Charlie Nairn tells us about getting L. Ron Hubbard & Scientology on air in the 1960s

[L. Ron Hubbard bust, from 1967’s ‘A Faith for Sale’]

After we published some Scientology news clippings from 1960s London this week, we were delighted to hear from Charlie Nairn.

Charlie is the eminent documentarian who made two early films about Scientology for Granada TV’s World in Action program, and he told us we had a slight mixup.

We posted a 1967 news clipping that said that World in Action’s film about Scientology had been held up by a court injunction, which is true, Charlie tells us. What we got wrong was which of Charlie’s films was held up by the court filing.

It was his first movie about Scientology, “A Faith for Sale,” that Scientology managed to keep from being aired for a couple of weeks in 1967.

Charlie tells us that at the time, there was something in the air about new approaches to mental health, and along came this group from America selling what they said was a “new science of mental health.”

But after checking it out, Charlie says, he and his team realized there wasn’t any science going on at all, which is how they came up with their title.

“The Scientologists didn’t like that, and so they took out an injunction, which anyone could do. So while it was in court we couldn’t air it,” he told us by telephone from England this week. ‘

But once it was in court, he says, the Scientologists didn’t fare well at all.

“I was actually slightly embarrassed for them. They were hardly given the chance to speak when it was thrown out,” he remembers. “Our QC, a very eminent man, tore them to shreds. I almost felt sorry for them.”

After the short delay, the film aired. And you can see it today here…

Charlie says the controversy only made him more interested in the subject and the man behind it, L. Ron Hubbard. What happened next he told to Steve Cannane for his great book on Scientology, Fair Game.

Once again, here’s the wonderful excerpt from the book that we’ve posted previously, with Charlie’s account of meeting the Great Thetan himself…

At the time Hubbard was bouncing between Mediterranean ports aboard his ship the Royal Scotman. Nairn worked out through marine radio channels that Hubbard had dropped anchor in the Tunisian city of Bizerte. The World in Action crew hotfooted it to North Africa. When they arrived, Nairn headed straight for the docks. It was after midnight, and the filmmaker was alone. He looked up at the Scientology ship and saw the outline of an older man in a Captain’s hat smoking away. Nairn was sure it was Hubbard and decided to try his luck:

“I went up the gang-plank, up to the bridge. He was alone. I said, ‘Hello’. I made my excuses, told him that I wasn’t a Scientologist like all those sleeping innocently below but that I was a young film-maker fascinated by the process of inventing a religion. Immediately he seemed interested, intrigued – there was absolutely no whiff of a ‘what are you doing on my ship?’ response. I remember telling him about why I was interested in this – about my mother”

According to Nairn, Hubbard was undeterred by the provocative premise of his interest in him. He welcomed the conversation and the pair talked for over an hour. The filmmaker asked Hubbard why he invented Scientology. As around two hundred Scientologists slept in their bunks on the Royal Scotman, he gave Nairn an answer he could never have uttered if his followers were awake, “He said it started out purely as a way to make money,” says Nairn, “This did seem to me the most extraordinary and fascinating opening. There he was saying this – that the whole thing was just a ‘con’ – very simply – with two hundred, or whatever it was, Scientologists innocently asleep just below us.”

As the conversation developed, Hubbard told Nairn that making a buck was not the only motivating factor. “He did say that although the initial thing was money, he had also become fascinated by ‘catching’ people, especially clever people, at luring them in,” recalls Nairn, “I remember him saying it reminded him of fishing with his father. You cast out your line to fool a beautiful silvery fish – that was the whole fun of it – of tricking it and luring it in, deceiving it.”

Hubbard explained to Nairn that as a child, he and his father made fishing flies and lures together, experimenting with what would work, and what wouldn’t. According to Nairn, Hubbard said, “I never understood why a beautiful fish could be caught by a fake fly.” Hubbard was admitting his life’s work was, like fly-fishing, all about camouflage and deception. Hubbard mused about how intelligent people got caught up in Scientology. “I remember him specifically talking about two medical doctors, (who got involved in Scientology) as if they should have known better,” says Nairn. “I remember a sense of triumph from him over this idea – as if he felt some of his victims were maybe brighter than he was – but that they were needy, gullible – that he understood the human animal and its ‘needs’ – exploitable needs – backwards.”

But a sense of triumph was not all that Nairn got from Hubbard, “I also got a feeling of someone who didn’t actually seem to have much self-confidence, who was ‘boosted’ by the respect and reverence that people he thought more intelligent than he was were prepared to pay him. And I’d say there was a funny mixture of triumph over his victims but then, once caught, a lack of respect for them – and now I wonder if that was what he ultimately couldn’t stand – and so all those later stories of his towering rages…Did he kind of ‘hate’ his victims? I got that feeling pretty strongly.”

As their late night conversation continued on the bridge of the Royal Scotman, Nairn put forward his idea of why intelligent people were so easily conned. “It’s because you are filling up the god-shaped hole,” Nairn told him. It must have been a confronting conversation for Hubbard. A young upstart filmmaker turns up unannounced and wants to ask provocative questions about how he invented a religion and how he was conning all those sleeping below the decks. Nairn says at no point did Hubbard argue with him, or shout at him, or ask him to leave, “What he absolutely didn’t say is, ‘No, that’s not what I’m doing, you haven’t understood.’”

Charlie Nairn felt Hubbard wanted to keep talking about the very topic you would least expect him to want to discuss with a documentary maker. “He settled down, in relief I’d say, finally to be able to talk to someone about inventing a religion and conning people – and I’d now say the trap he found himself almost intolerably stuck in,” says Nairn.

A thought nagged away at the young filmmaker as Hubbard expanded on the theme, “I could well understand hopping into bed at night with one’s wife, rubbing one’s hands together and saying ‘we made $10,000 today dear’,” says Nairn, “but I couldn’t understand his own wife believing it all, believing in out-of body experiences and previous lives. I couldn’t imagine lying in bed with someone who ‘believed’ my con. And being surrounded all the time only by believers – all those people sleeping peacefully below us, all believing in him.” Nairn asked Hubbard whether he felt trapped. Whether his situation made him feel utterly lonely? “That’s when he said – very, very slowly and with a smile that I can remember still – that was the first interesting question he had been asked in 20 years.”

Nairn thought he had hit the jackpot. Not only had he tracked down the elusive Hubbard in a remote port, but he had got him to talk openly about the topic Nairn was so desperate to make a film about.

He asked Hubbard if he would be interviewed on camera. Hubbard agreed. Nairn went away and woke up his film crew. By the time they had returned it was around 3 am. But the mood, the entire scenario had shifted significantly. There were now around thirty Scientologists surrounding Hubbard. He could not repeat the kinds of things he had been so happy to talk about just hours earlier. “They were standing behind me, getting edgy if I pushed Hubbard,” says Nairn, “I did try asking him ‘the first interesting question I’ve been asked in 20 years’ again – but it didn’t work. He was back in front of the conned – so therefore back in his trap.”

Nairn could not replicate the frank and intimate conversation he had with Hubbard just hours earlier. The on-camera interview still provides extraordinary insights into the character of Hubbard. The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard is still quoted and used by journalists and documentary makers across the world. But over forty-five years later Nairn sees what he missed, not what he captured. “I’ve always hated the results because it was all a million miles from our conversation about dreaming up a religion and God-shaped holes of an hour earlier,” says Nairn. “Of course, thinking afterwards, he couldn’t possibly have said any of this in front of his disciples, could he? Thinking about it now, how could Hubbard have ever got away from the monster he created? What would have been in it for him to stand up and say he didn’t believe?”

The result of that encounter was Nairn’s second World in Action film about Scientology, “The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard.” Charlie tells us that Scientology didn’t try to put up an injunction against this film after the drubbing they’d received earlier. And you can see the film here…

We are so happy to hear from Charlie Nairn, and also to correct the record about which of his films was held up by injunction.

Hip, hip, hooray!

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

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