Monday, June 21, 2021

Weird Scenes Inside the Resume of Candice Bergen

Most actors and actresses struggle for years to break into The Industry, spending a small fortune on acting lessons, photos, resumes, etc.  Most never make it, and eventually leave Hollywood behind.  Not Candice Bergen, though.  This gal literally had fame and fortune served up on a golden platter.  Nepotism could have opened some doors(her dad was a big name in The Industry), but that alone can't account for her success.

https://maureenorth.com/1989/02/candice-bergen-plays-at-hollywood-1989-vanity-fair/ 

Bergen launched a successful modeling career when she was in her late teens.  Her looks also had a lot to do with her flunking out of Penn, where she’d gotten A’s and F’s simultaneously.  But so what?  She was barely nineteen and a mini-celebrity.  “It was quite tantalizing what I was being offered out in the world.”  (Oscar nominated director)Sidney Lumet asked her to play the coolly beautiful lesbian Lakey in the film version of The Group. Esquire gave her an assignment to write about it.  Before The Group was even released she was given a co-starring role with Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles (a huge big budget production). 


Knock Wood by Candice Bergen, pg134 "Sidney Lumet had contacted me before I left college. ...he.. was interested in me for the part of Lakey." [Candice had experience in just two college plays at this time]

pg152  Producer Robert Wise recruits her to star opposite Steve McQueen

pg162  Fall 1965  she travels to Rome, Beirut, Damascus, Cairo, and Calcutta  before going to Taiwan in Nov 1965 to film The Sand Pebbles 

pg96   "I made other friends on Taiwan:  American bureau chiefs who briefed me on the island and generously took me on tours; US Military brass.. and Taipei's diplomatic circuit... "

Candice continues with her world travels:
pg169  1966  She travels to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Rhodesia, and South Africa

pg171 Summer '66 in Greece, where she is sought out by yet another director for another movie (The Day the Fish Came Out)

pg172  She goes to Paris, where she just happens to meet another director who again offers a role for yet another film(Live for Life).  Films in Amsterdam, East Africa

 Candy kept getting juicy roles, despite bad reviews of her acting ability:

https://airmail.news/issues/2019-8-31/candice-bergen-star-reporter
Candice Bergen wanted a life of adventure...   Her reviews were often lukewarm, but directors kept casting her, enchanted no doubt by her Scandinavian beauty... Another early mentor was the celebrated photographer Richard Avedon.  [Candy seems to be surrounded by highly-placed, influential 'mentors.']

https://www.marieclaire.com.au/candice-bergen-life-story
Nicknamed “the Ice Queen”, her earliest on-screen roles had received fairly dismal reviews. ...
By then she had signed with Ford Models. Film director Sidney Lumet spotted her posing with a leopard-skin* pillow in a Revlon ad and cast her as a lesbian in his controversial 1966 movie The Group, but her first foray on the screen didn’t impress critics.


 

https://www.marieclaire.com.au/candice-bergen-life                                                                           
Reviewers were left equally bemused by her performance in 1970’s The Adventurers (critics: "It alternates from slaughter to torpor to sex to torpor and back again to slaughter." “Bergen performs as though clubbed over the head … the dialogue may simply have stunned her.”)

Candice seems to have been as confused as anybody as to how she got to be a star:

https://clickamericana.com/topics/celebrities-famous-people/actress-candice-bergen

1968 interview: “Why do I do it? Why?” she says. “It’s not what I am or want to be. It’s so contrary to what makes me happy. And I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. ... I’m not an actress. I’m just a kid who goes out there and reads a line..... I would be very proud of myself if I could give up acting.”    [Why can't she?]

 

Candy even admitted in her book that she didn't bother taking any acting lesson until after her twelfth movie!  You won't find the word 'audition' in her book.  All the while, she is being courted by some people in very high places:

November 28, 1966    Candice also managed to get invited to the social event of the decade, the BLACK AND WHITE BALL at the Plaza Hotel in NYC.   Hosted by author Truman Capote, 540 of his elite friends attended the masquerade ball. 

The attendees mostly included the creme de la creme of New York society.  Why was Bergen included on the guest list?

                                                         Eyes Wide Shut?


https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a32972194/truman-capote-black-white-ball-oral-history/

CANDICE BERGEN, actress: I remember faces: Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow, ... I was a new girl in town and wasn’t really sure why I’d been invited.


"There was a guy who wore an executioner’s hood,” Bergen recalls of the party. “It got a little creepy."

 

https://lpcoverlover.com/2007/08/13/model-candace-bergen/                                                         Throughout the 1960’s, she would attend lavish parties thrown by the likes of CBS president William Paley.

https://maureenorth.com/1989/02/candice-bergen-plays-at-hollywood-1989-vanity-fair/                     She went from pheasant shooting on the Continent with uptight European aristocrats into the arms of her old high-school flame, Doris Day’s son, record producer Terry Melcher, one of the hippest of the L.A. hip.

May 1967 Candice appears on the cover of Vogue Magazine. (Abigail Folger's photo also appeared in a featured story in that issue.)


Candice Bergen, of course, was Terry Melcher's live-in girlfriend from about May of '67 until just after TLB happened.

Doris Day, the untold story of the girl next door by David Kaufman c.2008  pg390
Bergen moves back to the US after two years in Asia, Africa, and Europe in 1967.
"Bergen first saw Terry's house on Cielo Drive when she attended one of his parties."

June 15, 1967 Candy at Monterey Pop


 (Abigail Folger was also back stage at some point.)

Aug. 24, 1967 - Yippies throw dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in a famous stunt.  Trading is briefly halted.  The group of about a dozen young men and women, including Candy Bergen, is led by radical Abbie Hoffman. The media is tipped off and is there to record it all.

Dec 1967  Candy writes article for "Esquire" 'Is BelAir Burning?' about the invasion of rock 'n roll musicians into Bel Air("Beverly Hills' snootiest neighborhood").  She meets Sonny and Cher, the Mamas and Papas and the Beach Boys and other big names. (That issue also had a picture essay of Sharon Tate titled "A Beginner's Guide to Mao Tse-Tung.")

"Inside the gate is a rose-infested bungalow housing the Bel Air Patrol, a sort of Special Forces squad of pristine policemen... ..they keep teeny-boppers away from Bel Air's celebrity residents(Elvis).. or celebrity transients(The Beatles)."  (Strangely ineffective on the night of Aug 8th, 1969, though.  If Bel Air was a 'gated community' how come nobody in the Patrol ever noticed the Watson crew coming and/or going?)

 

May 1968  Candice goes on tour to help with the RFK presidential run.  She also covers the 1968 presidential primaries in Oregon as a journalist.

Many sources also claim Candice is one of the celebrity ex-members of the Church of Scientology.  Her involvement was in the 1960s, at some point.

 

One person she apparently never met at Cielo in those years is Charles Manson.  In Knock Wood she mentions Charlie only in reference to Melcher knowing him.  And says nothing about Tex or any girls with him.  Nor does she say why she and Terry suddenly broke the lease on the house and fled to Malibu, or exactly why she and Terry felt they were the real targets, right after the murders.  No mention of any interview with the LAPD detectives.  After TLB she managed to make herself scarce:

She broke up with Terry and fled to Mexico to do a blood-soaked Western("Soldier Blue"--(critics: "set a new mark in cinematic violence"  "a bloody 1970 exploitation western ... [which] has a gore-count worthy of Cannibal Holocaust.").  And thence to Spain to film "The Hunting Party" (critics: "It is blood and more blood..." "a repellantly violent western") from June '70 until Sept '70.  (No pesky reporter's questions for the Golden girl!)

Deana Martin was subpoenaed to testify in the Tex Watson trial.  According to her, Melcher had some kind of deal with Bugliosi so she wouldn't have to testify in the TLB trial.  Candice got an even better deal.  She wasn't subpoenaed for the TLB either, and for the Watson trail she merely had to sit in the back of the courtroom with Bugs to see if she could ID Tex.  She claims she didn't recognize him. 

Knock Wood pg203  "I had been shown photos earlier in the year to see if I recognized Charles Watson... the police believed he might have been at the house on the hill while I was there. I looked at the photos; I don't think so.... When I received a subpoena to appear in court, Bugliosi arranged for me not to testify publicly, and instead sat with me in the back of the courtroom when Watson... was brought out to the defense table. Did I recognize that man? Bugliosi asked. No, I said, I didn't. All flower children look alike."    (No messy cross examination for the Golden girl!)

[Though she now admits to seeing Watson at the front door of the Cielo house in this recent interview: https://www.stitcher.com/show/awards-chatter    (29:15)      She also now admits that they broke the lease at Cielo to get away from Manson.  (worth listening too, just for Candy's obviously faked ignorance of the case)]

 

Interestingly, Bergen also backed away from her association with Roman and Sharon.  She does admit that Roman Polanski attended her 21st birthday party on May 9, 1967 in Los Angeles.  She does NOT mention that she attended Roman and Sharon's wedding in London on January 20, 1968.  Nor does she mention that she sent a letter to Roman while he spent a month in prison:

Jack the Great Seducer by Edward Douglas c.2004   pg182
"...Polanski was confined in Chino Prison for forty-two days(late Dec '77 to Jan '78) of psychiatric assessment prior to sentencing for having sexually abused a minor. ... Polanski received mail from Candice Bergen ..."

Did Roman and/or Sharon visit Terry and Candice while they lived at Cielo?

Roman by Roman Polanski c.1984 pg299
Terry Melcher... ... was splitting up with Candice Bergen, so their rented house off Benedict Canyon was on the market. Sharon, who had always liked it, contacted the owner, Rudy Altobelli, and we signed the lease on February 12, 1969.

Obviously Sharon, at least, had been there before, and it is likely she had been there while Terry was living there, given Candice's friendship with Roman.



 -----------------

After returning from making movies abroad, Candy takes up with radical Hollywood wunderkind/producer Bert Schneider('the Monkees' "Easy Rider").  In the spring of 1970 she attends Black Panther fundraising events.

https://www.salon.com/2012/06/09/true_hollywood_story_the_producer_and_the_black_panther/
In actress Candice Bergen's memoir, "Knock Wood," she writes about her love affair with Schneider, then in his 40s. She was still in her mid-20s. ... After his divorce, he had moved in across the narrow canyon from her cottage and lived barely 200 yards away. ...she fell for him nonetheless... He was all about "taking care of things or controlling things ... Soon he began to take care of me ..."
The ardent revolutionary who introduced his pal Huey to the likes of Jane Fonda and other luminaries...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpNOL5C9Lls                                                                                 Q:  Your life in the '60s with all these revolutionaries.  You met them all didn't you?"  
A:  I did, yes...  Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Abbie Hoffman, Dan Ellsberg. Joan Baez .... That was in the '70s, in the '60s it was really the rock people that moved into Bel-Air....

Her affair with Schneider lasted from 1971 to about 1974.  In that time Schneider became increasingly close to Black Panther leader Huey Newton, and funded him to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, back when that was real money.  In this time also Newton became a heavy user of cocaine, and ended up destroying what was left of the Panthers with his paranoia and arrogance.

https://www.salon.com/2012/06/09/true_hollywood_story_the_producer_and_the_black_panther/
What hooked her(Bergen) was the sheer force of his(Schneider's) powerful and seductive personality...   "At times, I thought he financed the Panthers single-handedly, indirectly dispatching agents of the revolution from behind his desk or beside the pool table of his Hollywood Office of Operations."
....both men were spiraling down with drugs -- free-basing cocaine was their shared drug of choice.

 


                                            Newton and Schneider


Candy's description of Bert sounds a lot like what the girls said of Charlie, and they seemed to have the same interests:

Knock Wood pg243   re Bert Schneider "This was what I had waited for:  a man who wanted to take care of me; a man who wouldn't take any lip." (he lives at Bergen's feet, but won't let her step on him)  His bookshelf included books by John C. Lilly**.  "The bookcase bulged with volumes on behavior modification, LSD therapy, subjugation of jealousy and maps on open marriage." 

 

Bergen dates Henry Kissinger.  She lays down on the floor of the U.S. Senate Building and gets arrested.  She serves as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern's presidential campaign.  She interviews Fidel Castro and Haile Selassie.  She travels to Red China and Esalen.

After her breakup with Schneider, Bergen hits the road again: Ethiopia, Dar es Salaam, Rio, Kyoto, Teheran.

 

In the '60s and '70s Candice went everywhere, met everyone, and did everything.  Successful model?  Check.  Successful actress?  Check.  Successful photojournalist and magazine writer?  Check.  Hobnobbing with European royalty, New York High Society, Rock Stars, Yippies, and Panthers?  Check.  [The daughter of a member of Bohemian Grove?  Yeah, that too.  oo-ee-oo!]

This gal was where she needed to be, when she needed to be there!  IF someone was fortuitously directing her career--the hidden hand behind her amazing success--then the question is, did this person put her at 10050 Cielo Dr. for a specific purpose?

 

“She’s one of the people who knows a hell of a lot more than she’s ever said” 

    --Tom O’Neill

------------------------------------------

*Was Candy a beta-kitten?  See https://hollywoodsubliminals.wordpress.com/project-monarch/sex-kitten/actresses/

"Animal Print clothing is employed for this method of communication as it symbolizes the uninhibited or “wild” instincts brought out in the slave via Project Monarch’s Beta or “Sex Kitten” Programming; and when triggered will perform any action (or sex act) required by the handler."

                                  Who took a bite out of that apple?  


**A John Lilly book was also found in the bedroom of Folger/Frykowski at Cielo.  He was into CIA sponsored mind-control in the '50s before re-emerging as a counter-cultural guru/dolphin whisperer in the '60s.




23 comments:

orwhut said...

Thank you, Star. The article was very informative and I appreciated your listed references.

Torque said...

Excellent post, Star. I have not read Candice's book yet, but it has been reported that Candice encountered a very dishevelled and grimey Tex Watson in the kitchen at Cielo.

Evidently he was waiting on Terry Melcher when the startled Candice saw him. Terry apparently told Candice who Tex was, and to not be alarmed. This was no doubt the time Tex went to Cielo to obtain money from Terry for the purposes of bail. Instead, Terry did not have the funds, but did provide Tex a ride back down to the Strip.

Dan S said...

Cui bono? Polanski waited 20 years to have a child. Sick pun in there if you disagree...

Dan S said...

"All best"? All THE best, right?

D. said...

I know of somebody who met her and asked her point blank about Charlie and she didn't deny having met him and claimed her was "nothing like" the way he is portrayed. It's also an impossibility for her to not have known Watson and probally had more interaction with him than she did Manson because Watson and Melcher were more involved with each other than anyone will know. Moorehouse being his spiritual advisor is the biggest load of hogwash. Especially when you consider Dean supposedly just preached the gospel of Charlie and LSD.

starviego said...

D. said...
"I know of somebody who met her and asked her point blank about Charlie and she didn't deny having met him and claimed her was "nothing like" the way he is portrayed."

At this stage of the game, why don't they just come clean? What have they got to lose?

Fayez Abedaziz said...

We had the Beatniks.
Coffeehouses, poetry readings, some folk music and then most of 'em moved on.
Time did too and now,( 1966) those of us that heard about 'em, said, well, "they sounded cool man"
Then, comes the word "Groovy." Then, some said, "'cool' is cool, groovy is kinda, well, old and maybe a little silly.
Then,
I said, "it's fine with me, have you bums heard 'Rubber Soul' yet?" Yeah, "Mr. know it all, we did." They said back. I laughed,"okay."
Within days, I went and bought a suede coat, just like the one Paul McCartney was wearing on the cover of that album. I went around high school and coffee'soda shops quoting John Lennon. Ha
Here, the mid-late 60's, the things we did. On our own or copying this or that or just "going along," people and things...
and movements.
I'll tell you some more.
Like, say...the utter bullshit about these phonies they write about.
Candice Bergen? Michelle Phillips?
Listen to some of us, even as early as '69 and what we said about these airheads."Can you freakin' be more 'establishment" then them?"
All you have to read, about them, is the lifestyle they always lived.
Never cool, never any humility, except the silly, trite poses for the images they wanted or were primed to display. Joni Mitchell was more 'real,' for example.
Candice couldn't even get/use one of the 'in' words or expressions right:
referring to big, dirty, drugged out mass murderer Tex Watson as a..."flower child" type. You get the point.
Check out McGowan's book that Starviego has mentioned before. About the Laurel Canyon. I think I mentioned this before, which is, of all the places I've been in California,Laurel Canyon gave me the creeps and I felt afraid and almost fainted.
I said, to the driver, he and two other friends, in the car, "let's keep going, I've seen enough." I felt moody, but somehow serene, one night, years later as I stared at Spahn Ranch.
Who are these people that gravitated to that Laurel place? Why were almost 100% of the 'musicians,' the actors/actresses, from a high ranking military or intelligence agency parent or more and hell, Sharon's dad was a Colonel and close to intelligence agencies.
Here's my point to all of the above, (sheesh, finally dude, some of you are thinking)
These people were 'lookers' and had nothing to do with 'hippies,' the 'hip movement' and that includes this fella Schneider. The quickly fading away of the bands living in Laurel, in terms of any small influence on those of us in our teens to our early twenties, by the mid-seventies. And they had no real knowledge or insight in what some of us 'active' students/radicals/protesters were really thinking and doing. I know, I helped lead some.
Sometimes, I just say, "people will believe just about anything they read about the 60's in a magazine article or as part of a book."
What was there can be told not by a reporter or some of these studio/production people like Terry Melcher the 'welsher.' ha I had to throw that in. He welshed on brother-rest in peace' Charlie.
They only saw with their eyes and would hang around some 'radical' people, like a Black Panther or freak like Timothy Leary (CIA anyone?)
Can you tell me why Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were murdered?
Even 'overdosing' Morrison's girlfriend to death, her name is Pamela Courson.
Why was President Kennedy's friend, maybe sometimes a bit of a 'hugging friend,' beautiful Mary Myers, executed as she was jogging in D.C. along a river, one day? what about when I walked over to an SDS meeting, then, weeks later, to hear Mark Lane give a talk, same College room, after his book- Rush To Judgement- in stores in 1967-came out about the conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and the ridiculous Warren Report, which was a cover up. I'll be back. Next, you will see

jempud said...

Dice Fayez:

Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were murdered?

I don’t know who this Fayez is but he doesn’t make much sense. A casualty of the 60s, perhaps? And his literary style is painful – obsessive, pretentious and only occasionally coherent. Sorry, but someone has to say it.

These three musicians lived hard and fast, in a drug-fuelled world. That’s all there is to it. Yes, they were associated vaguely with the counterculture, but not in any meaningful way. If the CIA or FBI or whoever were offing people connected with the counterculture they would have gone after musicians like Sanders or Tupfeberg, more radical people, not stoned rock and blues singers. None of those three were exorcising the White House or the Pentagon.

I would imagine that yes, there were files on the three of them [and many others] but they didn’t have any communist links. Whyever would Hoover want them out of the picture?

Simply put, each of these died by their own hand and as a result of their own actions from illegally acquired drugs. End of.

Ciao

Jem

jempud said...

Sorry, misspelt Tupferberg, typed from memory. Should've checked. Founder member of The Fugs.

Peter said...

Hendrix died because he took too many Vesparax sleeping pills. But I guess technically he acquired them illegally, because it wasn't his prescription. Morrison's official cause of death was "heart failure." Joplin was the result of a drug overdose - and the medical examiner was the man we all know and love, Thomas Noguchi.

jempud said...

Yep Peter. Joplin died not so much through an OD as we understand it, but from a bad batch of heroin (others died too) - it worked very quickly on her and she died with the needle in her arm. Or so I understand; I wasn't actually there.

Milly James said...

Hi Folks - Re Hendrix: He took his girlfriend, Monika's prescribed drugs. The UK and USA tablets were approximately the same in dosage. She had a German prescription which was far higher. Hence the accidental overdose. I understand Monika panicked and didn't do what she should have done. Kathy Etchingham and Monika ended up in Court over allegations and counter allegations about the shenanigans that night. Kathy won and Monika committed suicide shortly afterwards. Uli Jon Roth of the Scorpions has a website dedicated to her.

Milly James said...

Re Janis - I would recommend Alice Echols' Scars of Sweet Paradise.

Jay said...

It’s amazing all of the connections, no matter how small, that there are between the Family and Hollywood. I doubt we will ever no the whole truth about any of this.

orwhut said...

People occasionally say that "Hollywood is a small town," in connection with this case as if it's a famous quote. Not knowing who said it, I looked it up and found the author to be, Mark Stalling. Then I had to look him up.

Hollywood is a small town, believe it or not. I see the same people over and over, so it's not that overwhelming or crazy as you might think.

Mark Salling

TabOrFresca said...

Starviego,
Another nice article down a road not taken.

The earliest I remember seeing Candice Bergen in a film was in “Carnal Knowledge”. It took a little guts to act in that film. Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret really nailed their roles.

Jack had his ties to Roman later (in Chinatown and Roman’s infamous scandal (at Jack’s house)). The husband of Ann-Margret, curiously, had the same name as Manson’s parole officer. I wonder if Jack and Candice spoke of anything related to TLB while shooting Carnal Knowledge?

Opportunities and fame sometimes happen by chance and for mysterious reasons. Rookie MLB pitcher “Bo Belinsky” became a celebrity when he threw a no-hitter for the Angels. Tate has become immortal because of TLB.

Ann-Margret could dance, sing, act in comedies and drama. She had a great figure and beautiful face. There was even a Flintstone episode about her. But she is mostly forgotten.

Fayez Abedaziz said...

You know, it was several years later that Ronald Reagan bought a ranch, after having been governor of California a couple of times.
In August of 1968, I, and a friend, in Santa Barbara, got a room at the Santa Barbara Inn.
Kenneth Anger wrote two books titled-Hollywood Babylon. I read the second one.
Before I forget, the ranch Reagan and dear Nancy lived in, was called
Rancho del Cielo. What
I knew it, California is really a place of strange trips and of weird 'trips.'
Kenneth Anger exposed a lot of scandalous happenings in the show biz crowd.
Politics was involved in making points from sensational events, such as the un-kind events that several people from Rancho del Spahn were involved in, in July and August of 1969.
So, Candice went to all of those countries and, like other bimbos, everything can be explained or rationalized away, like they're so dearly innocent and why, "I kinda was there and saw this person at this event and then... isn't it terrible what some people do." Cut the bullshit Candice and other actresses and singers,
you were there and, as far as Cielo Drive,Sharon was the good person and you did see Tex and probably easy livin' Charlie Manson. Son of a gun. Candice and every other bullshitter writing for magazines or newspapers were with the 'Mockingbird' program. Screw that and screw her and the other show biz freaks that cooperated with the Fed agencies, that were, factually, really acting illegally and against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
By the way, when I asked the front desk clerk, why there was a framed picture in my room, of Reagan and lady Nancy, he said, 'they stayed in that room." I said, "I'm thrilled" and rolled my eyes.
So, Kenneth Anger had Bobby Beausoleil as a visitor and friend and composer of music for some film, was it Looser Rising? Oh, Lucifer Rising. What bull.
Meanwhile, scatterbrain Janis Joplin, mixed up Jimi Hendrix (excuse me while I eat this pie) Oh, 'Kiss the sky.' Jimi the druggie dummy, all kinds of 'em, whenver.
And Jim Morrison, who ridiculously wore rubber pants, was trying to be continually high. Could it be that it was that easy to get any drug they wanted?
Could it be that there were a couple of guys, at the Monterey and at the disgusting Altamont one, that were walking around giving away acid tabs? LSD. The drug, not the Mormon church. Which I respect, so be quiet about it.
Hendrix, screwed up former military, Morrisons' dad, Admiral of the fleet that made up the 'Tonkin attack' on American naval vessels, that paved the way for America to increase, to full speed ahead, to make war on Vietnam.
Back to Reagan: in the late 40's and early fifties, he carried a gun for protection cause he was an FBI informant. You know, to report on communist activities in the Hollywood show biz community. He would even go to a payphone in a drugstore to call and report. Rather un-nice, if you ask me.
The CIA played pimp in San Francisco, at that house, where, several sleazy CIA guys, sitting behind a one way mirror, drinking booze, watched while one of the hookers that they payed, would have a customer who would be given something to drink, spiked with LSD. Unkowingly, by the hapless 'John.' And, so, like prisoners and concert goers, they would be filmed and studied. Like rats.
The FBI knew Spahn, they knew the goings on in Laurel Canyon. They gave poisoned drugs and/or over 'dosed' amounts in some tabs and in cocaine and heroin.
When someone decided that they wanted out of being an informant, they were 'taken care of.' How many of these freaks, the 'musicians' that lived in Laurel were FBI or CIA informants? More than a few. every other was a phony, they were not the 'counter-culture' thinkers many people thought they were. Think. I have just scratched the surface. Inside Hollywood? Sure, I had a first hand account from a studio person and she said...

Guy Callaway said...

Bergen is so wooden, i wouldn't doubt that she took acting lessons from one of her father's dummies.

orwhut said...

OT
Am I the only one St Circumstance has looking at a mismatched couple and trying to decide if the attraction is drugs or money?

AustinAnn74 said...

She was a good looking, thin, young blonde with mediocre acting abilities born to show biz parents....Those qualifications could and still can, open doors to anything & everything! I like to call it the "Kate Hudson or Gwyneth Paltrow effect." Enough said....

Ajerseydevil said...

It's been proven that Jim Morrison's father being involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident is pure bullshit I think that fairy tale started in the book Weird scenes inside the canyon

starviego said...

Morrison's father was definitely in the middle of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCtzcx_UyjA

Retromoviefan said...

I just read Tex Watson's Will You Die For Me in which he describes meeting Candice Bergen (he doesn't name her but it's obvious that's who it is), when he goes to Cielo to get money from Melcher. The thing that I found fascinating about that interchange (which had the ring of truth about it), is that Bergen demanded to know who he was and what he was doing in there in her kitchen. I thought that was quite amusing, given that Candy Bergen's persona over the years has been that of an ultra liberal revolutionary badass chick. But obviously when a real life hippie dude arrived unannounced in her posh kitchen, she wasn't having it. Typical Hollywood hypocrite. (not that I'm defending horrific Watson, only pointing out that she was and is a phony).