EXCLUSIVE: Former Hollywood madam sued Tom Cruise in 2021 — and then dropped dead

Hollywood private eye Paul Barresi has brought us some pretty startling and strange stories over the years, and he called saying that he had yet another one: Someone had sued Tom Cruise in 2021 at Los Angeles Superior Court and no one had reported on it yet. Were we interested?

Of course we were.

And this wasn’t the first time that Barresi had delivered something to us about Cruise. In 2019, he dug up a really remarkable audio recording of a 2006 conference call when Cruise and Paula Wagner were introducing themselves to their new employees after buying a stake in United Artists. In that call, Cruise talked about coming to Hollywood and getting to know Wagner as they became producing partners.

“Paula Wagner is a woman who I’ve known for 25 years, when I first came out to Los Angeles. I had just finished a picture called Taps…and I didn’t really know anything about Hollywood,” Cruise says in that recording. And remarkably, that statement by Cruise is actually relevant to this new story that Barresi has brought us.

Barresi says he heard about the 2021 lawsuit and then had a difficult time getting a copy of it from courthouse workers, which made him suspicious. Did Scientology have plants at the courthouse who wanted to keep the lawsuit under wraps?

As Scientology’s chief asset and most well known celebrity member, Cruise is certainly key to the church’s survival. But after Barresi gave us the lawsuit’s identifying number, we had no problem pulling documents about it from the courthouse website.

What those documents spelled out was a rather bizarre attempt to haul the Top Gun actor into court by a most unlikely plaintiff: Former Hollywood madam Jody “Babydol” Gibson.

In 1999, Gibson was arrested for pimping and pandering under another nickname — “Sasha of the Valley” — and her “black book” revealed that she had been sending the 300 women working for her to some of Hollywood’s biggest names. (Gibson claimed that the more well known Hollywood madam, Heidi Fleiss, had started out working for her.) She was sentenced to three years in prison, served two, and then moved to the desert town of Yucca Valley, where she wrote three books about her experiences.

Her nickname, Babydol, had resulted, in one version of her telling, from her mother’s love for the Elia Kazan movie Baby Doll. Her mother, Tobe Gibson, was a talent manager for child actors whose claim to fame was that she had discovered Tom Cruise in a production of Guys and Dolls at Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey in 1979 or 1980.

Cruise, a senior who graduated in 1980, was playing the role of Nathan Detroit, and a sophomore, Kathy Burns, was also in the production. Kathy’s older sister, Lorraine, was in the audience with Tobe Gibson, who was Lorraine’s talent manager. And that’s how Tobe saw Tom, and then introduced herself to him and then signed him. It was Tobe Gibson who convinced Thomas Mapother IV to change his name to Tom Cruise, and who then helped him get a small part in Endless Love and then his breakout role in Taps, both of which were released in 1981.

And then, as you can hear Tom say in that 2006 recording, after he starred in Taps he went out to Los Angeles and met Paula Wagner.

But in more recent years, and after Tobe Gibson’s death in 2009, Cruise’s story about those early years seemed to change.

For a 2016 book about the history of Creative Artists Agency, when Cruise was asked about breaking into the business, he seemed to credit actor Sean Penn, saying that he had crashed at Penn’s place in LA, and it was Penn who recommended he contact CAA and Wagner.

This apparently inflamed Babydol, who didn’t want to see her mother’s contribution erased. Documents show that she began sending aggressive emails and cease-and-desist letters to Cruise’s attorney Bert Fields, and to the publishers of the CAA history, demanding that they stop publishing the book.

Then, on September 7, 2021, Babydol sued Tom Cruise.

Babydol was representing herself without the help of an attorney, and it showed. The amateurish complaint was light on the law — how, exactly, did she think she had legal standing to sue Cruise for “fraud” for perceived slights aimed at her deceased mother? — and light on details.

“5. Tobe Gibson was an actor's agent when in 1978-1979, she discovered Defendant Cruise while he participated in a high school play,” the complaint reads.

6. Defendant Cruise signed a written agreement for representation with Tobe Gibson in 1978-1979.

7. In or during 1978-1979, Tobe Gibson changes Cruise’s name from Mopather [sic] to Cruise.

8. Tobe Gibson got Defendant Cruise his first big acting roles, and “big break” in the movie TAPS.

Then, Babydol makes the allegation that she must have known would have gone off like a bomb, if anyone had paid attention to the lawsuit:

9. In or during 1980-1981, Tobe Gibson’s nephew John Doe #1 began a relationship with Defendant Cruise. It was through this relationship that Defendant Cruise abandoned his agency relationship with Tobe Gibson and signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA).

Kaboom. A “relationship” with Tobe’s nephew convinced Cruise to drop Tobe and sign with CAA?

Babydol must have known how this would play to a public that has heard gay rumors about Cruise forever, and that few reporters who cover Cruise in depth take seriously.

Rather than provide any more detail or evidence of this key point, Babydol goes on to complain about the 2016 book on CAA’s history.

11. a) An actual controversy and FRAUD has arisen as a result of a Cover-Up that ensued to hide Cruise’s wrongdoing as evidenced in the 2016 Harper-Collins “Powerhouse” book by James Andrew Miller; wherein Cruise give a completely Fraudulent Interview falsely crediting CAA with all of Tobe Gibson’s work by claiming CAA Paula Wagner and CAA Discovered Tom, oblitering [sic] Tobe Gibson name and hard work, from existence. Plaintiff Gibson contends that Cruise wrongfully betrayed and abandoned Tobe Gibson.

b) But for the discovery of Tom Cruise by Tobe Gibson, and Tobe Gibson obtaining Tom’s first role in TAPS, Cruise would not have the career and wealth he’s had. There is an argument to be made that Tobe Gibson’s Professional Value and net worth would have been 100 times more had this Fraudulent 40+ year LIE, and Cover-Up not transpired that is still active today.

12. a) Plaintiff desires a judicial determination. Plaintiff confirms Tom Cruise’s denial of her mother now makes Plaintiff look like a liar.

b) That Defendant Cruise wrongfully betrayed and abandoned Tobe Gibson without regard to the damage caused to Tobe Gibson;

13. A Judicial declaration is necessary and appropriate at this time under the circumstances in order that Plaintiff Gibson may ascertain her rights and duties in informing their future conduct.

14. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant Cruise’s actions, Plaintiff as successor in interest to the Estate of Tobe Gibson has been damaged in an amount according to proof at trail [sic].

15. The actions of Defendant Cruise were intentional, willful, and wanton, and warrants the imposition of punitive damages sufficient to punish and deter.

Attached to the complaint, Babydol included a February 2000 article from a local New Jersey newspaper interviewing Kathy Burns about the night Cruise was discovered, along with this remarkable image from that night…

(That’s Kathy Burns with her back to the camera.)

In a supplemental filing with the court, Babydol also provided a copy of a 2018 email, supposedly from her assistant, angrily telling Cruise’s attorney Bert Fields (1929-2022) to “cease and desist” what Cruise was doing, and Fields answering in understandable confusion, “What does Ms. Gibson claim Tom did?”

Looking at what Cruise did say in that 2016 CAA history, which you can read in an excerpt at the Hollywood Reporter, it’s a muddled account, at best. It only describes how he got signed at CAA, and doesn’t actually deny that he had been discovered in high school.

In hindsight, it’s pretty hard to see how Babydol could have convinced a judge or jury that Tom Cruise had somehow materially harmed the reputation of Tobe Gibson by merely giving an interview for a history of CAA and describing how he had started with the agency.

Whatever our own assessment of her lawsuit, Babydol’s first opportunity to argue her case at LA Superior Court was a scheduled hearing for the morning of January 14, 2022.

The minute-order issued that day by Judge Robert S. Draper indicates that he had no choice but to put the hearing back because no one from either side in the lawsuit had bothered to show up.

And that’s because on January 2 Babydol had died in her sleep. She was 64.

TMZ broke the news of her death, saying that Babydol had been “somewhat of a beloved pop culture icon.” The website quoted Babydol’s husband of 12 years, Eric Markel, who said that his wife had been under intense pressure because of a lawsuit over the sale of their home, causing her dramatic weight loss that had her down to 87 pounds. He told TMZ he thought she had died of “exhaustion” over the stress she was under.

TMZ didn’t indicate if he made any mention of the lawsuit she’d filed against Cruise. (We tried emailing, calling, and messaging Markel and did not get a response.)

Babydol’s passing was notable enough that it merited a short obituary by Susan Orlean in the New Yorker, which said that the Hollywood madam had fallen into her business by happenstance, and that she had really gone to LA after growing up in Westchester County north of New York City because she wanted to be a singer.

In her most public gesture to advertise that desire, she spent thirty-five thousand dollars on a twenty-five-foot-high billboard near the Chateau Marmont, which featured a huge head shot and the slogan “BABYDOL . . . COMING SOON.” But it was not to be, neither soon nor late.

“I was certain that soon I would make the transition from Super Madam to Super Pop Star and leave all this behind me,” Babydol wrote in one of her memoirs.

No one apparently told the court about Babydol’s demise, and Judge Draper scheduled two more hearings before dismissing the lawsuit against Tom Cruise with prejudice on June 20, 2022 because Babydol had not appeared.

So, all that’s left of the case are a few pages still in the court’s docket, which still communicate Babydol’s outrage that Cruise, in 2016, gave a muddled interview about his start with CAA and — in her estimation, at least — obliterated and demeaned the memory of her mother Tobe’s discovery of the last great movie star.

Well, thanks to Paul Barresi, we at least know how Babydol felt about it.

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