3 LA ProphetsThe essay is about 3 los angelinos Criswell's is the first part. The festival sounds interesting
Three Los Angeles Prophets: Gene Scott, Aimee McPherson & The Amazing Criswell
Posted by Charles A. Coulombe on October 05, 2007
On 18 August 2007 at 10:30 P.M., my brother Andre, writer-documentary-maker Ed Canfield, and I led a candlelight procession of some 50 people down Selma Avenue in Hollywood , California . The cavalcade wended its three block-long way from an establishment called The Piano Bar to an office building inhabited by an outfit called “Five Star Video,” at 1555 Cassil Place . Despite the date, this was not an observance in honor of St. Agapitus—Hollywood is not known for its festas (although in recent years the feast of San Gennaro has become a local observance—thanks to Jimmy Kimmel, of all people). No, despite the fact that all occurred under the shadow of the imposing Jesuit Church of the Blessed Sacrament (where I received my First Communion), the worthy being honored was the Amazing Criswell.
This procession, which featured the singing of such hymns as “Kumbaya” and the theme from The Rocky Horror Picture Show was part of a festivity dubbed the “Cristennial,” in observation of the great psychic’s hundredth birthday. Other events included a party at the Piano Bar, featuring an endless loop of one of Criswell’s appearances with Jack Paar in 1962, and a rendition of Mae West’s classic ballad in his honor, “Criswell Predicts.” You see, the Video Office, in its former incarnation as 6620 Selma Avenue , was the apartment house which the prognosticator had owned, where we Coulombes had made our home upon arrival in Hollywood from New York in the mid-60s. Together with Criswell’s former art director, Claudia Polifronio (a fellow tenant at the time) and our mother, Andre and I were the only ones of the glittering assemblage who had actually known the great man. All the others had assembled purely out of homage to America’s first celebrity psychic.
Of course, it must be confessed that all the veneration offered the memory of the Man from Princeton (Indiana) was not entirely serious. True, one night in 1962, on the Tonight Show, Criswell had declared that “I predict that President Kennedy will not run for reelection in 1964, because of something that will happen to him in November 1963”—a prediction many others of the ESP fraternity discovered that they had made only after the event. Moreover, on December 31, 1965, Criswell predicted that Ronald Reagan would be California’s next governor. Some of his predictions—unattached to a particular date—have certainly come true: homosexuality has indeed been legalized by the Supreme Court, and clothes have become very unisex. But many others might be considered wildly inaccurate—for instance, that Mae West would be elected president in 1960; that pregnant women would be the first Americans on the Moon; that London would be destroyed by a meteor in 1988. Most famous of all, of course, was Criswell’s declaration that the World would end on August 18, 1999.
Sadly, the seer himself had “departed our dimension” (in Tim Burton’s memorable phrase) in 1982. Bereft of his support, I resolved to ride out this momentous occasion with many friends at Boardner’s, Criswell’s favorite bar in Hollywood—it was in staggering distance from the house. As writer John Whalen wrote in his coverage of that event for The New Yorker, “Alas, when the last revellers left, at 2 A.M., Boardners was still standing, thus dealing the Criswell legacy yet another harsh statistical blow.” Yes, well, scoffers may scoff! But we true believers know that all of us on earth are simply dwellers in the Criswellian aftermath! Thus it was that, eight years after that initial effort, the Cristennial was organized. Sadly, Boardner’s, well-described by Whalen as “congenially moldering” in 1999, has since been gentrified out of recognition; all that remains the same is the sign outside—worse yet, Saturday is “Goth Night,” eminently unsuitable for such a party. Hence the change of venue.
On a more serious note, however, Criswell’s career, bizarre as it was, has a certain significance beyond that magic circle of fans of bizarrerie. For one thing, Criswell incarnated the American dream, albeit in a funhouse mirror. During his high school years in his Hoosier hamlet, he wrote for a local paper. He migrated to Cincinnati and then New York , and in the latter town drifted into theatrical circles. Teaming up with later wife Myrtle Stonesifer—under the name “Halo Meadows”—a sometime speakeasy dancer) he resolved to break into Broadway. This he did, with his own play, The Life and Loves of Dorian Gray. It ran for a month in 1936; but how many of us will ever see our work on the Great White Way ?
Marrying Halo in 1940, Criswell took her and himself on the road with Dorian, playing across the country, and landing in Hollywood—where the cast included Norvell, another noted mentalist. But Criswell’s career as a psychic would really take off in the 1950s, with a nationwide television show of his own, numerous nightclub appearances in L.A. and Las Vegas, a nationally syndicated newspaper column revealing his predictions, and, of course, the Tonight Show. At his height, he became an important figure on the local scene, riding several years in Hollywood’s Christmas celebration, the Santa Claus Lane Parade; Criswell even hosted a television retrospective on the Hollywood Hotel, when that famed resort of the stars faced the wrecking ball. What has kept his memory alive, however, has been his appearances in his friend Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s three classic films, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Night of the Ghouls, and Orgy of the Dead. These, in turn, led to Tim Burton’s cinematic tribute to Wood, Ed Wood, wherein Criswell is played by the hapless Jeffrey Jones (better known, perhaps, as Emperor Joseph II in Amadeus and Matthew Broderick’s nemesis in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). But it must be said that Jones’ performance bore little resemblance to the man I knew. That was fine, though. Excellent as Johnny Depp’s Wood, Martin Landau’s Bela Lugosi and the others were, had Jones played Criswell as he was, they would have vanished into his shadow, as Kevin Costner did into Sean Connery’s in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.
The truth is, that with his shock of blond-white hair, invariable white or black tie, and booming delivery, Criswell was hard to miss. On his television show, the impressive strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” would be followed by the great one’s stirring messages, delivered in stentorian tones—“We are all interested in the future, because that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives”; “We are all lighted candles in a darkened room: weary travelers on the road of life!” With vocabulary and tense inspired by the Bible, Shakespeare, 19th century oratory, and medicine show pitches, such messages always trembled on the verge of comprehensibility. Audiences were wowed, for a while, anyway. His messages could be fevered:
Can our whirling, turning, churning earth last out the night? Our geologists tell us that the danger to Mother Earth lies not in the uncharted vast of outer space, but from inner-earth! .... Here is what will more than likely happen according to geologists: Small tidal waves will play havoc for no reason at all. The surface of the earth will bulge ever so slightly and highways will slightly buckle. Foundations will tip, and floors will slant. When you pour a cup of coffee or a glass of water, the rim will not level. Telephone coin boxes and vending machines will refuse to work. Delicate instruments will go haywire. Elevators will go out of whack. Jukeboxes will be mute. Radio and TV will fail. All electric power, gas and water service will cease. And then will come the time when garbage cans roll across the street for no apparent reason. Then and only then will you realize the advanced corrosion spelling the end of our Earth. The seas will quickly fill up with a gooey mass of inner-earth rubble. Our streets and city lots, farms, and deserts will bubble up like a festered oil, marking the complete collapse. Has this happened before? More than likely. And it will again happen in your incredible future.
But they could be reflective too—and Criswell commented on everything at one time of another: Biblical references, ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, lost continents, and a heavy dose of good, old fashioned Heartland moralism were tossed into the mix and served up. But this odd stew was uniquely American, as any reader of supermarket tabloids can attest. With it, Criswell conjured himself a career out of nothing—and this, too, is very Horatio Alger.
Alas, as the 60s wore on, and psychics and the occult became mainstream, Criswell’s star faded. His show did not last the 50s, and by the end of the 60s (although he did pen three books at that time) his column was relegated to the tabloids. Mrs. Criswell, who held unorthodox views on reincarnated pets and the virtues of grazing on grass for humans (she was a practitioner, and I a witness) was nevertheless a shrewd businesswoman. When her father died in 1972, she returned to her hometown to live off the proceeds of the family property, and apparently sold the Selma Avenue house (to which she had title) out from under her husband. He retreated to an apartment in Burbank, where he lived out his last decade. Criswell’s ashes reside in a tiny niche at the Valhalla cemetery in North Hollywood. Alas, his arc of success is also one that has been repeated in countless careers.
Perhaps Criswell’s major flaw was that he was not phony enough to succeed. Although he claimed some psychic powers in public (he was more forthcoming to friends) his approach to religion was always that of a nebulous layman. Never did he claim a link with the Almighty (though often referring to Him respectfully). Thus while he could ask for money from fans, Criswell could not demand it from followers.
