Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

triumph: 'In 1935, L. Ron Hubbard went to Hollywood and worked under motion picture contracts as
a scriptwriter of numerous films making an outstanding reputation there with many highly
successful films. His work in Hollywood is still remembered.'[9] He was also said to have salvaged
the careers of both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff by writing them into scripts when they were out of
work. In short, Ron became another 'Hollywood legend'.[10]
Sadly, it appears he was an unsung legend for his name cannot be found on any 'highly successful
films', with the exception of The Secret of Treasure Island. But this lack of recognition never
prevented Ron from reminiscing about his golden days in Hollywood: 'I used to sit in my penthouse
on Sunset Boulevard and write stories for New York and then go to my office in the studio and have
my secretary tell everybody I was in conference while I caught up on my sleep because they couldn't
believe anybody could write 136 scenes a day. The Screen Writers' Guild would have killed me.
Their quota was eight.'[11]
Ron did not stay long in Hollywood knocking out 136 scenes a day and by the end of the year he
was back in New York. Polly was pregnant again and mindful of what had happened with Nibs, they
decided she should have the baby in a New York hospital. On Wednesday 15 January 1936, she
produced a daughter, Catherine May. Unlike Nibs, Catherine was a lusty, full-term baby, perfect in
every way except for a birthmark on one side of her face. Not long after she was born, the Hubbards
travelled by train to visit Ron's parents in Bremerton, Washington.
Harry Ross Hubbard had been promoted to Lieutenant Commander, at the age of forty-eight, in
December 1934 and the following July he was posted, for the third time, to Puget Sound Navy Yard,
Bremerton, as an Assistant Supply Officer. For Ron's mother it was a particularly welcome move:
her much-loved sister, Toilie, was by then also living in Bremerton and their younger sister, Midgie,
lived across the bay in Seattle. May and Harry had already decided they would retire to Bremerton
after he left the Navy and so they bought a small house at 1212 Gregory Way, just two blocks from
the Navy Yard.
Ron's seventy-two-year-old grandmother, Ida Waterbury, was still at 'the old brick' in Helena, but in
October 1935 Helena was hit by an earthquake. The first tremor was felt during one of President
Roosevelt's Friday night 'fireside chats' on the radio. Throughout the following week, fifty-six further
shocks were recorded, none of them serious, but at ten o'clock on the evening of 18 October a
series of violent tremors shook the town, reducing many of the public buildings to rubble and
generating widespread panic. 'The old brick' survived the earthquake, but in a dangerous condition.
Next day, old Mrs Waterbury caught a train for Bremerton to stay with May and Hub at Gregory Way.
It was in these circumstances that Polly, Ron and their two small children were welcomed into the
bosom of the Waterbury family when they arrived in Bremerton in the spring of 1936. All the
Waterburys liked Polly. 'She was a lot of fun,' said Marnie, 'a good sport.' Polly reciprocated their
warmth, was comfortable with the family and happy to have grandparents and great-aunts around
to help take care of the boisterous Nibs while she looked after the baby.
Such was the conviviality of the milieu that Polly and Ron soon began looking for a home of their
own in the Bremerton area. Property was cheap in rural Kitsap County and they found a little
wooden house at South Colby, a small community with a post office and general store facing
Yukon harbour to the south of Bremerton. The house was set among cedar trees on a steep
hillside overlooking orchards and meadows sloping down to Puget Sound; from the front porch at
nights you could see the lights of Seattle on the other side of the water. Polly fell in love with the
place and named it 'The Hilltop'.