Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
Part VI
June 6, 2008
“Vito
was in his fifties, but he had four-way sex with goddesses … He held
these
clay-sculpting classes on
Kim Fowley
Recruits for Vito and Carl’s dance troupe
weren’t
likely hard to come by, given that, according to Miles, Vito operated
“the
first crash pad in LA, an open house to countless runaways where
everyone was
welcome for a night, particularly young women.” By the mid 1960s, the
group had
expanded into a second communal location in addition to the basement
studio at
For those who may not necessarily be ‘in the
know’
about such things, the Fraternity of Man were best known for the
novelty song,
“Don’t Bogart Me,” Tim Leary was best known for being a painfully
obvious
According to Barry Miles, “Franzoni’s commune
ended
in May 1968,” as that was when The Oracle moved out and our old friend
Frank
Zappa moved in. The lead Mother “had visited Karl at the log cabin on a
previous trip and realized it was perfect for his needs.” And it was an
easy
move for Frank, since he was already living in the canyon at the home
of Pamela
Zarubica (aka Suzy Creamcheese) at
As multiple sources remember it, Miles is
mistaken
in his contention that Franzoni’s commune came to an end; Frank Zappa
took over
as ringmaster, to be sure, but Franzoni and all his cohorts stayed on.
Carl had
a room in the basement, where he was known to bowl, usually naked and
intoxicated,
in the middle of the night. The doomed Christine Frka had a room down
there as
well, as did other future GTOs. Various other members of the dance
troupe
occupied other nooks and crannies in both the main house and the
guesthouse/treehouse. Indeed, as Miles noted correctly, the Freak
dancers
became so closely associated with the Mothers of Invention that “they
got
dubbed as ‘the Mothers Auxiliary’ and Karl Franzoni, in particular, was
included in a lot of group photographs.”
And that, my friends, is the story of Vito’s
Freakers – or at least a sanitized version. Because there is, as it
turns out,
a very dark underbelly to this story. And much of it is centered around
that
angelic hippie child that the readers of Life magazine met in
1966, and
who we now must sadly add to the Laurel Canyon Death List. For young
Godot
Paulekas, you see, never made it past the age of three (by most
accounts). The
specifics of the tragedy are all but impossible to determine,
unfortunately, as
there is little agreement in the various accounts of the event. Left
unclear is
exactly how the child died, when the tragedy occurred, and what age the
boy
was.
According to Barry Miles, “Vito and Szou’s
three-year-old son Godo had fallen through a trapdoor on the roof of
the
building and died.” Michael Walker tells of a “two or three” year old
Godot
“fall[ing] to his death from a scaffold at the studio.” An article in
the San
Francisco Weekly had it as “a 5-year-old boy” who died when he
“fell
through a skylight.” Super-groupie and former Freak dancer Pamela
DesBarres
agreed with the skylight scenario, but not the age: “Vito’s exquisite
little
puppet child, Godot, fell through a skylight during a wacky photo
session on
the roof and died at age three-and-a-half.” Alban Pfisterer of the band
Love
recalled a much darker scenario: “[Vito] got married, had a baby, gave
it acid,
and it fell off the roof and died.”
When Robert Carl Cohen recently digitally
remastered
his notorious Mondo Hollywood for
The details of the incident that can be ascertained are, to put it mildly, rather disturbing. We know, for example, that a musician and writer named Raphael told writer Michael Walker that, before the child’s death, he had been present one evening at Vito’s place when Godot was brought out: “They passed that little boy around, naked, in a circle with their mouths. That was their thing about ‘introducing him to sensuality.’” We also know that Vito and Szou had a rather odd reaction to the death of their first-born son and only child, as recounted by Ms. DesBarres: “I was beside myself with sorrow, but Vito and Szou insisted on continuing our plans for the evening. We went out dancing, and when people asked where little Godot was, Vito said, ‘He died today.’ It was weird, really weird.”
That it was, but perhaps even weirder is the
full
text of the quote from the San Francisco Weekly that I earlier
presented
you with an edited version of: “[Kenneth Anger’s] first candidate to
play
Lucifer, a 5-year-old boy whose hippie parents had been fixtures on the
And so it was that the soon-to-be convicted
murderer
replaced the cherubic hippie child as the face of Lucifer. But what was
it, one
wonders, that drew Anger’s twisted eye to the young boy? And how close
a
relationship did Anger have with Paulekas and Franzoni? And most
importantly,
how did Godot Paulekas really die? We will likely never know for sure,
but
let’s just quickly review some of the factors that might come into play
when
searching for a solution to this mystery:
- The young boy was reportedly subjected to
pedophilic treatment by his parents and others.
- The boy’s parents displayed a truly chilling
indifference to the child’s death.
- Kenneth Anger had expressed an interest in
filming the boy.
- Pamela DesBarres contends that the toddler
died during a “wacky photo session.”
- Alban Pfisterer has claimed that the child
was drugged.
- Bobby Beausoleil has said that some of
Anger’s film projects were for private collectors: “every once in a
while he’d do a little thing that wouldn’t be for distribution.”
- Finally, according to biographer Bill Landis,
Kenneth Anger was at one time investigated by the police on suspicion
that he had been producing snuff flicks.
You all will have to draw your own
conclusions on
this one. As a responsible journalist, I obviously cannot indulge in
any
reckless speculation here, and I think we can all agree that I have not
tried
to lead you in any specific direction, but have merely laid the facts
out on
the table for your review. Moving on then …
Pamela DesBarres shed further light on the
dark
edges of the Freak troupe with this description of a scene that Vito
had staged
one evening in his studio: “two
tenderly young girls were tonguing each other … everyone was
silently observing the scene as if it were part of their necessary
training by
the headmaster, Vito … One of the girls on the four-poster was only
twelve
years old, and a few months later Vito was deported to Tahiti for this
very
situation, and many more just like it.”
It was actually
Also at around that same time, according to
author
Ed Sanders, the Manson Family came calling at the Log Cabin: “One
former Manson
family associate claims that a group of four to six family members
lived on
It does not appear as though Vito was
actually
deported, by the way, but rather that he fled the country in a very
Mike
Ruppertian fashion to avoid likely prosecution. In any event, it makes
perfect
sense, in retrospect, that Charlie Manson and his Family came calling
just as
Vito fled the scene, and that a Mansonite replaced the Freak child as
the
embodiment of Lucifer. For the truth, you see, is that, in many
significant
ways, Charles Manson was little more than a younger version of Vito
Paulekas.
Consider, if you will, all of the following Mansonesque qualities that
Vito
(and to some extent, Carl) seemed to share:
- Vito appears to have spent a good portion of
his younger years in prisons and reform schools, as did, as we all
know, Charles Milles Manson.
- Vito considered himself to be a gifted artist
and poet, as did our old friend Charlie Manson.
- Vito, according to Miles, “was something of a
guru,” as was, quite obviously, Chuck Manson.
- Vito surrounded himself with a flock of very
young (often underage) women, as did Manson.
- Vito was considerably older than his
followers, and so too was Charlie.
- When Vito addressed his flock, they listened
with rapt attention as though they were being delivered the word of
God, as was true with Charlie as well.
- Carl Franzoni was known to wear a black cape
and refer to himself as “Captain Fuck,” while Manson was also partial
to black capes and declared himself to be “the God of Fuck.”
- Vito is said to have had a virtually
insatiable libido, as did, of course, Chuck Manson.
- Vito’s flock adopted nicknames to aid in the
depersonalization process, as did Charlie’s.
- Vito’s troupe included a
- Vito believed in introducing children to
sexuality at a very young age, while in the Manson Family, as Sanders
has noted, “Infant sexuality was encouraged.”
- Vito apparently liked to stage live sex shows
for his followers, usually involving underage participants, which was
also a specialty of Charles Milles Manson.
- Finally, Vito encouraged his followers to
drug themselves while he himself largely abstained, thus enabling him
to at all times maintain control, while Manson limited his own drug
intake for the very same reason.
Franzoni and Manson were not, by the way, the
only
folks on the Laurel Canyon/Sunset Strip scene who developed a fondness
for
black capes in the latter half of the 1960s. As Michael Walker noted in
Laurel
Canyon, during that same period of time David Crosby had “taken to wearing an Oscar
Wilde/Frank Lloyd Wright-ish cape wherever he went.”
In unrelated news, Ed Sanders notes in The
Family
that, “Around March 10, 1968, a
convoy of seven Process automobiles containing thirty people and
fourteen
Alsatian dogs journeyed toward
In other news, it appears as though Frank
Zappa also
displayed some of the same less-than-admirable qualities shared by
Manson and
Paulekas. As DesBarres observed, “Vito
was just like Frank, he never got high either.
They were both ringmasters who always wanted to be in control.” And as
Barry
Miles noted in his Zappa biography, Frank’s daughter Moon “recalls men
with
straggling beards, body odour and bad posture who crouched naked near
her
playthings …” Also, the “Zappa children watched porn with their parents
and
were encouraged in their own sexuality as soon as they reached puberty.
When
they became teenagers, Gail insisted they shower with their overnight
guests in
order to conserve water.” Because, you know, apparently the Zappas were
having
a hard time paying their water bill.
By the early 1970s, Vito Paulekas had
resurfaced up
north in
The Gong Show, of course, was the brainchild of Chuck
Barris, who
famously claimed that during the days when he appeared to be working as
a
mild-mannered game show producer, he was actually on the payroll of the
Anyway, during those same 1970s, “The cabin
and
treehouse scene,” according to Jack Boulware, “grew creepy.” Actually,
it had
always been pretty creepy, it likely just became a little more openly
creepy.
Eric Burden of the Animals moved in after Zappa vacated and the
property
continued to be communally occupied. In fact, it appears to have
remained
something of a commune throughout the 1970s, quite possibly right up
until the
time that it burned to the ground on
Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni appear to
have
remained in northern
More images of Paulekas and Franzoni can be found at the following
locations:
http://www.radfilms.com/mondo_hollywood_photo_album.html
http://ci.cotati.ca.us/sections/about/history5.cfm
("Popup Exhibits" at the bottom of the page)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardschave/sets/72157603849459322/
To Be Continued …