Departures of note

Jeron Criswell King, known as The Amazing Criswell, built a career on predictions that were spectacularly wrong. He claimed that Denver would be struck by a space ray turning metal into rubber, foresaw mass cannibalism, and set the end of Earth for August 18, 1999—his 92nd birthday. On The Jack Paar Program in March 1963, he predicted President John F. Kennedy would not run for reelection in 1964 because something would happen to him in November 1963. Despite the inaccuracies, his flamboyant style—spit-curled hair, stentorian voice, sequined tuxedo—made him a memorable figure on Los Angeles television and in the films of Ed Wood.

Criswell grew up in Indiana with relatives who owned a funeral home, and he often said he became comfortable sleeping in caskets in the storeroom. He claimed he did not speak until age four, when during a thunderstorm he made his first prediction: 'the rain will stop.' He later said he had worked as a radio announcer and news broadcaster. In the early 1950s, he began buying time on a local Los Angeles television station to run infomercials for his Criswell Family Vitamins, and to fill the time he started a 'Criswell Predicts' segment. This made him a minor off-beat celebrity, leading to appearances on Tonight Starring Jack Paar and friendships with Mae West and Korla Pandit.

His predictions appeared in syndicated newspaper columns, magazines, books—including Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000—and a spoken-word LP, Your Incredible Future. He also narrated and acted in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and Night of the Ghouls (1959), and appeared in Orgy of the Dead (1965). Criswell married Halo Meadows, a former speakeasy dancer. Mae West used him as her personal psychic; he once predicted her rise to President of the United States, after which she, Criswell, and George Liberace would take a rocket to the Moon. West sold him her old luxury cars for five dollars each.

Sources say Criswell never claimed to be a real psychic, but those who knew him, including actress Maila Nurmi ('Vampira'), believed he was. Writer Charles A. Coulombe, whose family rented an apartment from him, said Criswell told his father that he 'had the gift, but lost it when I started taking money for it.' Criswell died on October 4, 1982, at age 75, and was cremated days later. After his death, his friend Paul Marco released a song Criswell had recorded as a memorial, 'Someone Walked Over My Grave,' which he wanted released only posthumously.