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A lost tradition? Summer was when Scientology celebs partied in Hollywood

 TODAY AT SUBSTACK: If you’ve signed up for free emails at Substack, you will receive today’s feature story at your inbox: This August, Scientology’s Hollywood Celebrity Centre should be holding its 55th Anniversary Gala. But the last time it held one appears to be ten years ago. Geoff Levin reminds us what the annual bash []

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Priscilla Presley lawsuit gains a new bombshell in the fine print

[Dame Brigitte Kruse and Priscilla Presley in happier times]

TODAY AT SUBSTACK: If you’ve signed up for free emails at Substack, you will receive today’s feature story at your inbox: We’re keeping an eye on an interesting lawsuit filed by Priscilla Presley’s former business manager, a story we broke over at the Daily Beast in February. []

Yet another celebrity ‘first’ spotted in Scientology event press releases

[David Miscavige presides over the 2023 LRH Birthday Event]

Ever since we spotted Elisabeth Moss in Scientology’s press release for the 2024 L. Ron Hubbard Birthday Event, we’ve been searching through others to see what we could []

As David Miscavige restored Scientology’s events, here are the celebs who showed up

 In March 2019, a full year before the pandemic lockdowns began, Scientology held its annual birthday event for founder L. Ron Hubbard at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida, and it marked something of a high-water mark for attendance by big []

John Travolta and Elisabeth Moss were front-and-center for Scientology birthday bash

We finally got around to looking at Scientology’s rah-rah press release about its 2024 L. Ron Hubbard birthday event, which took place on March 16 in Clearwater, []

Priscilla Presley hangs out with Scientology celeb and longtime friend Gottfried Helnwein

Lisa Marie Presley was very adamant about it: She told us that after her disastrous trip to the Flag Land Base in October 2014, not only did she no longer consider herself a Scientologist, but she told her mother Priscilla and her daughter Riley Keough that they were coming out of the church with []

Gottfried Helnwein: The celebrated artist and his loud silence on Scientology

Over the years, we’ve told you about Gottfried Helnwein, the Austrian artist who is most well known in this country for iconic album covers with their gritty style. But he’s most interesting to us for his Scientology involvement, which has come up numerous times over the years. Austrian journalist Peter Reichelt has spent the most []

Sinéad O’Connor and Scientology: How she dodged a Thetan-tipped bullet

[O’Connor on The Graham Norton Show in February, 2012]

Sinéad O’Connor’s death at the age of 56 has produced an outpouring of tributes to her as a transformative artist and political figure, as well as moving portraits of her struggles with mental illness, something she was more open about than most. (See, for example, this superb []

Wait, Scientology has Mary-Ellen of ‘The Waltons’ on the hook for how much now?

[And does John-Boy know?]

Recently, we’ve been learning how much Scientology’s wealthy donors have been forking out as church leader David Miscavige makes a big fundraising push for his remaining “Ideal Org” projects in the []

Celebrity Sunday: Jim Meskimen, Terry Jastrow, and… Helena Kobrin?

 We’re continuing to look back at recent issues of Scientology’s Celebrity magazine, which appears to be a victim of the pandemic. Today, we thought we’d go through issue 439, which came out in October 2017 and featured actor and impressionist Jim Meskimen on the []