Afterlives of the Rich and Famous Read online

  He visits his biological and adopted children, “making up for lost time,” as he says, and he calls himself “a regular” in the clubs on Bourbon Street, particularly the Jazz Preservation Hall. And he can often be found in his favorite synagogue, offering silent prayers of thanks and celebration for all he’s been given and all he has left to give.

  Madalyn Murray O’Hair

  Madalyn Murray O’Hair proudly wore and encouraged the title of the “most hated woman in America,” and her death was, in many ways, as shocking as the life she lived. An avowed atheist, she was born Madalyn Mays on April 13, 1919, in Pittsburgh. Her Presbyterian parents, John and Lena Mays, had her baptized into their faith when she was an infant. After graduating from high school in Rossford, Ohio, where the financially struggling family had moved to live with Lena’s brother, she married steelworker John Henry Roths in 1941, but they separated when they both enlisted to serve in World War II. He joined the Marine Corps, while she joined the Women’s Army Corps and was assigned to a position in Italy, where, in 1945, she began an affair with William J. Murray Jr. Murray was an army officer. He was also a married Catholic, and although his religion prevented him from divorcing his wife, he and Madalyn conceived a child. She divorced John Roths, adopted the name Madalyn Murray, and gave birth to a son whom she named William J. Murray after his biological father.

  After her military service ended, she returned to the United States with her child, graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Ohio’s Ashland University, and received a law degree from South Texas College of Law in 1952, but she failed the bar exam and never practiced law. Instead, she was hired by an airplane manufacturing plant, where she met and had an affair with Michael Fiorillo, a fellow employee, whom she never married, but their son, Jon Garth Murray, was born on November 16, 1954.

  Madalyn joined the Socialist Labor Party in 1956, savoring her role as a relentlessly outspoken activist at marches and protests. This affiliation led her to take her two young sons to Europe with the intention of gaining citizenship in the Soviet Union. Her request was denied, and in 1960 she and her children returned to the United States, settling in Baltimore.

  It was in 1960 that Madalyn Murray, now an avowed atheist, took great exception to the fact that her son Bill was being “subjected to” Bible readings at school, declaring it unconstitutional and filing suit against the Baltimore Public School System. After a long, complicated series of court rulings, Madalyn, armed with her considerable IQ and law degree and enjoying the spotlight at the top of her lungs, managed to propel her lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court, which, in 1963, voted 8–1 in her favor, effectively ending prayer and Bible reading in American schools. The decision gained a lot of national media attention and outrage, and Madalyn’s sons and other family members became flashpoints for that anger while she reveled in her newfound notoriety.

  Her highly publicized success with the Supreme Court inspired her to participate in a variety of other “separation of church and state” causes, from an unsuccessful effort to challenge the tax-exempt status of churches to an equally unsuccessful lawsuit against NASA to declare it unconstitutional for American astronauts to broadcast prayers and Bible readings from space. Before long she managed to alienate not only much of the country, but also one of her own sons. Bill, a born-again Christian and preacher, eventually broke all ties with her and his half brother, Jon, who’d become one of her most ardent followers.

  In 1965 Madalyn Murray married a Marine named Richard O’Hair, who presided over a pro–free thought, pro-atheist organization called the Society of Separationists. She took charge of the organization after his death in 1978. In the meantime, she founded the American Atheist Center and the American Atheist Press in Austin, Texas, both of which were created for the purpose of uniting practicing atheists and providing them with reliable information with which to support their beliefs. Before long her profane, controversial, combative persona was recognized by the entertainment media for, if nothing else, its guaranteed ability to draw attention and ratings, and she was soon giving interviews to Playboy magazine and appearing on national talk shows. She lectured at Dartmouth, Harvard, and UCLA and even became Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt’s “chief speechwriter” in his resoundingly unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1984. She also produced and hosted her own syndicated radio and television shows promoting atheism.

  In 1986 Madalyn decided to retire and handed over the reins of the Society of Separationists and the multimillion-dollar American Atheists offices to her son Jon. Jon was not a popular leader, and many chapters began seceding from the Austin headquarters. Remaining local and state chapters were abandoned in 1991.

  In the meantime, Madalyn had long since adopted her granddaughter Robin, William’s daughter, and Madalyn, Jon, and Robin had become literally inseparable. They lived together, they worked together, they vacationed together, and, thanks to Madalyn’s fiercely territorial control over Jon’s and Robin’s lives, neither of them ever dated or strayed far from Madalyn’s side.

  On August 27, 1995, the three of them suddenly and mysteriously vanished. A half-eaten meal was found on the dining table. Imperative medications were left throughout the house. The family’s much adored dogs were abandoned with no arrangements made to care for them. A note was left on the locked office door of the American Atheists headquarters stating that the family had been called out of town on an emergency and had no idea how long they’d be gone. A handful of phone calls from Madalyn, Jon, and Robin over the next month only added to the mystery. They claimed that they were in San Antonio on business. Jon ordered $600,000 worth of gold coins from a San Antonio jeweler, but only collected $500,000 worth before disappearing again. Both Jon and Robin called various friends to claim that nothing was wrong, although they offered no explanation for their absence, and they reportedly sounded disturbed, stressed, and exhausted. The last communication from the Murray O’Hairs came on September 28, 1995.

  An investigation finally focused on a convicted felon named David Waters, whom Madalyn had hired to work for American Atheists. In 1995 he pleaded guilty to the theft of $54,000 from the organization, and Madalyn wrote an article in her newsletter giving his lengthy rap sheet, which included a vicious assault on his own mother. The article reportedly enraged him, and law enforcement began pursuing a belief that Waters and an accomplice named Danny Fry had kidnapped, extorted money from, and then murdered Madalyn, Jon, and Robin.

  That belief became fact when, in January 2001, David Waters, as a result of a plea deal, led police to a Texas ranch where the severed remains of the three Murray O’Hairs were buried. Waters was convicted of kidnapping, robbery, and murder and died in prison on January 27, 2003.

  From Francine

  The surprise is not that Madalyn went immediately through the Left Door and right back in utero again. The surprise is why. It has nothing to do with the fact that she was an atheist. Atheists who live lives of integrity, kindness, compassion, and sincerity are as welcome on the Other Side as the most devout Christians. What sent Madalyn through the Left Door was that her life was mean-spirited, cruel, dishonest, intensely narcissistic, and, it’s important to add, devoid of any psychological or physiological challenges; and all of these traits were entirely her choice, calculated and deliberate. The fact that I can’t see her chart means that this wasn’t her first dark lifetime or her first trip through the Left Door. Whether it will be her last is completely up to her, although she’s not off to an encouraging start.

  In June 1996 Madalyn reincarnated. She returned as a male, born near the western mountains of the Ukraine. Her name is now Leon or Leonid. I don’t know the last name, nor would I reveal it if I did. Her parents are fine, hardworking people who cannot understand why Leonid, the youngest of their four children, has grown up hateful, rebellious, dishonest, and already involved in criminal activity, while his siblings would make any parent proud.

  With no chart, no Spirit Guide, no acceptance of input from the Othe
r Side at all, it’s impossible to forecast what lies ahead for this lifetime. But as with every dark entity that recycles through the Left Door again and again and again, we’re vigilantly watching for an opportunity to reach out in mid-cycle and bring this soul Home into a Light so sacred and powerfully loving that no darkness can survive in its presence.

  Bette Davis

  The incomparable actress Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her parents divorced when she was ten years old, and from that point on she and her younger sister, Barbara, were raised by their mother, Ruth. In 1921 Ruth moved to New York City with her two daughters and became a portrait photographer, and it was there that Bette Davis’s acting aspirations began taking shape. While attending Cushing Academy in Massachusetts, she saw a production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, which she credited with solidifying her aspirations into a total, heartfelt commitment.

  After graduating from Cushing Academy, Bette auditioned for and was promptly rejected by Eva Le Gallienne’s Manhattan Civic Repertory—she was thought to be “insincere and frivolous.” She moved on to John Murray Anderson’s dramatic school, where she was a resounding success, and in 1929 she made her Broadway debut in Broken Dishes, followed by Solid South. It was in 1930 that Hollywood called, in the form of a contract with Universal Studios. The fact that her extraordinary eyes and highly distinctive looks didn’t fit the Hollywood mold was demonstrated by the studio representative who was sent to meet her train from New York, but left without her, because he couldn’t find any young woman among the disembarking passengers who looked like a movie star.

  After nine months, six unsuccessful films, and mixed reactions to this unique newcomer (including a comment from one executive that she had “about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville,” a pleasant but notoriously homely actor), Bette was released from her Universal contract. Warner Bros. signed her to a five-year contract thanks to her critically acclaimed performance in The Man Who Played God in 1932, and she often credited its star, George Arliss, who’d chosen her as his female lead, with providing her with her first real break in Hollywood.

  She won two Academy Awards in the 1930s—for Dangerous in 1935 and Jezebel in 1938—but she ultimately sued Warner Bros. for refusing to let her out of her contract, believing she wasn’t being offered the quality roles she deserved. She lost the lawsuit, and the 1940s passed with a series of films that declined in success until her Warner Bros. contract finally ended in 1949. Her career jump-started again in 1950 with her brilliant Oscar-nominated performance in All About Eve, and that decade brought her a succession of films as well, but by 1961 the offers had tapered off to nothing. In response, she placed a “Situations Wanted” ad in the trade paper Variety, as a joke, she claimed, that read in part, “Thirty years experience as an actress in Motion Pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumor would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway.).”

  Kidding or not, Bette enjoyed yet another comeback in the 1960s, and in the 1970s she added a TV miniseries to her volume of work, won an Emmy for her appearance in Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter, and became the first woman to be presented with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

  More television projects followed until 1983, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Within two weeks of her mastectomy, she suffered a series of strokes that left her partially paralyzed, from which she recovered with the help of extensive physical therapy. She was able to resume her career on a limited basis through 1989, when she gave her final performance, in the title role of Larry Cohen’s comedy film Wicked Stepmother.

  She “retired” to a series of talk show appearances and was interviewed by everyone from Johnny Carson to David Letterman to Dick Cavett, and her career earned her such prestigious acknowledgments as the Kennedy Center Honor, the Film Society of Lincoln Center Lifetime Achievement Award, and France’s Legion of Honor. It was while receiving the American Cinema Award in 1989 that she collapsed and subsequently learned that her cancer had returned. She managed a trip to Spain to be honored at the International Film Festival there, but her health declined so quickly and severely that she was only able to travel as far as the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She died there on October 6, 1989, at the age of eighty-one.

  Her epitaph, “She did it the hard way,” applied as much to her personal life as it did to her career. Her four marriages and affairs that included director William Wyler and Howard Hughes seemed to bring her very little security or happiness. She had a daughter, Barbara Davis Sherry, by her third husband, William Sherry; and she and her fourth husband, Gary Merrill, adopted two children, Margot and Michael. Tragically, Margot was severely brain damaged from an injury thought to have occurred during or shortly after her birth, and she was ultimately institutionalized. Bette’s biological daughter, Barbara, in 1985, writing under her married name B. D. Hyman, published a very bitter memoir about the relationship between her and her mother called My Mother’s Keeper, in which she portrayed Bette as an overbearing, abusive drunk. Following the release of the book, Bette disinherited her daughter and never spoke to her again.

  In the end, with more than 120 film, television, and theater credits, two Oscars, ten Academy Award nominations, and dozens of other honors acknowledging her utterly unique style and talent—flaws, abrasiveness, and all—Bette Davis more than earned her status as one of the American Film Institute’s greatest female stars of all time.

  From Francine

  All who witnessed Bette’s arrival described her emerging from the tunnel with a very apparent attitude of, “It’s about time!” She was tired of fighting her illness, tired of fighting in general, and had been looking forward to returning Home since the strokes she now says she found far more demoralizing than her breast cancer. “I never looked the same. I never sounded the same. I was more painfully aware of those facts than anyone, and I hated it. My themes were Infallibility and Winner. How could I not have hated it? I was just too stubborn to hide in my room like a self-pitying coward.”

  She was greeted by an unusually large crowd of loving friends, many of them from her amazing fifty-six incarnations, and William Wyler and Howard Hughes in particular from what she calls “my best and my last lifetime.” She was completely overwhelmed by her reunion with William Wyler, a kindred soul from five of those past lives and one of her fondest companions here at Home. His death years before hers had devastated her, and they held on to each other for a very long time before Bette’s Spirit Guide, Remy, accompanied her to the Scanning Machine.

  Reviewing her life left her satisfied for the most part—she was proud of refusing to be denied her great talent, “the finest gift I had to offer”—and she watched her performance in Dark Victory twice and was most proud of that.

  Bette is extremely introverted and, as she always has, lives alone with her six cats, preferring to change homes often. She has an overstuffed red velvet chair that she loves, and she takes the position that as long as she has her chair, she’s at home no matter where she is. She continues to express her passion for performing with an unending series of plays, particularly with her old friends Laurence Olivier and Carole Lombard, and she’s also returned to another of her passions: she’s one of our most admired Romance language teachers, specializing in classes for spirits preparing for new incarnations in which they’ve charted professorships on that subject.

  She’s currently taking great delight in mentoring a playwright named Keller or Kellogg. He’s planning to incarnate in 2014 by your years, in northern Oregon, and will one day write and successfully publish a trilogy of plays called Houses of Glass, on which he and Bette are currently working.

  There is no one Bette visits on earth, and she adds, “There will be no further incarnations, thank you. I think that world and I have had quite enough of each other.”

  Anna Nicole Smith

  Anna Nicole Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan on Novemb
er 28, 1967, in Harris County, Texas. Her parents divorced when she was still an infant, and she and her mother, Virgie, a Houston law enforcement officer, briefly lived with her Aunt Elaine until Virgie remarried in 1971. She attended school in Houston until the ninth grade, when she was sent to live with another aunt, Kay Beall, in Mexia, Texas.

  After failing her freshman year at Mexia High School, she decided she’d had enough of formal education, dropped out in her sophomore year, and promptly found a waitressing job at a fried chicken restaurant. There she met and fell in love with the restaurant’s cook; seventeen-year-old Vickie married sixteen-year-old Billy Wayne Smith on April 4, 1985. Their son, Daniel Wayne Smith, was born on January 22, 1986, and when the young couple separated in 1987, Anna Nicole moved back to Houston with her year-old son. The marriage legally ended in 1993.

  She was performing as an exotic dancer in 1991, when she responded to a newspaper ad for upcoming Playboy auditions and was promptly chosen for the March 1992 cover of the magazine. It was also in 1991, at the strip club where she danced, that twenty-six-year-old Vickie Smith met eighty-nine-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall. They were married in 1994 amid a predictable swirl of accusations that she married him solely for his money, which she denied. He died thirteen months later, triggering a decade of court battles over his estate between Marshall’s sons and her.

  In the meantime, Anna Nicole’s modeling career gained momentum. She was Playboy’s Playmate of the Year in 1993, having officially changed her name from Vickie Smith to Anna Nicole Smith by then, and that same year she signed a contract to model in print ads for both Guess Jeans and H & M Clothing.