Eugene Landy and Maureen McCormick

[Jay]

 I wasn't exactly sure where to put this. It kind of touches on The Beach Boys, in a roundabout way. I just recently got the autobiography of Maureen McCormick and decided to look her up on YouTube just out of curiosity. I tend to do that with a person whose autobiography I read. Anyway, I came across an interview she did with Howard Stern, and in it she mentions being "treated" by Eugene Landy. It seems as though she had a very similar experience with Landy as Brian Wilson did. I just thought that you guys here might find it interesting. I know that Howard Stern isn't to family friendly, so for anybody who may want to skip to the relevant parts of the clip, I would skip to about 3:40 into the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAZ22UhUbHQ

[startBBtoday]

I wasn't exactly sure where to put this. It kind of touches on The Beach Boys, in a roundabout way. I just recently got the autobiography of Maureen McCormick and decided to look her up on YouTube just out of curiosity. I tend to do that with a person whose autobiography I read. Anyway, I came across an interview she did with Howard Stern, and in it she mentions being "treated" by Eugene Landy. It seems as though she had a very similar experience with Landy as Brian Wilson did. I just thought that you guys here might find it interesting. I know that Howard Stern isn't to family friendly, so for anybody who may want to skip to the relevant parts of the clip, I would skip to about 3:40 into the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAZ22UhUbHQ

Interesting, definitely gonna check that out on my lunch break. Does anyone know a full list of celebrities that Landy treated?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Interesting, definitely gonna check that out on my lunch break. Does anyone know a full list of celebrities that Landy treated?

These names are usually linked to him:
 
Alice Cooper
Rod Steiger
Richard Harris
Gig Young

People Magazine September 25, 1978 Vol. 10 No. 13

From Alice Cooper to Rod Steiger, Shrink Eugene Landy Candles the Most Celebrated Heads

By Robert Windeler

The Oscar-winning scenarist had a problem: A TV script was overdue, but he was suffering from writer's block. It was an obvious case for Dr. Eugene Landy, 43, the Beverly Hills star shrink. Landy promptly imprisoned the writer in a phoneless, windowless room for 2½ days, opening the door only to shove in sustenance or to allow the patient to relieve himself. The script got written.

A clinical and social psychologist, Landy eschews such classical Freudian props as the couch or even an office. Instead, he applies round-the-clock therapy, as in the famous case of Brian Wilson, the creative genius of the Beach Boys, who had withdrawn into overfed self-exile in his Bel Air bedroom. For 13 months, 24 hours a day, either Landy or one of 14 assistants was with Wilson, directing his every action, from eating (they padlocked his refrigerator) to composing. "He was a master gamesman who had contrived for years to stay in bed," diagnosed Landy. The fee: $90 an hour. (Landy's rates have since gone up to $2.50 a minute.) The Beach Boys eventually discharged Landy—prematurely, he claims—because they needed Brian in the recording studio. In any case, Landy sourly says the LP in question, The Beach Boys Love You, was a flop. But even Landy's detractors concede that his methods helped make Wilson functional again.

He has applied variations of the saturation/servitude therapy to Alice Cooper, Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch and Rod Steiger. Richard Harris was so exultant he even dragged the doc onto TV talk shows to proclaim, "He literally saved my marriage." Numerous other names prefer the traditional shrink-patient anonymity.

The reason so many celebs go into treatment is not just because they can afford it or that it's trendy. The real explanation, says Landy, is that "everybody caters to stars, and they are isolated from reality. They lose some of their ability to function as normal people do. They're always on, so my treatment is always on too." His supporting cast depends upon the severity of his case load but sometimes reaches 30. "I feel," he says, with accustomed modesty, "like a conductor—the Zubin Mehta of psychotherapy."

Landy does hear a different drummer than some of his colleagues. "What some analysts call perverse," he says, "I'll call normal. Homosexuality, for example. It is not an illness. There are no perversities. Extremes, yes. Adults who rape and kill a 2-year-old child, for instance. But adults who reach out for and give love to each other in one form or another are not perverse," he believes. "Compare that to the chick who kisses her horse and calls it 'my darling'—and people accept that as normal!"

With drug abusers, however, Landy is more traditional. "A patient who comes to me with a drug problem," he explains, "must sign a commitment that if I find anything at all in his system after treatment begins, I am to turn him over to the police." Landy has not had to take that step yet, he reports; his patients are so "completely tied up they'll do everything I say."

The only child of a Pittsburgh physician and his psychodramatist wife, Landy was born with dyslexia, an abnormality of perception that causes things to appear backward. He could not read until he was 13, still cannot spell, and sometimes reverses numbers. (He notes that Nelson Rockefeller, Patton and Einstein, and a disproportionate number of actors and performers have been dyslectic.) Landy dropped out of school after sixth grade but later took entrance exams and earned a B.S. in chemistry at Los Angeles City College, studied psychology at the University of Mexico and took his doctorate at the University of Oklahoma. He married a fellow student and fathered a son, now 16. While in training he worked as an A&R (artist and repertoire) man at Coral, Decca and RCA records, was a production assistant on Liberace's old TV show, and wrote for Teen Screen and True Confessions. "California," he says, "always felt right to me from the moment I got here."

After helping instruct Peace Corps, VISTA and Office of Economic Opportunity psychologists in group methods, Landy began working in 1968 as a drug abuse therapist at Gateways Hospital in L.A. Now, in addition to treating the superrich, he also operates a clinic for lower-income patients.

Therapy occupies 60 hours of his week, not counting phone calls from his patients or staffers (some isolation cases ring him up 20 times a day). Still, he manages time to ski, fly and motorcycle, as well as read—from Melville to Vonnegut—and attend Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts. Divorced three years ago, he squires actress Alexandra Morgan, a onetime group therapy patient at his clinic.

Seven years ago Landy wrote a book called The Underground Dictionary. He is currently at work on a novel whose main character, Supershrink, resembles himself. Landy's only problem—not quite yet at the treatable stage—is that he has writer's block.

[donald]

Gig Young?

I wonder if the Landy treatment was concurrent with his violent demise?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Gig Young?

I wonder if the Landy treatment was concurrent with his violent demise?

I'd take that bet.

[Banana]

According to Wikipedia he authored a dictionary of hippy jargon called The Underground Dictionary.

[punkinhead]

Danget, I was hoping for some video footage of her. She's been so attractive to me since the last season of the Brady Bunch and even up til now.

[CenturyDeprived]

(Apologies as this goes a bit off topic), but I just thought of something odd... Future Landy patient Maureen McCormick was on an early episode of Bewitched with  Elizabeth Montgomery - and Future Landy patient Gig Young was previously married to Elizabeth Montgomery just a few years before Bewtiched started.

So a double bizzarro roundabout Landy connection there. Not sure if we could connect Brian to all that though, but I'll bet BW watched an episode or 2 of Bewitched in its 8 year run. Or at the very least, he probably watched the I Dream of Jeannie episode which guest-starred Phil Spector (yes, that really exists).

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

(Apologies as this goes a bit off topic), but I just thought of something odd... Future Landy patient Maureen McCormick was on an early episode of Bewitched with  Elizabeth Montgomery - and Future Landy patient Gig Young was previously married to Elizabeth Montgomery just a few years before Bewtiched started.

So a double bizzarro roundabout Landy connection there. Not sure if we could connect Brian to all that though, but I'll bet BW watched an episode or 2 of Bewitched in its 8 year run. Or at the very least, he probably watched the I Dream of Jeannie episode which guest-starred Phil Spector (yes, that really exists).

And Brian suspected that guy's chick was a witch! Maybe he was on to something.

This isn't mental illness, it's sorcery!

[Jay]

When I made this thread last night, I hadn't actually read the passage in Maureen's book. I had only found a passing reference. Today I read the full details in Maureen's book about her being "treated" by Landy. What I read really creeped me out, even after having read in detail about the way Landy exploited Brian. After reading about the stunts he pulled with Maureen McCormick, I am convinced that this "man" should have never been allowed anywhere near even a book on psychiatry, let alone any type of degree that would let him practice. That lowlife scum should have been thrown in jail and locked away for life.

[runnersdialzero]

Danget, I was hoping for some video footage of her. She's been so attractive to me since the last season of the Brady Bunch and even up til now.

Uh, yeah. Good gravy, what an attractive woman.

[rn57]

(Apologies as this goes a bit off topic), but I just thought of something odd... Future Landy patient Maureen McCormick was on an early episode of Bewitched with  Elizabeth Montgomery - and Future Landy patient Gig Young was previously married to Elizabeth Montgomery just a few years before Bewtiched started.

So a double bizzarro roundabout Landy connection there. Not sure if we could connect Brian to all that though, but I'll bet BW watched an episode or 2 of Bewitched in its 8 year run. Or at the very least, he probably watched the I Dream of Jeannie episode which guest-starred Phil Spector (yes, that really exists).

Mentioning Bewitched requires me to put this up. Quentin Tarantino, I believe, has said on more than one occasion that it constitutes the two minutes that, for all time, justify the existence of television. Or words to that effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3cFkXSgfjg

And we have Bobby Hart and the late beloved Tommy Boyce to thank for it.

As for the pestilent Pittsburgher - if only Dennis had lived long enough to beat the hell out of him. If only.

Anyway, the Spector appearance on Jeannie can be seen at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJTUx7QDCuY&feature=related

(There's a longer excerpt at YT but the video is murkier.)

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

When I made this thread last night, I hadn't actually read the passage in Maureen's book. I had only found a passing reference. Today I read the full details in Maureen's book about her being "treated" by Landy. What I read really creeped me out, even after having read in detail about the way Landy exploited Brian. After reading about the stunts he pulled with Maureen McCormick, I am convinced that this "man" should have never been allowed anywhere near even a book on psychiatry, let alone any type of degree that would let him practice. That lowlife scum should have been thrown in jail and locked away for life.

What happened?

[rn57]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28285678@N00/5420099163/

Alice Cooper, IIRC, has rarely spoken about Landy's treatment of him - but the above photo is one Coop inscribed to the old quack either during or just after his treatment. Note his reference to "all 15 of you." Hard to say if that refers to Landy's "helpers" or what was in his head.

[Jay]

When I made this thread last night, I hadn't actually read the passage in Maureen's book. I had only found a passing reference. Today I read the full details in Maureen's book about her being "treated" by Landy. What I read really creeped me out, even after having read in detail about the way Landy exploited Brian. After reading about the stunts he pulled with Maureen McCormick, I am convinced that this "man" should have never been allowed anywhere near even a book on psychiatry, let alone any type of degree that would let him practice. That lowlife scum should have been thrown in jail and locked away for life.

What happened?

Landy told her that while she was under his care, she was forbidden to have sex. When she questioned that, he told her "If you have sex, I will find out. I might even be watching you". Something about that made my skin crawl. She was followed everywhere, and monitored 24/7. She was even forbidden to use the restroom without being accompanied. She literally almost had to be kidnapped by her own friend to get away from him. She also said that he perscribed her tons of different pills, and when she went cold turkey from them it made her extremely sick.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Jesus

[MBE]

I'm surprised he didn't make her have sex with him. He was charged with giveing a paitent cocaine and sleeping with her in 1984. It's part of why he lost his licence.

[runnersdialzero]

I'm surprised he didn't make her have sex with him. He was charged with giveing a paitent cocaine and sleeping with her in 1984. It's part of why he lost his licence.

Uh, was he charged in 84, or several years later? If it was 84, then... y'know, what the f*** were the folks around Brian thinking keeping Landy around?

Damn. This guy just keeps getting worse the moment you think he couldn't have been worse.

[Jay]

Marianne Faithfull was also "treated" by landy. She mentioned him in her book too, but I don't think it was much more than a passing reference.

[MBE]

I'm surprised he didn't make her have sex with him. He was charged with giveing a paitent cocaine and sleeping with her in 1984. It's part of why he lost his licence.

Uh, was he charged in 84, or several years later? If it was 84, then... y'know, what the f*** were the folks around Brian thinking keeping Landy around?

Damn. This guy just keeps getting worse the moment you think he couldn't have been worse.

Actually the charges came in 1988 at the same time his work with Brian was under focus. Both cases lost him his licence but he continued to "life manage" Brian until 1992. life manage=almost kill in this case

[Jay]

Do you think Landy ever actually intended to kill anybody? Were his actions 100% intentional, or was he just so egotistical and greedy that he didn't realise what kind of danger and damage he was causing?

[MBE]

Do you think Landy ever actually intended to kill anybody? Were his actions 100% intentional, or was he just so egotistical and greedy that he didn't realise what kind of danger and damage he was causing?

I hope the latter is true but the will thing makes me wonder the worst.

[donald]

Landy was a psychologist, NOT a psychiatrist.  He either illegally obtained the meds he was giving or recommended a regimen to a physician/psychiatrist to administer.  In limited situations, in a few states,  some psychologists may prescribe SOME meds in collaboration with a physician.  Also, Landy violated professional ethical standards of the American Psychological Association followed in evey state in the USA by having a DUAL RELATIONSHIP with Brian Wilson.
Having said that, he may have saved Brian's life at some point thru his unorthodox/illegal treatments.  Things aren't always black and white.

[Amy B.]

A few years ago, Maureen was on a reality show called "Gone Country" with Carnie. I don't know if it was scripted or real, but Maureen and Carnie became good friends. I wonder if that connection had anything to do with it-- what they talked about when the cameras weren't rolling.

[EthanJames]

I've read about Landy in her book, she pretty much describes Landy as everyone else has said about him, this was when she was making the Brady Brides and Brady bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz and his son Lloyd got Landy for Maureen, thinking it would help.