Cults in America

[victorianscribe]

Well, I got the book today, and to be honest, I feel kind of sick right now. I'm just glad it didn't arrive on the anniversary of Freddie's loss.

In the midst of stories about Jim Jones and Guyana, Witchcraft, and Black Masses, is this little tidbit. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, but I still don't like it.

Phasing Out Of Shangri-La

In the hills about Hollywood lies a Shangri-La world that few outsiders ever see. Narrow, winding roads lead to private estates in Beverly Hills, Benedict Canyon, Bel Air and other exclusive neighborhods. The people who live there have fulfilled the American dream. They are rich, famous, successful ...

Gossip's very much a part of Shangri-La, except when it reaches the wrong ears.

Leaving Shangri-La, phasing out, comes easier. An overdose. Sleeping pills. The crack of a pistol shot. It's all over in an instant
and the departing member can be assured of leaving behind one question that no one professes being able to answer -- WHY?

Freddie Prinze -- Pure Gold

Shangri-La seldom enjoys the opportunity to open its gates to a member so stunningly qualified as Freddie Prinze who was only twenty-two when he wanted "out," been around only a couple of years, bringing youth, vitality, good looks and a reservoir of talent that had barely been touched. His "act" was pure gold and as Chico in Chico and the Man he needed to go no further for applause and appreciation of his talent than the canny veteran who played The Man, Jack Albertson. When Albertson called an actor "good," he didn't need reviews.

When Freddie shot himself in the small hours of the morning and died twenty-four hours later, the Beautiful people asked "why" and came up with the usual answers. "He couldn't handle success ... he was too young ... things happened too fast for him ... he was too withdrawn."

The speculation artfully dogdged the real reason -- for serveral years he'd been in the limelight. Even before he moved from New York to Hollywood, the young star who brought humor and dignity to his Puerto Rican heritae had been freaked out on drugs. You don't point a gun at your head the first time you smoke a joint or sniff cocaine. Or even the second or third trip around. Man's body is a miracle of toughness. It takes a long time to abuse it to the point where the mind can no longer distinguish between reality and the fears, terrors, and demons that drugs produce. But once the inevitable line has been crossed, tragedies like that of Freddie Prinze should surprise no one. You only have to pick up the paper of any American city, large or small, to know that drugs and alcohol are the two most potent killers roaming the world today.

Freddie Prinze stayed clean when he was a kid in the ghetto and a student at New York's High School for the Performing Arts, and never indulged in anything stronger than an occasional joint when he was beginning to gain recognition in the handful of night clubs in New York that open their doors to young new talent. He was accepted for the Tonight Show, discovered there by producer Jimmy Komack, who had created Chico and the Man and was searching for a talent like Freddie's to bring it off. He already had Albertson in his pocket.

However, at sixteen Prinze was already into cocaine as well as alcohol. Between the two he'd become a zonked-out kid, but no one bothered to find out much about this part of his life when he was singled out for television stardom.

So he went to Hollywood and the public figure is all on the books. His career was meteoric; he was a star the day he started to work. And Shangri-La sent its messengers to connect him, slimy little pied pipers of death -- pushers in tailored suits, handmade shoes, initialed underwear. They've got the keys to Shangri-La. They've got just what a young kid needs to knock off the tension -- a broad, a pad, and cellophane packets of white stuff. "There's nothing to it, kid," they say. "You'll feel great, and isn't that how everybody wants to feel? ****, you're entitled to a little fun, a little relaxation. Look at all the dough they're making on you -- the big guys. And what's left over after the fat cats have taken their bite dribbles down to you."

Actors have been suckers for that line as long as there have been actors, but there wasn't always the easy availablity of Quaaludes to lull them into forgetting their resentment. There was a time when actors took suspensions, lost a barrel of money. Others just got sore, walked away from the business, and made a barrel of money. But they stayed alive, groused or cheered, depending on how things turned out. Whatever their fate, they were the masters of their own destiny -- not enslaved by a tiny bottle of pills.

This whole topic is just making me so sad, and besides, I have to teach two classes tonight -- I'll post more later.

Poor, dear Freddie.

[Joy]

[victorianscribe]

I know. This is why I haven't written today. Wait until you read the rest.

Keep in mind, though -- the info comes from a long-forgotten, pretty cheesy paperback book. Still, it's being sold on eBay, and Freddie's name is being used to advertise it, which stinks.

[victorianscribe]

Here's a little more:

Freddie Prinze went the whole route. He married, fathered a child, tried to kick the habit, turnedfrom one drug to another, found street men who'd feed his craving when his doctor turned him down. The plice came into his life and all the four years of addiction whirled into a momenet of desperate depression. The world closed in on him. His mind, no longer functioning freely, follwed the course his addiction dictated -- end it, give back the keys, drive away the terrors once and for all. Freddie Prinze listened and they put him to rest in Forest Lawn with the usual high sounding words and typical post-mortems.

Wrote Pete Hamill, "It's too easy to say that Hollywood killed him. But if he had stayed in New York, if he had not done Chico and the Man and instead had taken the time to deepen and season his talent, while maturing emotionally, he might have lived ... In New York Prinze would have had the streets, with their get-tough lessons, their hard ironic intelligence, their ability to see through weakness and hypocrisy. He would have had genuine friends instead of people who fed on his talents. He would have had time to grow up."

Hamill's points were well taken but naive. What young actor could cconceivably have turned down Chico and the Man to "mature" on the streets of New York?

None. If there had not been Freddie Prinze, there would have been a Freddie X. He might have been stronger than Freddie Prinze -- or weaker. Who can honestly make a prediction and who can honestly pinpoint the factors responsible for Freddie's degeneration?

More later.

[Luckymama58]

I can see a lot of what they are saying, and they are right in many respects. We can all sit back and say what if....


The thing that gets me is the fact that this is in a book about cults, unless they are calling the drug culture or even the Hollywood culture cults.... I guess one could look at them this way. I know they keep talking about the lure of drugs or the lure of Hollywood..... and cults tend to lure their victims....
Still it is a bit of a stretch.

Sounds like there isn't anything new in this book, just the depressing realities of Freddie's problems with none of the celebration of his life. At least they do recognize his talent. Who knows what could have happened. I still think he had the wrong people around him managing him, and not recognizing his warning signs for help. Soooo sad.....

I sometimes look at people like Richard Prior and wonder how he made it through the drugged out times, cause I wonder if his current health problems might not be connected with his former drug use.... I guess for every Richard who survived, there is a Freddie who didn't.... Look at Rock stars too, and movie stars.... the world is full of the ironies of the contrasts of those who survive and those who don't.... I guess there is no sense to be made of it.....

[Joy]

[Pitooey]

Joy I can understand why you're crying..... Hearing it makes me want to cry too.

Alot of what I just read is typical of what they had said about Freddie. There is a lure of money hungry greedy drug people who want to take a star's money. Look at Whitney Houston. It did happen to Richard Pryor and loads of others....

These authors do make it sound like he was drugged up all the time.

Freddie had too many greedy people around him. I'm sure they gave him free stuff. While they were giving him freebies they were probably robbing him blind.

[Pitooey]

To call it a Freddie cult is bull.........

People always want to point a finger at an innocent man who (maybe) took his life.

No one wants to say that it was a DRUG CULT! Made by a society who looks the other way when drugs are bought in this country. Or made here..... So it wasn't a Freddie cult... Shame on the author of this book!

[Pitooey]

Thanks Victoriansscribe for posting these excerpts of the book.


I am looking foward to hearing the rest....

[victorianscribe]

Okay. Here's the sad and sorry end of it.

If a heavy can be identified it's Show Business itself -- a profession never noted for its sympathy toward human frailty. There is that hackneyed legend that "the show must go on," as indeed it must, because the paying customers are waiting. Today it goes way beyond a theatre audience. TV is a killer, and who was around to monitor a kid like Prinze, to realize his problem and help him cope with it? The old-time producers who used to lock their drunken actors nude in hotel rooms, don't seem like such villains today -- not compared to the gargantuan machinery of modern show business which lives by computers which have never been programmed to consider the human equation. A manufactor of cars doesn't give a damn if some Puerto Rican kid is selling them and killing himself at the same time -- just that they've sold.

As long as Freddie was on the stage during the day and did his job, lifting poor scripts out of mediocrity, who cared about the terrors he endured at night? Who even asked hwere he spent them, or about the company he kept? Was he dining out with the pill-popping set, or was he at home working on his lines?

The Freddie Prinze suicide was a one-day sensation, dropping out of the headlines as abruptly as it appeared. The Beautiful People returned to their walled estates, took extra precautions against invaders from the outside, promising themselves to be more cautious about accepting someone like Freddie again.

With the latest one down, the obituary writers sharpened their pencils for the next tragedy from Shangri-La.

I don't know about you, but this chapter about "cults" brought the whole tragedy back to me like a sledgehammer. I'm glad I didn't pay much for the book -- kinda sorry I ever saw it in the first place, but I'm glad I had the chance to share it with all of you.

Let's all go to sleep with positive, loving thoughts of Freddie tonight.

[Joy]

I couldn't agree more with you Victorianscribe!!!

[Cheryl Harrell]

After writing what I was gonna say & sending it I immediately got disconnected from the internet & lost everything I wrote. Scream, scream, scream...

I hate how they made out like he was a cult to sell the book & then made out like he was a drug abuser. It was the pills & the dr precribing them that was the problem. Not a dear sweet innocent boy. I agree with them on hollywood tho. It's sad how they let a dear boy get hooked on pills & then commit suicide. It is stuff like this that makes folks make him out to be some kinda nut cuz he comitted suicide... I was tearing up too...

Thanks for sharing this with us. Were there any pics of him in the book? Just wondering...

This here is the real Freddie...

[victorianscribe]

See, the thing is -- and I was going to post this last night, but didn't know if I should -- I think the eBay seller kind of overemphasized Freddie's place in the book, maybe to help sell the item. There are no photographs in the book, but the cover has drawings of Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and a man I don't recognize. Freddie's name is not listed anywhere on the cover -- as a matter of fact, I had to study the book for several minutes to find the several-page section devoted to him.

Again, this is a long-forgotten cheesy paperback; I'm sad that it's still out there at all, but I don't think we should overemphasize its effect upon dear Freddie's reputation.

Thank you, Cheryl, for reminding us of who he really was.