June 8, 2021 • 29 mins
Pierce receives an invitation from Don’s former assistant, MIA, now a major producer, to move into Don’s house. It’s a thrill for Pierce to live in Don’s house- he had always wanted to see the great man's lair but Don had never invited him. While at Don’s house, Pierce is alerted to police cars down the street. They’re coming from Madame Cora’s house. Pierce sees that the woman he had encountered earlier seeking a job as a prostitute was actually an undercover cop.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the ballad of Hollywood Shack and the Ridge Cage.
In Hollywood, Shack hit the big time and went to
make movies. From I Heart Radio, the Based on True
Events anthology, we chronicle true events in the Hollywood tradition,
that is to say, adhering to the facts as long
(00:22):
as the facts don't get in the way of a
good story. First Up the Dawn, The Definitive Episode podcast
series on Hollywood producer Don Simpson. Episode six, Don Flies
Too Close to the Sun. There's a photo that went
viral of an old truck driver where the left half
of his face is ravaged and wrinkled from years of
(00:43):
sun exposure, but the right half is smooth and useful.
There's no subtlety in marking the passage of time of
a trucker, and there's no subtlety in Hollywood, where time
can only be marked by success and failure. Pierce had
been in town three days. His instigation into those closest
to Don, namely the drug dealers, be actresses, co cattled
(01:05):
producers in Hollywood Madam's had given Pierce well, pretty much nothing.
Pierce didn't exactly help his cause by partying with the
people he was supposed to be investigating. Perhaps Pierce believed
that cozying up with these characters might somehow bring him
closer to learning what happened to Don. But after three
days Pierce found himself worse off than when he had
(01:26):
first arrived. Don's drug dealer had stopped paying for Pierce's
hotel room and threatened to call his Columbian drug lord
associates if Pierce continued asking about his ex girlfriend. It
wasn't the ex girlfriend that Pierce wanted, but the ex
girlfriend's doctor, who was reportedly a regular fixture at Don's
parties if only Pierce could track him down. But at
(01:49):
the moment, Pierce was pressed to find a roof over
his head in cash to buy a one way ticket
back to England. All this to say that Pierce's time
in Hollywood should have been marked as a toe little failure.
So why was Pierce so upbeat standing outside Don's house
at five in the morning. The simple answer is he
(02:10):
had an invitation. In the ten years that Pierce new Dawn,
he had never been invited to his house. Don treated
him as a buddy, a confidante, a collaborator, but never
the relationship that Pierce truly desired a friend. The sun
had yet to rise in bel Air, but the birds
were already in full blown chatter. Pierce reread the note
(02:33):
left for him at his hotel room. He was welcome
to move into Don's guesthouse overlooking the pool. The pool
gate was locked, so Pierce approached the front door. The
tour was open. I stepped into the foy and they're
standing before me. Was done rather life size three dimensional
(02:53):
cutout of Dawn on a glass coffee table in his
navy pilot jacket from top gun. It was an accurate likeness,
but for the fact that the cutout stood six ft
tall and Dawn was barely five eight. Dawn, even in death,
was larger than life. Pierce called out hello and announced
(03:13):
his presence. No one answered. Pierce padded down the hallway
to the screening room. The movie playing was American Giggelow.
On the screen, Richard gear is standing in the nude,
gazing out the window, his manhood and freeze frame fully
exposed on the large screen. The image is rather unremarkable
(03:38):
but for the fact that no man in the history
of studio movies had bared himself fully on the screen.
The frame suddenly changes to another gratuitously sexualized image and
exotic dancer splayed out in a chair, her back arched
as she's doused with a bucket of water Flash dance.
The frame suddenly changes again. What get it you're out?
(04:03):
Do I got? Nor of to go I got? There
seemed to be a connection between the images. They were
all edited from Don's films. The clips shared the same themes,
(04:25):
sexualized objectification, desperate outsiders fueled by raw passion who ultimately prevail?
Was that how Don saw himself. Pierce had been watching
the clips for about thirty seconds before he realized he
was not alone. In the light of the movie screen.
A young man and woman, white early twenties were to
(04:47):
Pierce his horror, having sex right in the same room
he was standing in. Not wanting to make his presence known,
pierced padded quietly out of the screening room. Pierce found
his way to the poolhouse. The decor was California beige.
The beds, the walls, the carpeting all shades of beige.
There was a Juniper Bonzai on the bedside table, all
(05:10):
perfectly zen for a peaceful night's sleep, And yet Pierce's
mind was royal ing jet lag, a three day bender
of booze and cocaine, an ikey image of pasty white
kids having sex. Pierce knew he wouldn't be able to sleep.
He searched Don's medicine cabinets and found several bottles of
sleeping pills. The name on the pills gave him pause.
(05:33):
Dr Peter Fraser, Don's doctor, who overdosed in the very
same poolhouse. Pierce put down the sleeping pills. He had
spent years covering Don's extravagant lifestyle, and now here he
was just one room over from Don's palatial palace. The
poolhouse was connected to the main house by a long
(05:54):
columned passageway. As I worked under the task and archway,
overlooking the pool, I felt I might have been a
supporting player, a conspirator, perhaps in one of Shakespeare's Italian plays,
but not for Don's bow flex and thyme master and
phalanx of fitness machines. I am reminded of an article
(06:16):
Don had asked me to write about. It detailed his
bootcut regime he had designed with his navy sealed trainer
of no was a massage bench attached to a medieval
looking machine looped with giant rubber bands. I profiled how
the Navy seal would massage the bands along Don's stomach,
(06:38):
the vibration peeling away Don's tummy flap to his hard
earned rock Hard eight pack. Perhaps it was Pierce's coverage
of Don's abs that spurned interest from Playgirl. After vibration treatment,
Don would subject himself to ours inside a custom filled
sauna suit that would mimic the effects of sitting hours
inside a sweat lodge. According to Pierce, Don would wear
(07:01):
the sauna suit all day while rolling calls. The suit
had the effect of a dehydrator sucking moisture out of
a piece of fruit. Don would often have to drop
a call when he became faint or lightheaded. He compared
it to cutting weight for wrestling. Don wrestled competitively at
the University of Oregon for dawn grappling, Dominating and ultimately
(07:22):
submitting another man was the ultimate victory. Don pouted himself
a gladiator in an industry where the top execs where
ivy leaguers whose idea of competition was five hours on
the golf course. Don would never fail to bring up
that fourteen of the first forty presidents had been wrestlers,
and that Abraham Lincoln wrestled three hundred matches, losing just once.
(07:46):
Don would mimic the choke slam, said to be invented
by Lincoln, where he would lift his opponent by the
neck and slam him to the ground. Don took the
sauna suit to the extreme in the weeks leading up
to his twenty high school reunion. It and Don had
just been annointed the King of Hollywood after the blockbuster
success of Top Gun. Most Titans of industry would simply
(08:10):
enter their high school reunion through the front door, but
not done. As Pierce recalled in an earlier tape, I'm
traveling with Dawn in a Bell two oh six long Ranger.
It's a spacious chopper that seats seven in this case
for myself, Dawn, and two pen how centerfolds. We're flying
(08:32):
over Don's hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. Our landing spot the
South Banchoradge High School football field. To crystallize the visual
we've got done in one of his Armani suits. His
haircuts circa Miami Vice. He's been on a crash diet.
He looks like Mel Gibson on hunger strike. He's extremely irritable.
(08:54):
He hasn't eaten salads in two weeks. He pays little
attention to the centerfolds. Let's call them Tanya on Tawny.
Don had attached a sub woffer to his boom box.
The effect was to blast music out of the chopper,
like in the scene from Apocalypse Now, like in the
movie Heats. His old classmates will find out once they
hear the music. And that's just what happened. A Don
(09:18):
Simpson movie shoots Meg's out of the sky. A Don
Simpson movie smashes stock cars at two hundred miles per hour.
A Don Simpson movie crosses sharp infested waters to Alcatraz.
Yet none of his movie exploits compared to this staged
arrival for his twenty five high school reunion. For the
past ten years, Don had lived every day of his
(09:42):
life as if it were a movie. This is the
day Don would finally star in one of them. The
football field was bathed in a sort of diffused golden
light from a Tony Scott movie. It all played out
(10:03):
perfectly Don Simpson production, just as Don had choreographed it.
If only Don could live in that movie moment forever.
Don't wait for me. Before sliding open the helicopter door,
Don's girlfriends disembark, their hair blowing in the helicopter winds.
Don waits another beat. He knows the most important shot
(10:26):
in any movie is the shot where the star is
first introduced to the audience. Oh my god, that's what
he was, a movie star. Don's hair was crisp, like
a meringue. He had applied enough hairspray to combat the
wind from the chopper's blades. What was going through his
mind upon seeing his classmates for the first time in
twenty five years. Pierce would recall Don doing a sort
(10:50):
of mental headcount, tallying the number of classmates. It was
self evident that Don made more in taxes than all
of his class of sixty two classmates income. Come mind,
the helicopter rental on the price of the escorts alone
was a bigger expense than the reunion party. Don had
told Pierce he planned to stay for a few hours.
He tells stories about his movies, how Kilmore and crews
(11:12):
didn't want to do the scene where they say they'll
be each other's wingman anytime. Bullshit. You can be mine,
and how the scene wasn't going to be shot until
Don stepped in and told them the scene was going
to be the most memorable scene in the whole movie.
But Don didn't tell any stories that day. Instead of hugs,
(11:35):
he stiffly offered handshakes. He worked the room as if
it were any other Hollywood industry event, But behind the
formality was a bottled up anger and anger that Don
had been carrying for twenty five years. As Pierce described it,
Dawn could hear the buzzing through the crowd by distressed
bees searching for honey komt. Who is that is that
(11:58):
Don Simpson? Don had recognized one of the high school jocks,
Brad Daily. Brad was the sort of guy that Don hated,
the kind of guy that flunked algebra twice but still
got all the girls. Brad starts to snicker as Don approaches.
He asks, in a voice loud enough for Don to hear,
who's the guy in the sunglasses. It's the question Don
(12:19):
has been waiting to be asked since his graduation. It
was the question he had hoped he would be asked
by Brad Daily and the jocks that bullied him by
the teachers who told him he would amount to nothing.
It was a question that Don had been waiting to
answer for a very long time. It was an answer
that I'd always thought would make a great title to
(12:41):
his biography. I'm Don Simpson and You're not. And with that,
Don turns and leaves the gym, with Tonny and Tina
on each arm. Don left his high school reunion without
speaking to a single person, no memories shared, no laugh
snow hugs, no human connection. And yet, for Dawn, it
(13:06):
was a beautiful moment. It was the most beautiful moment.
I had a lot of good times, Pierce, but this
Don glows emotional was the best fucking day of my life.
I looked out the window as Don's classmates gathered to
watch outside as we faded off into the sunset. What
(13:31):
was going through Don's mind as he looked out the window.
Did he have a sort of it's a wonderful life
flashback flying over his childhood home. Perhaps he was telling Pierce,
that's where my parents would lock me up in a
dark closet, my penance for having impure thoughts. Alaska was
a scary place for a little kid. There were more
guns than people, and the coulder it got, the more
(13:53):
often my parents dragged me to church, listening to preachers
tell us that we would go to hell if we
didn't take the Lord as our savior. They knew, damn well,
my only savior was the movies. You see that art
deco building over there, that's the Denali Movie Theater where
I saw my first movie, The Greatest Show on Earth.
That was my Rosebud moment. I was seven. I memorized
(14:16):
the trailer. I wouldn't stop reciting it until my mom
agreed to take me. We bring you the Circles, The
Pied Piper, whose magic tunes three children of all ages
from six to sixty into a tinsel one candy whirl,
Bringing the Circus Pied Piper, whose magic tunes greet children
of all ages from six to sixty into a tinsel
(14:39):
and spun candy world of reckless beauty and mounting laughter
and whirling thrills. As little Don sits in the front row,
stuffing his face with popcorn and rock candy, his eyes
growing bigger and bigger with each circus act more spectacular
than the next, his mood suddenly darkens, As Pierce would
(14:59):
later Hellett Jimmy Stewart is out of his clown costume,
but still wearing his clown face. He nodds down to
Charlton Heston, whose life is just saved, and moves to
join the arriving crowd, but he's stopped by Henry Wilcoxon.
He arrests the clown, which sends young Down into a fit.
(15:24):
You call arrest the clown, You call arrest the clown.
His mother pulls him by the hair out of the theater.
Little down on the street corner, crying his eyes out.
His mother pulls the car up, but Don doesn't get
into the car. He charges back into the theater, past
the ticket usher, up the stairs to the projectionist booth,
(15:46):
bursting open the door and demands change the ending. But
little Don couldn't change the ending of the movie, but
it could one day change the ending of his own movies.
The way Pierce recounts it, it was at that moment
that Don knew he would go into the movie business.
(16:06):
Pierce's recollection of Don's trip ends here. We're not sure
if he had ended up in the main house that night,
or if he had slept in the pool house, or
maybe he passed out on the vibrating rubber band bench.
His next tape recounts his waking up and entering the
kitchen of the main house. He's greeted by a peach
fuzz college age kid reading the Hollywood trade variety. He
(16:27):
looked familiar, medium, builled with floppy hair. He introduced himself,
Howie the assistant. He offered bagels. Nate Now's meal would
be coming shortly, traffic. This was the cadence of young
Hollywood assistance. One long sentenced followed by a non sentence.
How he made small talk about film school U. C
l A. And how he wanted to be a filmmaker.
(16:48):
Director Pierce felt a wave of jealousy couldn't help associate
twenty two year old Howie with twenty two year old May.
Twenty two year old man of twenty two year old
Howe's confidence or swagger all the sort of arrogance that
comes from privilege and a little life experience. Unlike myself
(17:10):
at two, how He had all the promise and potential
to be whoever how he thought he should be, as
long as how he played the game. How he appeared
to be a simple young man. His odds were quite good.
How he then took a call from his boss Mia.
She wouldn't be coming in. Don was upset about the
(17:31):
review of her new movie, Don, in this case being
Don Steele, the producer and former studio head Don Steele.
Don Simpson had mentored Don Steele at Paramount. Don the
tough minded executive and Don the high octane producer would
team up for all of Don Simpson's hit movies. Don
(17:51):
Steele would break the glass ceiling to become the first
female studio head, but no male studio head was subject
to nicknames like the Queen of Mean or Balls of Steel.
Men like Don Simpson were labeled tough, whereas Don was
called bitchy. Where Don Simpson was competitive, Don Steele was
hyper aggressive, where Don Simpson was tenacious, Don Steele was abrasive.
(18:17):
Paramount would eventually fire their first female studio head while
she was in labor giving birth to her first child.
One could imagine paramounts ned Tainan asking to be patched
into Don Steele's maternity suite and the nurse putting the
phone up to Don's ear during contractions. We have Paramount
are so grateful for your service. Unfortunately, we will have
to let you go. Please don't speak to the press
(18:39):
until we have issued our statement, and give that baby
a big kiss from her uncle ned. This might have
been the first and only time that don Steele was
left speechless and now the first woman ever to run
a studio who was behind such hits as Flash Dance
and Footloose and Fatal Attraction, and the accused had been
demoted to make ging a feature film called Angus starring
(19:03):
James Vanderbeek and George C. Scott, about a fat kid
who turns the tables on the school bully. We're going
to turn you from a large pathetic virgin into a
large pathetic virgin with the new lave. Mia apologized to
Pierce and hoped they might see one another later in
the day. It was here that Pierce noticed a name
(19:23):
scrawled out in a notebook on the counter. The name
was memorable for one reason. It was, in Pierce's estimation,
the longest name he had ever seen by his count,
over thirty letters long. That was the name of the
chief medical Examiner and coroner of Los Angeles County. Pierce
knew the name, having tried several times to reach the
(19:44):
Coroner's office. When he first arrived to town. Lakshman On
sathiag Ishwan was the coroner in the O. J. Simpson case.
He would perform Michael Jackson's autopsy and testify in the
Phil Spector trial. Later, under much scrutiny, he would change
the actress Natalie Wood's cause of death from accidental drowning
(20:06):
to drowning and other undetermined factors. What business might Mia
have had with the coroner. Mia gives Howie a few
final directives, dry cleaning, to pick up, afternoon meetings, to cancel,
et cetera. She signs off, teasing Howie on his hot
date from last night. How He sheepishly replies, it went well.
A sudden flash overcomes Pierce. He knows where I had
(20:30):
seen Howie. I suddenly recalled the image of a flabby,
pasty faced Howie panting over the poor wretched girl on
the receiving end. Howie gives me a knowing wink, as
if to say, I know that you know where you've
seen me. It was a look that said, don't you
envy my life? Having sex in my boss's screening room
(20:54):
and getting paid to fetch pastries. How He kicked up
his feet and grabbed himself for Danish. He knew this
gig would get him a development job in a couple
of years. In five years, he'd be a fully fledged producer.
Life was looking pretty sweet for Howie. I declined his
(21:15):
offer for a pastry and asked that how he might
open the driveway gate so I might have a stroll
and some fresh air. I hadn't wrought all than a
block down Stone Canyon Road when I saw two mustache
cops parked outside Madame Cora's. Then came a parade of
more police cars. I noticed Cora's handyman fleeing over the
(21:36):
side yard. He disappeared over a neighbor's stone wall. It
was a bust, plane and simple. A few months later,
they took Madame Cora away in handcuffs. As it turned out,
the young woman who had refused to take her top
off in front of Cora was a cop and she
(21:58):
had been wearing a fire But that was just the
tip of the iceberg. The l a p d. Was
looking for a bigger takedown. What went down over the
past several months was an elaborate Keystone Cops sting operation
involving seven call girls, half a dozen undercover cops and
a confidential informant named Philip Ramsey. Philip was a sex
(22:19):
addict and a john who had been busted several times
at brothels around town. In order to avoid prosecution, he
agreed to play the part that he perfected to be
the john to Cora's girls. According to Pierce, Detective Bramble
would call Cora pretending to be Philip Ramsey, Cora would
send over the girls. Ramsey would fulfill his assignment and
(22:40):
pay for their services. Why Detective Bramble would continue to
lay out a dragnet dependent on a sex addicted john
to gather further evidence on Cora, who was so obviously
a madam, was a real head scratcher. Bramble went even
further in assigning six officers to go undercover. The officers
rented a house in mal Aboo overlooking the ocean. They
(23:01):
stocked the bar with booze. He instructed the officers to
in no way touch or coerce the girls into sex.
This was made all the more difficult as the call
girls got more and more drunk and started trying to
kiss and group the officers. When the officers resisted, the
girls started kissing each other in what was turning into
a wild sex party. One of the detectives slipped away
(23:22):
to phone Detective Bramble for help. Bramble told them literally
and figuratively, to man up, instructing each officer to pair
off with the girl. The officers dispersed with their chosen
girls one by one. The girls offered up sex and
a fee for their services. The officers would then whip
out their badges and make the arrest. Meanwhile, across town,
(23:44):
Phil Ramsey was having a blast continuing to solicit sex.
More arrests were made. After a dozen arrests, I guess
the l APT had enough to arrest the infamous Madame Cora,
who they already knew was a madam due to the
hundreds of pages they had collected in her file. Now,
the head scratcher of it all was that the files
(24:04):
painted Cora in a very favorable light. The l a
p d. Vice Squad had a stable of two hundred informants.
Cora was ranked number one. Over the years, her information
had brought down drug cartels, gang activity, and even a
terrorist plot. She was a one woman crime stopper, and
(24:24):
yet her bail was set for a whopping one million
dollars she would have had to put her house up
as collateral. Cora was livid when she came home from
the police station. She screened at the reporter's camped outside
her house. She had a client list that would destroy lives,
not just actors and rock stars, but senators and heads
(24:44):
of state. She would tell all if her case went
to trial. Pierce wished he had taken Cora up on
her offer to write her book. Madam Cora was front
page news. Pierce hoped to get inside to talk to Cora,
but a news crew had blocked the entrance. Her story
would air that night on the local Fox station. This
woman may have masterminded a global called girl ring. Hey
(25:07):
tell me that the people I would be working with,
they are very high up. Jim Paymart probes the world
of high class prostitution and its connections with international intelligence agencies.
Pierce wondered how the news crew had been tipped off
so quickly. This was pre Internet, before social media could
spread the news in a millisecond. Who informed the press
of corus arrest and why Pierce took his time walking
(25:30):
back to Don's estate. A theory began to form in
his mind. What if the l a p D arrested
Cora to cause a distraction. The media would descend on
one Hollywood scandal, the arrest of a high price madam,
and ignore another Hollywood scandal, the death of a Hollywood producer.
(25:51):
It was something of a Wag the dog conspiracy theory,
but a theory that Pierce couldn't let go of. As
he stood in front of ons gated driveway debating his
next move, a black Ferrari screeched to a halt, inches
from launching Pierce onto the roof, like a scene out
of one of Don's action films. Pierce recognized the license
(26:13):
plate the dawn who was driving Don's Ferrari. The driver
rolled down her window with an apologetic wave. It was
the woman for Morton's Mia. What's with all the press
around Cora's house? She asked, listen to the Don on
(26:48):
the I Heart Radio, Apple podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. Episode six Disclaimers. The description of the exercise
equipment in Don's house is speculative. We do know that
Don went to extremes to lose weight. He was most
likely on an extreme diet and anticipation of his twenty
high school reunion Don's helicopter arrival at his reunion was
an inspiration for the scene in Roman Michelle's high School
(27:10):
Reunion with Lisa Kudrow and Mia Sorvino, where the wealthy
playboy played by Alan Cumming arrives at their high school
reunion in a helicopter. All the alumni come out to
see the spectacle, only to see him leave abruptly, just
as Don had done. Disclaimer to Don's childhood in Alaska.
According to Don and the James Toback documentary The Big Bang,
(27:31):
Don grew up in an abusive, fundamentalist Christian home. However,
there are other accounts that Don had a perfectly normal,
middle class childhood. As far as Don's rosebud moment in
seeing the film The Greatest Show on Earth, that's a
story Don told quite often. Interestingly, The Greatest Show on
Earth is also the first film experience of Steven Spielberg,
who also credits the film as being a major inspiration.
(27:54):
We wonder if Don might have created the myth to
put him in a steamed company with Spielberg. Disclaimer three,
Pierce's encounter with fictitious assistant Howie is, of course a fabrication.
Howie did not have sex in don screening room, although
we did talk to one of Don's assistants who told
us that he in fact did lose his virginity in
down screening room. Howe's boss, Mia, as we mentioned earlier,
(28:17):
is also a fabrication, as is her relationship with the
real life producer Don Steele. Don Steele was known inside
the business as the Queen of Mean. She was in
fact fired from Paramount shortly after giving birth. Thereafter, Don
struggled to make films. She would die of brain cancer
two years later. Disclaimer four. The l A coroner with
thirty one letters in his name was in fact the
(28:38):
coroner who presided over Don's autopsy. Disclaimer five. The sting
operation of Madame Cora is mostly a dramatization by all accounts.
In reality, it was something of a Keystone Cops affair.
Why the l a p d Went to such elaborate
lengths to solicit sex from prostitutes when it was so
obvious that Madame Alex was a madam seems rather absurd
not to mention a blatant waste to taxpayer money. However, Don,
(29:02):
to our knowledge, was not used as a source in
the district attorney's case, nor did he ever publicly issue
comments about his old friend's demise
This is the ballad of Hollywood Shack and the Ridge Cage.
In Hollywood, Shack hit the big time and went to
make movies. From I Heart Radio, the Based on True
Events anthology, we chronicle true events in the Hollywood tradition,
that is to say, adhering to the facts as long
(00:22):
as the facts don't get in the way of a
good story. First Up the Dawn, The Definitive Episode podcast
series on Hollywood producer Don Simpson. Episode six, Don Flies
Too Close to the Sun. There's a photo that went
viral of an old truck driver where the left half
of his face is ravaged and wrinkled from years of
(00:43):
sun exposure, but the right half is smooth and useful.
There's no subtlety in marking the passage of time of
a trucker, and there's no subtlety in Hollywood, where time
can only be marked by success and failure. Pierce had
been in town three days. His instigation into those closest
to Don, namely the drug dealers, be actresses, co cattled
(01:05):
producers in Hollywood Madam's had given Pierce well, pretty much nothing.
Pierce didn't exactly help his cause by partying with the
people he was supposed to be investigating. Perhaps Pierce believed
that cozying up with these characters might somehow bring him
closer to learning what happened to Don. But after three
days Pierce found himself worse off than when he had
(01:26):
first arrived. Don's drug dealer had stopped paying for Pierce's
hotel room and threatened to call his Columbian drug lord
associates if Pierce continued asking about his ex girlfriend. It
wasn't the ex girlfriend that Pierce wanted, but the ex
girlfriend's doctor, who was reportedly a regular fixture at Don's
parties if only Pierce could track him down. But at
(01:49):
the moment, Pierce was pressed to find a roof over
his head in cash to buy a one way ticket
back to England. All this to say that Pierce's time
in Hollywood should have been marked as a toe little failure.
So why was Pierce so upbeat standing outside Don's house
at five in the morning. The simple answer is he
(02:10):
had an invitation. In the ten years that Pierce new Dawn,
he had never been invited to his house. Don treated
him as a buddy, a confidante, a collaborator, but never
the relationship that Pierce truly desired a friend. The sun
had yet to rise in bel Air, but the birds
were already in full blown chatter. Pierce reread the note
(02:33):
left for him at his hotel room. He was welcome
to move into Don's guesthouse overlooking the pool. The pool
gate was locked, so Pierce approached the front door. The
tour was open. I stepped into the foy and they're
standing before me. Was done rather life size three dimensional
(02:53):
cutout of Dawn on a glass coffee table in his
navy pilot jacket from top gun. It was an accurate likeness,
but for the fact that the cutout stood six ft
tall and Dawn was barely five eight. Dawn, even in death,
was larger than life. Pierce called out hello and announced
(03:13):
his presence. No one answered. Pierce padded down the hallway
to the screening room. The movie playing was American Giggelow.
On the screen, Richard gear is standing in the nude,
gazing out the window, his manhood and freeze frame fully
exposed on the large screen. The image is rather unremarkable
(03:38):
but for the fact that no man in the history
of studio movies had bared himself fully on the screen.
The frame suddenly changes to another gratuitously sexualized image and
exotic dancer splayed out in a chair, her back arched
as she's doused with a bucket of water Flash dance.
The frame suddenly changes again. What get it you're out?
(04:03):
Do I got? Nor of to go I got? There
seemed to be a connection between the images. They were
all edited from Don's films. The clips shared the same themes,
(04:25):
sexualized objectification, desperate outsiders fueled by raw passion who ultimately prevail?
Was that how Don saw himself. Pierce had been watching
the clips for about thirty seconds before he realized he
was not alone. In the light of the movie screen.
A young man and woman, white early twenties were to
(04:47):
Pierce his horror, having sex right in the same room
he was standing in. Not wanting to make his presence known,
pierced padded quietly out of the screening room. Pierce found
his way to the poolhouse. The decor was California beige.
The beds, the walls, the carpeting all shades of beige.
There was a Juniper Bonzai on the bedside table, all
(05:10):
perfectly zen for a peaceful night's sleep, And yet Pierce's
mind was royal ing jet lag, a three day bender
of booze and cocaine, an ikey image of pasty white
kids having sex. Pierce knew he wouldn't be able to sleep.
He searched Don's medicine cabinets and found several bottles of
sleeping pills. The name on the pills gave him pause.
(05:33):
Dr Peter Fraser, Don's doctor, who overdosed in the very
same poolhouse. Pierce put down the sleeping pills. He had
spent years covering Don's extravagant lifestyle, and now here he
was just one room over from Don's palatial palace. The
poolhouse was connected to the main house by a long
(05:54):
columned passageway. As I worked under the task and archway,
overlooking the pool, I felt I might have been a
supporting player, a conspirator, perhaps in one of Shakespeare's Italian plays,
but not for Don's bow flex and thyme master and
phalanx of fitness machines. I am reminded of an article
(06:16):
Don had asked me to write about. It detailed his
bootcut regime he had designed with his navy sealed trainer
of no was a massage bench attached to a medieval
looking machine looped with giant rubber bands. I profiled how
the Navy seal would massage the bands along Don's stomach,
(06:38):
the vibration peeling away Don's tummy flap to his hard
earned rock Hard eight pack. Perhaps it was Pierce's coverage
of Don's abs that spurned interest from Playgirl. After vibration treatment,
Don would subject himself to ours inside a custom filled
sauna suit that would mimic the effects of sitting hours
inside a sweat lodge. According to Pierce, Don would wear
(07:01):
the sauna suit all day while rolling calls. The suit
had the effect of a dehydrator sucking moisture out of
a piece of fruit. Don would often have to drop
a call when he became faint or lightheaded. He compared
it to cutting weight for wrestling. Don wrestled competitively at
the University of Oregon for dawn grappling, Dominating and ultimately
(07:22):
submitting another man was the ultimate victory. Don pouted himself
a gladiator in an industry where the top execs where
ivy leaguers whose idea of competition was five hours on
the golf course. Don would never fail to bring up
that fourteen of the first forty presidents had been wrestlers,
and that Abraham Lincoln wrestled three hundred matches, losing just once.
(07:46):
Don would mimic the choke slam, said to be invented
by Lincoln, where he would lift his opponent by the
neck and slam him to the ground. Don took the
sauna suit to the extreme in the weeks leading up
to his twenty high school reunion. It and Don had
just been annointed the King of Hollywood after the blockbuster
success of Top Gun. Most Titans of industry would simply
(08:10):
enter their high school reunion through the front door, but
not done. As Pierce recalled in an earlier tape, I'm
traveling with Dawn in a Bell two oh six long Ranger.
It's a spacious chopper that seats seven in this case
for myself, Dawn, and two pen how centerfolds. We're flying
(08:32):
over Don's hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. Our landing spot the
South Banchoradge High School football field. To crystallize the visual
we've got done in one of his Armani suits. His
haircuts circa Miami Vice. He's been on a crash diet.
He looks like Mel Gibson on hunger strike. He's extremely irritable.
(08:54):
He hasn't eaten salads in two weeks. He pays little
attention to the centerfolds. Let's call them Tanya on Tawny.
Don had attached a sub woffer to his boom box.
The effect was to blast music out of the chopper,
like in the scene from Apocalypse Now, like in the
movie Heats. His old classmates will find out once they
hear the music. And that's just what happened. A Don
(09:18):
Simpson movie shoots Meg's out of the sky. A Don
Simpson movie smashes stock cars at two hundred miles per hour.
A Don Simpson movie crosses sharp infested waters to Alcatraz.
Yet none of his movie exploits compared to this staged
arrival for his twenty five high school reunion. For the
past ten years, Don had lived every day of his
(09:42):
life as if it were a movie. This is the
day Don would finally star in one of them. The
football field was bathed in a sort of diffused golden
light from a Tony Scott movie. It all played out
(10:03):
perfectly Don Simpson production, just as Don had choreographed it.
If only Don could live in that movie moment forever.
Don't wait for me. Before sliding open the helicopter door,
Don's girlfriends disembark, their hair blowing in the helicopter winds.
Don waits another beat. He knows the most important shot
(10:26):
in any movie is the shot where the star is
first introduced to the audience. Oh my god, that's what
he was, a movie star. Don's hair was crisp, like
a meringue. He had applied enough hairspray to combat the
wind from the chopper's blades. What was going through his
mind upon seeing his classmates for the first time in
twenty five years. Pierce would recall Don doing a sort
(10:50):
of mental headcount, tallying the number of classmates. It was
self evident that Don made more in taxes than all
of his class of sixty two classmates income. Come mind,
the helicopter rental on the price of the escorts alone
was a bigger expense than the reunion party. Don had
told Pierce he planned to stay for a few hours.
He tells stories about his movies, how Kilmore and crews
(11:12):
didn't want to do the scene where they say they'll
be each other's wingman anytime. Bullshit. You can be mine,
and how the scene wasn't going to be shot until
Don stepped in and told them the scene was going
to be the most memorable scene in the whole movie.
But Don didn't tell any stories that day. Instead of hugs,
(11:35):
he stiffly offered handshakes. He worked the room as if
it were any other Hollywood industry event, But behind the
formality was a bottled up anger and anger that Don
had been carrying for twenty five years. As Pierce described it,
Dawn could hear the buzzing through the crowd by distressed
bees searching for honey komt. Who is that is that
(11:58):
Don Simpson? Don had recognized one of the high school jocks,
Brad Daily. Brad was the sort of guy that Don hated,
the kind of guy that flunked algebra twice but still
got all the girls. Brad starts to snicker as Don approaches.
He asks, in a voice loud enough for Don to hear,
who's the guy in the sunglasses. It's the question Don
(12:19):
has been waiting to be asked since his graduation. It
was the question he had hoped he would be asked
by Brad Daily and the jocks that bullied him by
the teachers who told him he would amount to nothing.
It was a question that Don had been waiting to
answer for a very long time. It was an answer
that I'd always thought would make a great title to
(12:41):
his biography. I'm Don Simpson and You're not. And with that,
Don turns and leaves the gym, with Tonny and Tina
on each arm. Don left his high school reunion without
speaking to a single person, no memories shared, no laugh
snow hugs, no human connection. And yet, for Dawn, it
(13:06):
was a beautiful moment. It was the most beautiful moment.
I had a lot of good times, Pierce, but this
Don glows emotional was the best fucking day of my life.
I looked out the window as Don's classmates gathered to
watch outside as we faded off into the sunset. What
(13:31):
was going through Don's mind as he looked out the window.
Did he have a sort of it's a wonderful life
flashback flying over his childhood home. Perhaps he was telling Pierce,
that's where my parents would lock me up in a
dark closet, my penance for having impure thoughts. Alaska was
a scary place for a little kid. There were more
guns than people, and the coulder it got, the more
(13:53):
often my parents dragged me to church, listening to preachers
tell us that we would go to hell if we
didn't take the Lord as our savior. They knew, damn well,
my only savior was the movies. You see that art
deco building over there, that's the Denali Movie Theater where
I saw my first movie, The Greatest Show on Earth.
That was my Rosebud moment. I was seven. I memorized
(14:16):
the trailer. I wouldn't stop reciting it until my mom
agreed to take me. We bring you the Circles, The
Pied Piper, whose magic tunes three children of all ages
from six to sixty into a tinsel one candy whirl,
Bringing the Circus Pied Piper, whose magic tunes greet children
of all ages from six to sixty into a tinsel
(14:39):
and spun candy world of reckless beauty and mounting laughter
and whirling thrills. As little Don sits in the front row,
stuffing his face with popcorn and rock candy, his eyes
growing bigger and bigger with each circus act more spectacular
than the next, his mood suddenly darkens, As Pierce would
(14:59):
later Hellett Jimmy Stewart is out of his clown costume,
but still wearing his clown face. He nodds down to
Charlton Heston, whose life is just saved, and moves to
join the arriving crowd, but he's stopped by Henry Wilcoxon.
He arrests the clown, which sends young Down into a fit.
(15:24):
You call arrest the clown, You call arrest the clown.
His mother pulls him by the hair out of the theater.
Little down on the street corner, crying his eyes out.
His mother pulls the car up, but Don doesn't get
into the car. He charges back into the theater, past
the ticket usher, up the stairs to the projectionist booth,
(15:46):
bursting open the door and demands change the ending. But
little Don couldn't change the ending of the movie, but
it could one day change the ending of his own movies.
The way Pierce recounts it, it was at that moment
that Don knew he would go into the movie business.
(16:06):
Pierce's recollection of Don's trip ends here. We're not sure
if he had ended up in the main house that night,
or if he had slept in the pool house, or
maybe he passed out on the vibrating rubber band bench.
His next tape recounts his waking up and entering the
kitchen of the main house. He's greeted by a peach
fuzz college age kid reading the Hollywood trade variety. He
(16:27):
looked familiar, medium, builled with floppy hair. He introduced himself,
Howie the assistant. He offered bagels. Nate Now's meal would
be coming shortly, traffic. This was the cadence of young
Hollywood assistance. One long sentenced followed by a non sentence.
How he made small talk about film school U. C
l A. And how he wanted to be a filmmaker.
(16:48):
Director Pierce felt a wave of jealousy couldn't help associate
twenty two year old Howie with twenty two year old May.
Twenty two year old man of twenty two year old
Howe's confidence or swagger all the sort of arrogance that
comes from privilege and a little life experience. Unlike myself
(17:10):
at two, how He had all the promise and potential
to be whoever how he thought he should be, as
long as how he played the game. How he appeared
to be a simple young man. His odds were quite good.
How he then took a call from his boss Mia.
She wouldn't be coming in. Don was upset about the
(17:31):
review of her new movie, Don, in this case being
Don Steele, the producer and former studio head Don Steele.
Don Simpson had mentored Don Steele at Paramount. Don the
tough minded executive and Don the high octane producer would
team up for all of Don Simpson's hit movies. Don
(17:51):
Steele would break the glass ceiling to become the first
female studio head, but no male studio head was subject
to nicknames like the Queen of Mean or Balls of Steel.
Men like Don Simpson were labeled tough, whereas Don was
called bitchy. Where Don Simpson was competitive, Don Steele was
hyper aggressive, where Don Simpson was tenacious, Don Steele was abrasive.
(18:17):
Paramount would eventually fire their first female studio head while
she was in labor giving birth to her first child.
One could imagine paramounts ned Tainan asking to be patched
into Don Steele's maternity suite and the nurse putting the
phone up to Don's ear during contractions. We have Paramount
are so grateful for your service. Unfortunately, we will have
to let you go. Please don't speak to the press
(18:39):
until we have issued our statement, and give that baby
a big kiss from her uncle ned. This might have
been the first and only time that don Steele was
left speechless and now the first woman ever to run
a studio who was behind such hits as Flash Dance
and Footloose and Fatal Attraction, and the accused had been
demoted to make ging a feature film called Angus starring
(19:03):
James Vanderbeek and George C. Scott, about a fat kid
who turns the tables on the school bully. We're going
to turn you from a large pathetic virgin into a
large pathetic virgin with the new lave. Mia apologized to
Pierce and hoped they might see one another later in
the day. It was here that Pierce noticed a name
(19:23):
scrawled out in a notebook on the counter. The name
was memorable for one reason. It was, in Pierce's estimation,
the longest name he had ever seen by his count,
over thirty letters long. That was the name of the
chief medical Examiner and coroner of Los Angeles County. Pierce
knew the name, having tried several times to reach the
(19:44):
Coroner's office. When he first arrived to town. Lakshman On
sathiag Ishwan was the coroner in the O. J. Simpson case.
He would perform Michael Jackson's autopsy and testify in the
Phil Spector trial. Later, under much scrutiny, he would change
the actress Natalie Wood's cause of death from accidental drowning
(20:06):
to drowning and other undetermined factors. What business might Mia
have had with the coroner. Mia gives Howie a few
final directives, dry cleaning, to pick up, afternoon meetings, to cancel,
et cetera. She signs off, teasing Howie on his hot
date from last night. How He sheepishly replies, it went well.
A sudden flash overcomes Pierce. He knows where I had
(20:30):
seen Howie. I suddenly recalled the image of a flabby,
pasty faced Howie panting over the poor wretched girl on
the receiving end. Howie gives me a knowing wink, as
if to say, I know that you know where you've
seen me. It was a look that said, don't you
envy my life? Having sex in my boss's screening room
(20:54):
and getting paid to fetch pastries. How He kicked up
his feet and grabbed himself for Danish. He knew this
gig would get him a development job in a couple
of years. In five years, he'd be a fully fledged producer.
Life was looking pretty sweet for Howie. I declined his
(21:15):
offer for a pastry and asked that how he might
open the driveway gate so I might have a stroll
and some fresh air. I hadn't wrought all than a
block down Stone Canyon Road when I saw two mustache
cops parked outside Madame Cora's. Then came a parade of
more police cars. I noticed Cora's handyman fleeing over the
(21:36):
side yard. He disappeared over a neighbor's stone wall. It
was a bust, plane and simple. A few months later,
they took Madame Cora away in handcuffs. As it turned out,
the young woman who had refused to take her top
off in front of Cora was a cop and she
(21:58):
had been wearing a fire But that was just the
tip of the iceberg. The l a p d. Was
looking for a bigger takedown. What went down over the
past several months was an elaborate Keystone Cops sting operation
involving seven call girls, half a dozen undercover cops and
a confidential informant named Philip Ramsey. Philip was a sex
(22:19):
addict and a john who had been busted several times
at brothels around town. In order to avoid prosecution, he
agreed to play the part that he perfected to be
the john to Cora's girls. According to Pierce, Detective Bramble
would call Cora pretending to be Philip Ramsey, Cora would
send over the girls. Ramsey would fulfill his assignment and
(22:40):
pay for their services. Why Detective Bramble would continue to
lay out a dragnet dependent on a sex addicted john
to gather further evidence on Cora, who was so obviously
a madam, was a real head scratcher. Bramble went even
further in assigning six officers to go undercover. The officers
rented a house in mal Aboo overlooking the ocean. They
(23:01):
stocked the bar with booze. He instructed the officers to
in no way touch or coerce the girls into sex.
This was made all the more difficult as the call
girls got more and more drunk and started trying to
kiss and group the officers. When the officers resisted, the
girls started kissing each other in what was turning into
a wild sex party. One of the detectives slipped away
(23:22):
to phone Detective Bramble for help. Bramble told them literally
and figuratively, to man up, instructing each officer to pair
off with the girl. The officers dispersed with their chosen
girls one by one. The girls offered up sex and
a fee for their services. The officers would then whip
out their badges and make the arrest. Meanwhile, across town,
(23:44):
Phil Ramsey was having a blast continuing to solicit sex.
More arrests were made. After a dozen arrests, I guess
the l APT had enough to arrest the infamous Madame Cora,
who they already knew was a madam due to the
hundreds of pages they had collected in her file. Now,
the head scratcher of it all was that the files
(24:04):
painted Cora in a very favorable light. The l a
p d. Vice Squad had a stable of two hundred informants.
Cora was ranked number one. Over the years, her information
had brought down drug cartels, gang activity, and even a
terrorist plot. She was a one woman crime stopper, and
(24:24):
yet her bail was set for a whopping one million
dollars she would have had to put her house up
as collateral. Cora was livid when she came home from
the police station. She screened at the reporter's camped outside
her house. She had a client list that would destroy lives,
not just actors and rock stars, but senators and heads
(24:44):
of state. She would tell all if her case went
to trial. Pierce wished he had taken Cora up on
her offer to write her book. Madam Cora was front
page news. Pierce hoped to get inside to talk to Cora,
but a news crew had blocked the entrance. Her story
would air that night on the local Fox station. This
woman may have masterminded a global called girl ring. Hey
(25:07):
tell me that the people I would be working with,
they are very high up. Jim Paymart probes the world
of high class prostitution and its connections with international intelligence agencies.
Pierce wondered how the news crew had been tipped off
so quickly. This was pre Internet, before social media could
spread the news in a millisecond. Who informed the press
of corus arrest and why Pierce took his time walking
(25:30):
back to Don's estate. A theory began to form in
his mind. What if the l a p D arrested
Cora to cause a distraction. The media would descend on
one Hollywood scandal, the arrest of a high price madam,
and ignore another Hollywood scandal, the death of a Hollywood producer.
(25:51):
It was something of a Wag the dog conspiracy theory,
but a theory that Pierce couldn't let go of. As
he stood in front of ons gated driveway debating his
next move, a black Ferrari screeched to a halt, inches
from launching Pierce onto the roof, like a scene out
of one of Don's action films. Pierce recognized the license
(26:13):
plate the dawn who was driving Don's Ferrari. The driver
rolled down her window with an apologetic wave. It was
the woman for Morton's Mia. What's with all the press
around Cora's house? She asked, listen to the Don on
(26:48):
the I Heart Radio, Apple podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. Episode six Disclaimers. The description of the exercise
equipment in Don's house is speculative. We do know that
Don went to extremes to lose weight. He was most
likely on an extreme diet and anticipation of his twenty
high school reunion Don's helicopter arrival at his reunion was
an inspiration for the scene in Roman Michelle's high School
(27:10):
Reunion with Lisa Kudrow and Mia Sorvino, where the wealthy
playboy played by Alan Cumming arrives at their high school
reunion in a helicopter. All the alumni come out to
see the spectacle, only to see him leave abruptly, just
as Don had done. Disclaimer to Don's childhood in Alaska.
According to Don and the James Toback documentary The Big Bang,
(27:31):
Don grew up in an abusive, fundamentalist Christian home. However,
there are other accounts that Don had a perfectly normal,
middle class childhood. As far as Don's rosebud moment in
seeing the film The Greatest Show on Earth, that's a
story Don told quite often. Interestingly, The Greatest Show on
Earth is also the first film experience of Steven Spielberg,
who also credits the film as being a major inspiration.
(27:54):
We wonder if Don might have created the myth to
put him in a steamed company with Spielberg. Disclaimer three,
Pierce's encounter with fictitious assistant Howie is, of course a fabrication.
Howie did not have sex in don screening room, although
we did talk to one of Don's assistants who told
us that he in fact did lose his virginity in
down screening room. Howe's boss, Mia, as we mentioned earlier,
(28:17):
is also a fabrication, as is her relationship with the
real life producer Don Steele. Don Steele was known inside
the business as the Queen of Mean. She was in
fact fired from Paramount shortly after giving birth. Thereafter, Don
struggled to make films. She would die of brain cancer
two years later. Disclaimer four. The l A coroner with
thirty one letters in his name was in fact the
(28:38):
coroner who presided over Don's autopsy. Disclaimer five. The sting
operation of Madame Cora is mostly a dramatization by all accounts.
In reality, it was something of a Keystone Cops affair.
Why the l a p d Went to such elaborate
lengths to solicit sex from prostitutes when it was so
obvious that Madame Alex was a madam seems rather absurd
not to mention a blatant waste to taxpayer money. However, Don,
(29:02):
to our knowledge, was not used as a source in
the district attorney's case, nor did he ever publicly issue
comments about his old friend's demise
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