SPEAKER_01: Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. We're celebrating Pride Month with icons, supreme queens of queer culture. Some are household names. Others are a little more behind the scenes. All have defied social norms and influenced generations of people to be unapologetically themselves. If you watched TV in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you might remember today's Womanican for her infamous infomercials. This television psychic often sat behind a large table adorned with a crystal ball and candles, encouraging viewers to call her for a free reading now. But when it comes to this icon, there's more than meets the eye. Let's talk about Miss Cleo. Before she was the famed TV psychic Miss Cleo, she was simply Ure Del Harris. Ure was born on August 12, 1962 in Los Angeles to a Catholic Afro-Caribbean family. She attended an all-girls boarding school, and when she was 19 years old, she married a man and had her first child before getting divorced a few years later. She went on to have another child in her late 20s. Ure debuted the character of Miss Cleo after she relocated to Seattle in the mid-1990s. Originally she performed on stage as Cleo, a Jamaican character in a play she wrote under one of her many aliases, Ray Parre. The play was titled For Women Only and was produced for the Seattle Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. Ure put on a handful of plays at the Performing Arts Center, but soon after her last show flopped, she left the city. Controversy followed Ure. According to an investigation by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, she never paid her production cast. She blamed the missed payments on medical costs for cancer, and claimed she would eventually pay up. In 1997, Ure moved to Florida, where she met the founders of the Psychic Readers Network, Stephen Fetter and Peter Stoltz. She began working as a tarot-reading psychic for their telemarketing center using her Jamaican Cleo character, complete with the accent. And after a series of failed commercials with other hosts, Miss Cleo got her chance in the spotlight. In the 1980s and 90s, hotlines, or 1-800 numbers, were popular ways for companies to make a quick buck from unsuspecting callers. There were hotlines for almost everything. You could call in to talk to your favorite TV and movie characters. Hotlines gave real-time baseball scores and told you the weather forecast. But two of the most popular categories were phone sex hotlines and psychics. In the late 90s, Miss Cleo's infomercials were impossible to miss.
SPEAKER_03: If you've never had a reading from a real psychic, try us right now for free!
SPEAKER_01: Cleo would appear sitting in a throne-like chair wearing bright clothes and a matching headscarf. In front of her were her candles, a crystal ball, and tarot cards she would read from. Cleo would give love and life advice to stunned callers, encouraging viewers to call me now for a free psychic reading.
SPEAKER_03: The cards can reveal things that you will never see by yourself. Call me now for your free tarot reading!
SPEAKER_01: Miss Cleo had an undeniable presence and soon became a pop culture fixture. She was spoofed on sketch comedy shows, referenced on sitcoms, and appeared on talk shows. Her star was rising, but long-term success was not on the cards for Miss Cleo. The free psychic reading promised to callers was not exactly free. In fact, it cost $5 per minute, even when they were on hold. When the phone bill came, callers were hit with exorbitant fees. In 2002, the Federal Trade Commission sued the psychic readers network and ordered the company to forgive $500 million in customer fees. The network agreed to stop selling their services over the phone and to pay a $5 million fine to the FTC. The callers weren't the only ones getting scammed. Miss Cleo said she and the other psychics were only paid somewhere between 12 and 24 cents per minute. But because Miss Cleo was the face of the network, she was the subject of the complaint, though she wasn't named as a defendant since she didn't have any ownership in the company. In the public's mind, that didn't matter. Miss Cleo's reputation was ruined. Many years later, she appeared in a cereal commercial as Miss Cleo, but she didn't even own that character anymore. The psychic readers network sued General Mills for using Miss Cleo. In general, she mostly faded from the public eye, occasionally offering readings at weddings and parties. After the FTC scandal, Miss Cleo became a recluse, rarely leaving her Florida home. She eventually took solace in the Florida LGBTQ community. She even organized meetings and attended pride marches. In 2006, Miss Cleo came out as a lesbian in an interview with The Advocate. In the interview, she stated, "'I am who I am.'" She said she always knew she was gay, but that society back in the 1970s would not have accepted her sexuality. Even decades later, after she became famous, she remained concerned about her sexuality becoming public. In 2014, Miss Cleo appeared on the documentary Hotline discussing the relationship between callers and hotlines. A few years later, in 2016, Miss Cleo died of colon cancer in Palm Beach, Florida. She was 53 years old. Miss Cleo's infamous legacy was documented in the 2022 film Call Me Miss Cleo through interviews with friends and family. A new side to Miss Cleo is now a part of history. All month we're talking about icons. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Tune in tomorrow for a bonus episode presented by our sponsor Planned Parenthood. We talk about how to support a loved one who's having an abortion and hear from Anusha, a doctor and Planned Parenthood storyteller who shares their abortion story. Talk to you then.
SPEAKER_00: In 1995, Detective Tony Richardson was trying to figure out who killed a fellow officer.
SPEAKER_03: The case comes down to who is believed and who is ignored. Oh my goodness, we did convict an innocent man. I'm Beth Shelburn from Lava for Good podcasts. This is Ear Witness. Listen to Ear Witness on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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