Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Today's Blind Items - DB: Busted In LA - A Different Dancing Boy

Surprise! The "db" of this story refers not to the dancing boy, but another one - for him there is a song.

This story does involve not the college but does involve the school, and back even further in the day. The president is at this time not yet disgraced, let alone former, and the land war in SE Asia rages on - albeit in its later stages; Americans are seeking escapist entertainment, especially on TV. One show is about a mixed family, another about a musical family. We're talking now about the latter.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. How I heard the story is as follows: one day, after school I was shopping for music at the local indie record store. I happened to be wearing my school uniform at the time, and one of the guys who worked there, sort of the town hippie (or one of them - he now owns the place), laughed and said he used to go to that school. As we were leaving I mentioned this to my friend, who told me this story...

Initially, the school had not been a k-12 day school with elite aspirations, but associated with the Church of Christian Science. Among its students at the time, in addition to said town hippie, was a member of the show's cast - not the recently deceased one, but the one with the troubled adulthood. Apparently those troubles began earlier.

This is where the story becomes uncharacteristic for the context, and time. It's an odd point of note, but even while homosexuality remains unmentionable in some religious communities, and countries, there's sometimes a surprising tolerance for trans people. Just think of Iran, where same sex relations are punishable by death, but sex reassignment surgery is paid for by the state.

Apparently among this group of Christian Scientists it was like that. There was even one trans girl among the tween students. She was allowed to wear a skirt to school, and there was a fund taken up for her hormones, and surgery.

What no one knew at the time or expected was that the actor had both a budding interest in and hostility toward this person, and others like her. And one day after PE, he cornered her. It's unclear exactly what happened - the two were the only witnesses - but by the end of it she'd been beaten and robbed (presumably for drug money). That's when our friend the hippie and his kid brother showed up. Seeing the state of her, they roughed the actor up, and left him on the playground. By then a crowd had formed around them, cheering them on (the actor had a few hangers on, but no real friends).

Of course, things being what they are, both the hippie and his brother were promptly expelled from the school. And of the actor and the trans girl, only one of them got appropriate medical attention. I guess they make exceptions for famous people.

Within a few years ownership of the school changed hands, and this history was more or less lost.

Apparently, how the Christian Scientists lost ownership of the school is that several children (who were students there) - a boy with asthma, a girl with diabetes, and another boy with cancer - all died from lack of proper medical care. There was purportedly an infirmary on the site, which had no nurse, medications, or medical equipment - just prayer books and religious tracts. It was demolished when the new owners (I guess there had been a lawsuit by an ex-church parent) discovered a child-sized coffin in the storage room. The kids are said to have been buried in one of the surrounding canyons.


54 comments:

  1. Danny Bonaduce?
    Partridge Family?

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  2. Yep. My guess too...

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  3. Danny Bonaduce fits this one fo sho

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  4. It has to be him because it isn't the cowsills or the Boone's they weren't series.

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  5. Montclair College Preparatory School for the school...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montclair_College_Preparatory_School#Notable_alumni

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  6. Danny had a thing for trans girls. "On March 31, 1991, Bonaduce was arrested in Phoenix for beating and robbing Darius Barney, a transvestite prostitute"

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    1. Mixed family = Brady Bunch
      Musical Family = Partridge Family
      One that recently died = David Cassidy
      DB = Danny Bonaduce

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  7. Yep has to be Danny. Gadflys link seals the deal.

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  8. Danny Bonaduce claimed in his autobiography he went to school with the Jacksons and they would gang up and fight people. I think Danny was beaten by them. To he clear, they did not fight unprovoked. Danny was saying do nit mess with them, they are not what they appear to be.

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    1. Well they certainly had a dad to teach them

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  9. Michael Jackson also attended Montclair College Prep. It closed in 2012.

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  10. Rip to those kids. This is like people who want to send prayers to the grief stricken parents if dead kids in Florida. Prayers help( I believe this with all my heart) but there are instances when religious ignorance can literally kill.

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  11. Hey PTA, thanks for all the scoop behind the curtain at the Oscars.

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  12. @Unknown, the Brady Bunch were a profoundly mixed family. All the males had dark hair, and all the females blonde. Unless you count the maid as "family".

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    1. Anonymous4:30 AM

      I think by mixed enty means blended. Mr. Brady was the biological dad of the boys. Mrs. Brady was the bio mom of the girls.

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    2. @Divacentrik, yes, I was joking there.

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  13. Interesting that someone else with a lot of siblings also attended that school. I wonder if the hippie and his brother are among them.

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  14. Christian Science is a weird one. Crazy religion, with lots of otherwise semi-sensible practitioners (at least among my acquaintances).

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  15. Danny Bonaduce and Michael Jackson went to California Preparatory School in Encino with a bunch of other celebrity kids:

    https://books.google.com/books?id=6pd84XvouoQC&pg=PT33&dq=cal+preparatory+school+encino&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi16eyz9NrZAhVCVWMKHRftBa0Q6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=cal%20preparatory%20school%20encino&f=false

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  16. As other commenters note, if the child actor is Danny Bonaduce, the school would be Montclair College Preparatory, which was in Van Nuys.

    Is there an indie record store in Van Nuys? News to me.

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  17. @bollybiy s

    Freakbeat Records is right down the street. Watch out for those vampires heading in the opposite direction:

    http://freakbeatrecords.com/

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  18. 1997: I used to box at a gym with Danny Bonaduce in West Bloomfield, Michigan.
    I suppose it's a good thing he learned to channel his rage on the bag instead of fellow humans.
    He was very nice. Hyper. But nice to everyone.

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    1. Small world! My grandma lives in West Bloomfield (where my mom grew up).

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  19. Obviously Danny Bonaduce. Wonder what happened to the poor girl he terrorized? Hope she's had a happy life.

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  20. My aunt, a Christian Science adherent, just died thanks to letting breast cancer go unchecked until it was too late. Christian Scientists don't really pray; they're basically instructed to *think* away bad stuff. Never works, of course. My Mom's side of the family is all CS. They aren't open to discussing/disputing their beliefs. I'm a basic Bible-believing Protestant Christian adult, and I would never commit myself to a belief system that doesn't *invite* scrutiny of any and all tenets it professes.

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  21. Danny is definitely the villain in this story and has had some trouble with his actions in life but was he a tweener in this story? Glad those guys stuck up for the girl but I kind of feel bad for Danny post this story. I think he might have had some abuse in his life and it seems he struggled as an adult not always doing right but trying. Childhood fame ain't what it seems.

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  22. @Falzone
    Thanks, I thought of Freakbeat (great place) but it doesn't really fit. It's actually more like 7 or 8 miles from Montclair prep, it's probably only been open 10 years, and it's still owned by the same guy (Bob) who started it up. Also, it's really hard to imagine Bob as a hippy, even if he does have a seriously deep knowledge of sixties psych.

    Incidentally, the Partridge Family's first album does have a tune called "Singing My Song" (the blind says "...for him there is a song"), but Bonaduce didn't sing it. In fact, he didn't sing on his own solo album, or any of the group's records.

    On a different note, can explain why a private Christian Science school faced financial liability for failure to treat long-term illnesses like asthma, cancer or diabetes? Why would any rational parent expect a Christian Science school to provide medical care contrary to their beliefs? That part of the blind makes no sense to me.

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  23. Wait a minute, there were indie record stores back then?

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  24. My mum's family was CS and the only reason my grandma switched to Methodist was because when my aunt came down with Scarlett Fever around age 10, they controlling family refused to have her treated and she nearly died.
    MeMa kept all her Mary Baker Eddy books however, and cautioned me when curious 12 year old me wanted to read them.
    That side of the family was interesting; John Birch Society members and Masons going back decades to England. Also, incest going back also decades which stopped with my generation (for which I cannot express how grateful I am.)
    So not all super twisted families are in entertainment...

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    1. @Samantha
      If you ever did get around to reading any CS books, I'm sure you found them to be hopelessly incoherent and equally boring. It's bewildering to me how anyone could subscribe to that religion. For example, it posits that the material world, including our bodies, doesn't actually exist (because matter bad; spirit good, as in gnosticism). But how do we come to acquire this knowledge? By using our eyes to read a material CS book and our ears to hear CS adherents tell us about it. Crazy and sad and my aunt who I loved died 10 years early because of it.

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  25. Anonymous3:12 PM

    Nice.
    Bonaduce received medical attention; while the hippie who tried to help the girl, was expelled.

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  26. Wasn’t Jean Harlow a Christian scientist?

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  27. It’s so funny. I live in Seattle and listen to Danny Bonaduce on a morning radio station. He has shared some crazy stories but he has definitely changed as he’s gotten older.

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  28. Anonymous6:16 PM

    Regardless...I hope Danny's doing ok now, since both David and Dave Madden are gone. He had described them as being like his real brother and dad.

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  29. I had a brief meeting with Danny Bonaduce in a night club in 1989. He was chatting me up, very nice, running around with a tape recorder. He was a radio dj and wanted to tape me saying, "K blah blah blah, the no.1 hit music station." I told him I could not do that, because it would destroy my cool cred factor to be on top 40 radio. That actually cracked him up! Then, honest to God, we went backstage and did some coke, then chatted a little more and said bye. He was indeed found naked and bleeding in his closet after beating a transgendered hooker very shortly thereafter.

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  30. My dad's family were CS. My grandfather sawed his finger off and put it in his pocket. My grandmother did make him get it seen to by a hospital eventually. My aunt had her arm cast removed and healed her own arm. Apparently my grandfather had a new artery growing when he died. Mental.

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  31. Odd that the Wikipedia entry for Montclair College Preparatory School says nothing about it being a Christian Science school.

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  32. @GoogleSleuth, my mom grew up in West Bloomfield, too.

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  33. I wonder what happened to the trans girl :/

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  34. Friend babysatt his kids when we were younger. They we're definily heavy partiers. Sounded like domestic disputes and abuse were an issue as well.

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  35. @PapayaSF
    Good point. MCP was not affiliated with Christian Science. It was founded in 1956 by an idealistic public school teacher, Vernon E. Simpson, and was non-denominational from the start.

    (So, perhaps its alumnus Danny Bonaduce is off the hook. C'mon, get happy!)

    On the other hand, Berkeley Hall School was founded by Christian Scientists in 1911. It operated in Beverly Hills up until 1976, when it temporarily closed before reopening at a new location on Mulholland Drive in 1980. Somewhere along the way it lost its Christian Science affiliation. Unlike many of the other local private schools at the dawn of the 1970s, it was co-ed (which is a requirement for the blind).

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  36. Another problem with the Bonaduce/MCP guess is that the school is near the 405 smack dab in the flats of the Valley. The blind refers to disposal of students' bodies in "one of the surrounding canyons." There are no "surrounding canyons" near MCP.

    I wonder if the source of this story has mixed up the schools, and grafted the story of a playground beating at MCP onto rumors of fatal medical neglect at Berkeley Hall. Certainly the former seems a lot more plausible than the latter.

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  37. Wow. WTH? Iran forces gays to have surgery. It's not some great tolerance thing to trans people. Where does this nonsense come from? Islam is openly filled with hatred toward gays.

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  38. I think the term 'surrounding canyons' is all relative my man. I think for sure it's Montclair prep.

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  39. Jeremy Gelbwaks? It seems like none of the cast got along with him and he was replaced in 1971. Can't find any info on his schooling though.

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  40. Does indeed sound like Danny Bonerdouchebag.

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