A Fake Prince, a Game Show Contestant and the Devil
How an intelligence officer's trivia show winnings were a gift to us all
February 9, 1961 - Burbank, California
There’s a saying. It goes something like, “Comedy lives next door to horror.”
The devilish diary that Bill had in his custody couldn’t be in starker contrast to his current surroundings, and that’s perhaps where that saying, or my butchering of it, came from.
So, sure, comedy lives next door to horror, but sometimes those houses were bulldozed into a duplex with disturbingly thin walls.
Bill sat in the green room preparing to take the stage as a contestant on the Groucho Marx-hosted, comedy-quiz show, You Bet Your Life. The show was later hosted in the 1990s by Bill Cosby and revived in the 2020s by Jay Leno.
The diary Bill possessed was titled, “The Exorcist Diary of Father Bowdern as Kept by Father Raymond Bishop” and there really, truly, wasn’t anything comedic about it. It was all horror. No comedy.
The diary details a downright Biblical battle between good and evil that began on January 15, 1949, in Cottage City, Maryland. The grandmother of the unnamed family could hear a sound, troubling and persistent. The consistent dripping of water. It continued on until a hanging picture of Christ shook as though it was hit from within the wall.
Let me tell you, things don’t get a whole fuck of a lot better from there on out.
So, the grandmother could hear scratching coming from beneath her floorboards. Under the assumption of a pesky rodent, an exterminator was called in. Wrong again. Shortly thereafter, the grandmother and one of her grandsons described a terrifying incident where they were plagued by the sound of someone running towards them in the dark, “… similar to the rhythm of marching feet and the beat of drums.”
Poor granny, trying to knit through her golden years when suddenly she’s running pest control for Hell itself.
Whatever this invisible and malevolent force was, it allegedly invaded and attached to one of the boys in the family, only noted as “R.”, in the diary.
“An orange and a pear flew across the entire room where R. was standing. The kitchen table was upset without any movement on the part of R.”, the diary professed.
It wasn’t just at home either. The diary notes an incident where “R’s desk at school moved about on the floor similar to the plate on a Ouija board. R did not continue his attendance out of embarrassment.”
The bizarre activity followed R. and the family to St. Louis, Missouri, where some form of crossword vs. Ouija board remix went down, “Letters of alphabet written on paper were underlined whenever the table moved. A code of messages became evident. Phenomena indicated that the spirit was not the devil…”
After months of stigmata, torment, and numerous exorcisms, on April 18, 1949, the diary entry states:
Then there were the most violent contortions of the entire period of exorcism… …perhaps this was the fight to the finish.
Father O’Flaherty and the Brothers were weary and sore physically from the exertion. After seven or eight minutes of violence R., in a tone of complete relief said, “He’s gone!” Immediately R. came back to normal and said he felt fine.
The Exorcist Diary of Father Bowdern as Kept by Father Raymond Bishop
April 18, 1949
Just like that, it was over. R. had communion the next day, and the final entry relating to the exorcism, written by Father Bishop on April 25, 1949, read, “Since Monday at 11:00 PM there have been no indications of the presence of the devil.”
The Washington Post ran a follow-up story on August 20, 1949 titled, “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil's Grip”. It was this article that would become the cosmic nudge that changed everything for our comedic protagonist.
Bill had been a student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC at the time. When he read the Post article, the devilish tale intrigued him. Through his years as a student, Bill followed up and penned short pieces about the strange happenings in St. Louis and DC, eventually obtaining the diary of Rev. Raymond Bishop in the process.
Completing his Master’s degree, Bill joined the US Air Force in 1954, working in their psychological warfare division. He would eventually end up at the United States Information Agency in Beirut, spreading US propaganda during the Cold War, before returning to the United States and heading to California.
That’s where we find our man now.
The California winter sun is a far cry from February in St. Louis, or Washington, DC where the “…20 to 30…” exorcisms were diarized by Father Bishop in 1949. The palm trees swaying in an ocean breeze are a disorienting contrast, one that might have made the Reverend’s diary feel as if it were written in a different country, or a different time.
And rightly so because the diary is wildly creepy and Bill knew it.
Begone levitating beds, secretive Latin incantations and sweaty clergy!
Take off! All thee demonic entities endlessly fucking with the land of the living by chucking around our furniture and fruit!
This was more Bill’s style.
Comedy.
Pulling people’s leg.
Bill was not about to take the stage as himself.
Perhaps using some of his knowledge gained from working in Beirut during his psychological warfare and propaganda days, Bill was about to take the stage as a Saudi Arabian Prince.
Don’t adjust your dial, you read that correctly.
I watch now, 64 years later, as this fake Prince, former intelligence officer, comedy writer, and goofball took the stage. Adorned in a brilliant white suit, slicked back hair and wearing dark, impenetrable sunglasses, Bill—er…The Prince—was handsome, quirky, and a curious sight to behold. Groucho plays the part, albeit with numerous cringe-worthy, misogynistic jokes that tire much faster than the Prince’s air of intrigue.
The Prince from… Minnesota.
The jig is up.
Bill takes off his identity-concealing sunglasses and tells Groucho and the studio audience his name. Bill explains he’s a writer, and he loves playing the “Arabian prince” joke on friends and celebrities around Los Angeles.
Everyone has a big laugh.
Good times.
Then, Groucho gets down to trivia business, hurling questions at Bill and his razor-sharp partner, Arlene Di Fraia. The couple runs the board, scooping up a grand prize of $10,000, about $100,000 USD if you’re reading this in 2025. No paltry sum.
When Groucho asks a gleeful Bill how the writer would spend his prize money, Bill responds with an unsurprising smile, “It’s going to finance me to write my next book.”
It would be ten years later, in 1971, when The Exorcist was unleashed upon unwitting readers. Two years later, the movie would change the horror genre and film itself forever.
This was after Bill dropped the Arabian prince bit, lived off his Groucho Marx trivia winnings and started using his full name for his work: William Peter Blatty.
Bill would follow the first book up with an even more terrifying sequel, Legion, which would become the backbone of the equally terrifying film, The Exorcist III.
So maybe comedy doesn’t just live next door to horror, it borrows sugar from it, throws raging block parties, and sometimes sneaks into its bed at night. Or rattles the floor boards.
Sources
Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil's Grip. Bill Brinkley, August 20, 1949.
SLU Legends and Lore: The 1949 St. Louis Exorcism, Slu.edu (2019).
William Peter Blatty, American writer and filmmaker (1928-2017), Wikipedia.org.