Bare-faced Messiah - Background and Synopsis

Background and Synopsis

Russell Miller had been an investigative journalist for the Sunday Times and had written well-received biographies of Hugh Hefner and J. Paul Getty. He spent two years researching the book, which followed a Sunday Times Magazine investigation of the Church of Scientology published in October 1984. In 1985, he suggested that the Sunday Times should try to find Hubbard, who had disappeared from public view several years earlier. If the project succeeded, it would be a worldwide scoop for the newspaper. Even if it did not find the reclusive Scientology leader, the continuing mystery would itself be a good story. Through contacts among ex-Scientologists in the U.S., Miller narrowed down the area where Hubbard was hiding to the vicinity of San Luis Obispo, California. However, Hubbard died in January 1986 before Miller could finish his project. He decided at this point to use his research as the basis of a full-fledged biography of Hubbard, in addition to writing the previously agreed series of articles for the Sunday Times.

Bare-faced Messiah covers a period from 1911, when Hubbard was born, to his death in 1986, with some additional background on his family history. It describes his early life, his success as a science fiction writer in the 1930s and 1940s, his military career during the Second World War, the rise of Dianetics and Scientology in the 1950s, his journeys at sea with his followers in the 1960s and early 1970s and his legal problems and period as a recluse from the mid-1970s to 1986. The author draws on previously unpublished materials, such as Hubbard's teenage diaries and personal correspondence to colleagues, employers and the FBI, as well as government documents like Hubbard's military service record and FBI file. In an "author's note", Miller writes that the book would have been impossible without the Freedom of Information Act. Among the private papers quoted in the book are a letter written by Hubbard to the FBI denouncing his wife as a Soviet spy, another in which he tells his daughter he is not really her father and an internal letter in which he suggests that Scientology should pursue religious status for business reasons. Other sources used by Miller include news articles and comments from interviews that he conducted with Hubbard's old acquaintances and family members.

Miller's research was assisted by a set of Hubbard's personal papers obtained by Gerry Armstrong, a disaffected former employee of the Church of Scientology. Armstrong had been preparing material for an official biography of Hubbard, but left the Church in 1981 after finding that Hubbard's claims about his life conflicted with independent sources. The Church of Scientology obtained an injunction in California to prevent Armstrong from further distributing the documents. However, English courts refused to enforce this order.

In the book's preface, Miller summarises his view of Hubbard:

The glorification of 'Ron', superman and saviour, required a cavalier disregard for facts: thus it is that every biography of Hubbard published by the church is interwoven with lies, half-truths and ludicrous embellishments. The wondrous irony of this deception is that the true story of L. Ron Hubbard is much more bizarre, much more improbable, than any of the lies.