwise from far left, Tito, Jackie, Jermaine, and Michael at bottom, with Marlon in the center. (Gilles Petard/Redferns)

  1971: The Jackson family has moved to the Hayvenhurst estate in Los Angeles and Michael just graced the cover of Rolling Stone for the first time (not this image). He has also been schooled in showbiz truthiness, insisting he is two years younger than his actual age, thirteen. (©Henry Diltz/Corbis)

  The Jacksons, no longer allowed to use the “Jackson 5” name after leaving Motown, in New York, February 1977. Jermaine, breaking with his brothers over the Motown split, has been replaced by fifteen-year-old Randy. Later this year, Michael will return to New York to shoot The Wiz, and have his first taste of independence. (©Bob Gruen/www.bobgruen.com)

  Michael was escorted to the Golden Globes, for which he won Best Song for “Ben,” by his parents in February 1973. Two months later Katherine would file for divorce from Joe, but wouldn’t go through with it.

  (© PHIL ROACH/IPOL/GLOBE PHOTOS INC.)

  Blame it on the boogie: The Jacksons around the time of Destiny, their first record for their new label. Their 1979 world tour would take them to nine countries and four continents. (Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

  Michael had known Stevie Wonder since his early days at Motown, and appeared on several of Wonder’s songs. Michael was in the studio here, along with his brothers, supplying backing vocals on Wonder’s 1974 song

  “You Haven’t Done Nothing.” (Todd Gray)

  Michael’s arrival in New York allowed him to stretch his wings, and he became a regular at Studio 54. Here he is with Woody Allen in April 1977.(Russell Turiak/Liaison)

  Michael dancing with Tatum O’Neal at a 1978 party in Los Angeles held in celebration of the Jacksons’ gold records. (Brad Elterman/BuzzFoto/FilmMagic)

  Man in the mirror: Michael, New York 1977. The child frontman had become painfully self-conscious as puberty wreaked havoc on his skin and his brothers and father mocked his appearance. (©Bob Gruen/www.bobgruen.com)

  Alone in a crowd—or onstage—Michael could put his introversion aside.

  (Epic Records/courtesy Neal Peters Collection)

  Michael’s love of movies and desire to act stayed with him all his life, as did his love of costumes, either as dress up or as disguise. Here he is (left) as Charlie Chaplin in London, 1979. (Tony Prime/WpN)

  Dressing up as The Wiz’s Scarecrow (right) allowed Michael an excuse for his skin breakouts and inaugurated a lifelong dream of movie stardom. (Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images)

  Michael with Andy Warhol in 1981, whom he befriended four years earlier while in New York for The Wiz. They both enjoyed watching the goings-on at Studio 54, but neither really participated. (©Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis)

  We want Michael! Michael’s success with Off the Wall made him the indisputable star of the Jacksons, and on the Triumph tour he’d started to adopt the signature look that would come to full flower with Thriller (rhinestone accents, long curly hair). He had also had his first rhinoplasty. (©Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis)

  Michael and Diana Ross in 1981 on her TV special. Motown’s first lady, Diana introduced the Jackson 5 at their Los Angeles debut, and taught Michael how to conduct himself as a star. (Rex USA)

  Liza Minnelli was another Studio 54 friend with whom Michael maintained a lasting bond. She escorted him to the club’s VIP area and, later, to Swifty Lazar’s legendary Oscar party. (Ron Galella/WireImage)

  She’s even wearing his glove: Michael met actress Brooke Shields, a fellow survivor of childhood stardom, in 1984, and she became his constant companion at public appearances and a good friend. Passion? Not so much.

  (©Sonia Moskowitz/Globe Photos/ZUMAPRESS.com)

  Michael in the “Beat It” jacket, with his sister La Toya, around the time she played his love interest in the “Say, Say, Say” video. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

  “Dodgy to be someone’s friend and then to buy the rug they’re standing on”: Michael with Paul McCartney in 1983. They wrote and recorded music together and bonded over their mutual love of collecting cartoons, but the friendship soured when Jackson bought the Beatles catalog. (©Bettmann/CORBIS)

  When Michael acquired majority ownership in the Hayvenhurst property, his parents’ home, from his father, he remade it, demolishing and rebuilding the house and assembling his own menagerie, including these deer, Prince and Princess. (Todd Gray)

  Michael on November 30, 1983, with his brothers and Don King at a press appearance for the Victory tour. He had recently become friends with Emmanuel Lewis, the twelve-year-old star of Webster, also pictured.

  Three days later, the “Thriller” video was released. (©Bettmann/CORBIS)

  Quincy Jones, producer of Thriller, was at Michael’s side as he collected an arm-straining eight awards at the February 1984 Grammy Awards, a month after he was burned shooting a Pepsi commercial. (AP Photo/Doug Pizac/Saxon)

  Michael showed the victory sign arriving at Heathrow with his manager Frank Dileo. He was literally treated like royalty in London, entering the Guildhall for a sumptuous fete in his honor by the royal entrance, by special permission of the Queen. (Mirrorpix)

  John Branca, Michael’s attorney since 1979, with whom Jackson is pictured here at Branca’s 1987 wedding, negotiated some of his biggest deals and career moves. (AP Photo/courtesy of John Branca)

  The Changing Face

  of Michael Jackson

  1976

  1983

  2000

  2002

  1988

  1995

  2005

  2009

  1976 (Mich
ael Ochs Archives/Getty Images); 1983 (Dave Hogan/Getty Images);

  1988 (©Rick Maiman/Sygma/Corbis); 1995 (Andrew Shawaf/Online USA);

  2000 (Robin Platzer/Liaison); 2002 (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images);

  2005 (Phil Klein-Pool/Getty Images); 2009 (MJ Kim/Getty Images)

  At Radio City Music Hall in 1992, Michael did press for the Dangerous world tour with Tommy Mottola of Sony Music (with beard) and Peter Kendall of Pepsi.

  (Ron Galella/WireImage)

  When Sony sought promo ideas for 1995’s HIStory tour, Michael suggested, “build a statue of me.” Nine were built and distributed to select European cities including this one floating up the Thames on a barge. “Baldly vainglorious,” said the LA Times. (Associated Press)