The Catalina-Scientology Connection

(Photo: Kevin Sebold/Wikimedia Commons)

Catalina Island has been the home to, or at least the vacation destination of, myriad celebrities over the decades. This was particularly true during the silent movie era when the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford came here either to work or, as often as not, play like hell.

We’ve had our share of authors, too, including Zane Grey and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But unknown to many is that fact that Dianetics author and Big Man in Scientology L. Ron Hubbard actually lived and worked on Catalina for a short time.

Since Dianetics was the culmination of years of research and philosophical thought on the part of Hubbard, and since the book wasn’t published until nearly four years after he left the island, it probably wouldn’t be fair to say he actually “wrote” the book while on Catalina.  However, he did much of the research (and no doubt drafted many segments) while working at the Catalina Island Yacht Club and recuperating from combat wounds he suffered during World War II.

Regardless of how you feel about Hubbard and his philosophy, he inarguably led an extraordinary life.  He was of that generation that came of age on a remarkable cusp of human civilization; a generation raised on 19^th century bravado alloyed with Depression-era austerity and forged, sometimes dangerously, with 20^th century technology.

Born in 1911 into a Navy family in Nebraska, Hubbard first crossed paths with Catalina shortly after  the war.  During that conflict, he had served in the U.S. Navy as a Lieutenant in the Pacific Theater under General MacArthur and later as commander of a subchaser in the North Atlantic, escorting convoys to Europe and back.

It was during this time that he suffered unspecified combat wounds and wound up in the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California.  Once he was fit enough to leave, he moved to Catalina for further recuperation.

By this time in his life, Hubbard was already a well-established writer and had written a number of short stories and other fiction pieces.  He was, and still is, regarded as an important science fiction writer and penned a number of novels such as Battlefield Earth and the Mission Earth series released in the 1980s.

While on Catalina, Hubbard wrote a number of articles ranging from benign sportfishing articles for the Catalina Islander and a short piece entitled “The Edna Irene” (published anonymously in that paper on Nov. 21, 1946), to the more lofty “An Error in Scholastics,” described as a treatise exploring the “frustration of so many American soldiers suffered at the hands of government bureaucracy.”

In late 1946, or perhaps early 1947, Hubbard left Catalina and shortly thereafter began to enter the limelight.  With the publication of Dianetics in 1950, he was well on his way to become the iconic, if controversial, character the world has come to know.

It’s not clear whether or not Hubbard ever visited Catalina again, or—if he did—whether he spent much time here.  In true Howard Hughes-esque style, much of his later life was shrouded in mystery; his whereabouts generally kept secret.

Hubbard died, reportedly, in January of 1986, leaving a controversial legacy and a life-long trail of literature that includes a few yellowed pages of sportfishing articles in the Catalina Islander newspaper.