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Too much too much detail wow can't fit into one post needed to split into a few post.
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Personal life
Hubbard claimed that when he was four years old, he became the protegé of "Old Tom", a Blackfeet Indian shaman.[152] In 1985, Scientologists claimed that members of Blackfeet Nation, Montana, commemorated "the seventieth anniversary of [L. Ron Hubbard] becoming a blood brother of the Blackfeet Nation. Tree Manyfeathers in a ceremony re-established L. Ron Hubbard as a blood brother to the Blackfeet Tribe."[152] Blackfeet historian Hugh Dempsey has commented that the act of blood brotherhood was "never done among the Blackfeet", and Blackfeet Nation officials have disavowed attempts to "re-establish" Hubbard as a "blood brother" of the Blackfeet.[152] Former vice president of the tribe's executive committee, John Yellow Kidney dismissed the credibility of a letter claiming to re-establish Hubbard as a blood brother.[152]
Publicly, Hubbard was sociable and charming.[153] Privately, he wrote entries in his notebook like "All men are your slaves," and "You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have the right to be merciless."[7]
After a 1940 sailing trip that ended with engine trouble on his yacht, he began a three-month stay in Ketchikan, Alaska. Hubbard worked as the host of a popular maritime radio show where he was known as a "charismatic storyteller".[11]
Hubbard was also interested in and talented at hypnosis [11][154] and biographer Russell Miller mentions several incidents—including a cruel post-hypnotic 'prank' recalled by writer A.E. van Vogt—which suggest that Hubbard sometimes used his hypnotic talents capriciously on his unsuspecting subjects.[155]
During this same period, just after World War II, Hubbard was financially destitute,[7] and suffered from feelings of depression as well as suicidal thoughts, according to a letter he wrote in 1947 requesting assistance from Veterans Affairs.[156]
Toward the end of my (military) service, I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected....I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all.Hubbard's first wife was Margaret "Polly" Grubb whom he married in 1933, and who bore him two children: L. Ron, Jr. (also known as Ronald DeWolf) and Katherine May (born in 1936).[157] They lived in Los Angeles, California and, during the late 1930s and '40s, in Bremerton, Washington.[158] In a 1983 interview for Penthouse magazine that he later retracted,[159] DeWolf said, "according to him and my mother", he was the result of a failed abortion and recalls at six years old seeing his father performing an abortion on his mother with a coat hanger. In the same interview, he said "Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game" and described his father as "only interested in money, sex, booze, and drugs."[160] Later, in a sworn affidavit, DeWolf stated that he had "weaved" stories about his father's harassment of others, that the charge he had made about drugs was false, and that the Penthouse story was an example of statements that he deeply regretted and that had caused his father and himself much pain. Before, in 1972, L. Ron Jr. had signed affidavits declaring the denigrating statements he had made about his father false.[161]
– L. Ron Hubbard[7]
After the war, in August 1945, Hubbard met Jack Parsons, a researcher at Caltech and an associate of the British Intelligence occultist[162] Aleister Crowley.[163][164] By Crowley's account, Hubbard and Parsons were engaged in the practice of ritual magick in 1946, including an extended set of sex magic rituals called the Babalon Working, intended to summon a goddess or "moonchild."[165] At this time, Hubbard formed a partnership with Parsons and Betty, which they named "Allied Enterprises". To this, Parsons invested $20,970.80, Hubbard invested $1,183.91, and Betty, nothing. Hubbard came up with a plan to go to Miami with Betty, purchases three yachts, sail them through the Panama Canal, and sell them on the West Coast at a profit. Parsons soon realized that he had his girlfriend and most of his life savings stolen by Hubbard. After an attempt to catch up with Hubbard and following a court settlement, Parsons received only a promissory note for $2,900 from Hubbard.[166] The Church says Hubbard was working as an ONI agent on a mission to end Parsons' supposed magical activities and to "rescue" a girl Parsons was "using" for supposedly magical purposes.[167] Hubbard later married the girl he said that he "rescued" from Parsons, Sara Northrup.[168] Crowley recorded in his notes that Hubbard made off with Parsons's money and girlfriend in a "confidence trick."[169][170]
Sara Northrup became Hubbard's second wife in August 1946 while he was still married to Polly, something Sara did not know at the time[171] Hubbard left his first wife and children as soon as he left the Navy, and he divorced his first wife more than a year after he had remarried.[172] Both women allege Hubbard physically abused them.[160][173][174] Later, he disowned Alexis, claiming he was not her father and that she was actually Jack Parsons's child.[175] Sara filed for divorce on 23 April 1951, claiming that Hubbard was still legally bound to his first wife at the time of their marriage.[176] She accused him in her divorce papers of kidnapping their baby daughter Alexis, as well as torturing her.[176][177][178]
On August 1948, Hubbard was arrested and charged for petty theft in East Pasadena, California. Subsequently, he pled guilty and paid $25 fine.[179]
In 1952, Hubbard married his third wife, Mary Sue Whipp, to whom he remained married until his death. Over the next six years, Hubbard fathered four more children: Diana, Quentin, Suzette, and Arthur.[180] Quentin, born in 1954, was expected to one day replace his father as head of the Scientology organization.[181][182] However Quentin was uninterested in his father's plans and had preferred to become a pilot. He felt guilty about his homosexuality, and committed suicide in 1976.[182] Hubbard was prone to self-aggrandizement and exaggeration,[11] and, in 1938, he wrote a letter to then-wife Margaret "Polly" Grubb reading, "I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form, even if all the books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned."[7] In 1984, during the Church of Scientology's lawsuit against Gerry Armstrong, Judge Paul G. Breckenridge Jr. described Hubbard as "charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating and inspiring his adherents." However, the judge ruled against the Church, and in so doing said that "The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements."[7]
In 1957, Martin Gardner wrote that friends differed in their assessments of Hubbard. Some described him as honest and sincere, some called him a great con man, and to others he was basically sincere but a victim of his own psychoses.[183] Several trusted colleagues say Hubbard was prone to emotional fits when he became upset, using insults and obscenities. Former Scientologist Adelle Hartwell once described such an outburst: "I actually saw him take his hat off one day and stomp on it and cry like a baby."[7]
The financial windfall that came with the success of Scientology allowed Hubbard to hide this and other aspects of his personality that contrasted with the image of himself currently celebrated by Scientologists,[7] who regard Hubbard as "mankind's greatest friend".[184] The few who worked at his side saw personality flaws and quirks not reflected in the staged photographs or in Hubbard's church-produced biographies.[7]
Later life
In 1976, Hubbard moved to a California ranch, and returned to writing science fiction.[4] He wrote an unpublished screenplay called Revolt in the Stars in 1977 which dramatizes Scientology's OT III teachings.[185] In 1982, he wrote Battlefield Earth,[4] and later wrote the ten-volume Mission Earth. During this time, Hubbard's science fiction sold well and received mixed reviews, but some press reports suggest that sales of Hubbard's books were inflated by Scientologists purchasing large quantities of books to manipulate the bestseller charts.[186][187] While claiming to be entirely divorced from the Scientology management, Hubbard continued to draw income from the Scientology enterprises; Forbes magazine estimated "at least $200 million gathered in Hubbard's name through 1982".[1]
In early 1980, it was expected that L. Ron Hubbard would be indicted by a New York grand jury investigating Operation Freakout, the Guardian's Office's campaign against New author Paulette Cooper, or by a Floridian grand jury investigating Scientology's activities in Clearwater.[188] Around the end of February 1980, he went into hiding[189] and remained in seclusion in the small town of Creston, California for the remaining six years of his life.[190] Hubbard was in such seclusion that on November 6, 1982, in a Riverside, California court, Hubbard's son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., sued for control of his father's estate, saying that his father was either dead or incompetent.[191] Hubbard was proved to still be alive.[192]
In a bulletin dated May 5, 1980, Hubbard told his followers that he would be reincarnated in the future, "not as a religious leader but as a political one." He set his followers the task of preserving his teachings until his eventual return.[132]
On January 24, 1986, Hubbard died from a stroke at his ranch in Creston, California, at age 74.[193] He left a $600 million estate.[4] Scientology attorneys arrived to claim his body, which they sought to have cremated immediately in accordance with his will.[7] They were blocked by the San Luis Obispo County medical examiner, who ordered a drug toxicology test of a blood sample from Hubbard's corpse.[7] The examination revealed a trace amount of the drug hydroxyzine (brand name Vistaril).[194] After the blood was taken, Hubbard's remains were cremated.[7]
The Church of Scientology announced Hubbard had deliberately discarded his body to conduct his research in spirit form, and was now living "on a planet a galaxy away."[7] In May 1987, David Miscavige, one of Hubbard's former personal assistants, assumed the position of Chairman of the Religious Technology Center (RTC), a corporation which owns the trademarked names and symbols of "Dianetics", "Scientology", and "L. Ron Hubbard".[195]
Fictionalized depictions in media
See also: Scientology in popular culture
- Hubbard turns up in a fellow pulp author's fiction as early as Anthony Boucher's 1942 murder mystery Rocket to the Morgue, which features cameos by members and friends of the "Mañana Literary Society of Southern California", in which Hubbard makes a dual appearance as D. Vance Wimpole and Rene Lafayette (a pen name of Hubbard).[196]
- Del Close, who apparently knew Hubbard personally through his involvement in science fiction fandom, fictionalized an encounter between them in an autobiographical story in the comic book Wasteland. The story showed Hubbard hypnotizing Close in order to probe the latter's subconscious memories in a similar manner to that of the subjects whose past life recollections appear in Hubbard's Have You Lived Before This Life.
- Hubbard appears in the story "In the Air" contained within the collection Back in the USSA by Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman.
- Director Paul Thomas Anderson is planning a film based on Hubbard called The Master.[197] Philip Seymour Hoffman has been cast to play the leader of, "a faith-based organization that becomes popular in 1952 America — exactly the year L. Rob Hubbard expanded his Dianetics self-help system and established the Church of Scientology."[198] Reese Witherspoon and Jeremy Renner have reportedly also been approached to appear.[199]
Hubbard was awarded the 1994 Ig Nobel Prize in Literature (a mock award parodying the Nobel prize) for Dianetics.[200][201]
In 2006, Guinness World Records declared Hubbard the world's most published and most translated author, having published 1,084 fiction and non-fiction works that have been translated into 71 languages.[202][203]
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