If you watched any amount of late television in the 1990s, you’re familiar with the concept of 900 numbers. Specifically, you’re almost certainly familiar with infomercials for telephone psychics. Miss Cleo was the biggest celebrity of these infomercials, even though other celebrities like Dionne Warwick and Billy Dee Williams also promoted over-the-phone psychics.
This morning I watched a documentary on HBO/MAX called Call Me Miss Cleo. I’ve read numerous news stories and article debunking the telephone psychic industry, and some of these touch on Miss Cleo in passing, but this was the first in-detail information I got about her. I was disappointed at how little information the documentary related, as they had interviewed multiple friends and lovers of Miss Cleo without shedding too much light on who she really was.
Truth be told, though, I think she was as much of an enigma to her friends and lovers as she was to the public. The makers of Call Me Miss Cleo might not have been able to get more details from them because there were no more details to be gotten.
But I did learn several things about Miss Cleo I didn’t know previously, and you probably don’t know these facts about Miss Cleo, either:
1 – Miss Cleo Actually Had Little to Do with Psychic Readers Network
Yes, Miss Cleo was an actual phone psychic, and she would take calls on film for the commercials they were running. But in spite of looking like she was the person you were calling, she had no ownership stake in PRN (Psychic Readers Network)(Yes, they’re still in business, and their homepage says they’re under new management), and she had no management role.
She was just the face of the company, and she wasn’t paid as well for that as you think. This didn’t prevent her from getting sued, though. In Florida, companies’ spokespersons can also be held liable. She didn’t have to pay any damages — the charges against her were dropped. But PRN paid out loads of cash.
2 – Miss Cleo Wasn’t Really from Jamaica, in Spite of Her Accent
Miss Cleo’s given name was Youree Dell Harris, and her birth certificate indicated that she was born in Los Angeles. She went to school in California, too.
She was raised by a Catholic Afro-Caribbean family. Her attorney claimed that she was just as Jamaican as anyone who claimed that as their heritage. One wonders how people who were born and raised in Jamaica might feel about that.
3 – Miss Cleo Used the Jamaican Accent in Her Personal Life, Too
In the documentary, multiple personal friends, two godsons, and two romantic partners were interviewed. I don’t know which of them made this observation, but more than one pointed out that Miss Cleo always used the same Jamaican accent she used in her commercials. They also said that her personality onscreen was the same as in her personal life…
But…
4 – Miss Cleo Had Other Personalities and Used Different Names
The multiple people close to Miss Cleo also observed that she had other identities with different names, as well, and they did have different accents. According to her Wikipedia article, she also used the following aliases:
- Ree Perris
- Youree Cleomili
- Youree Dell Harris
- Youree Perris
- Rae Dell Harris
- Cleomili Perris Youree
- Cleomili Harris
There was speculation in the documentary that she might have had multiple personality disorder.
5 – You Couldn’t Really Get Miss Cleo on the Phone
Even though she was a real fortuneteller and tarot card reader, and even though she asked people to “call me now” on her infomercials, you couldn’t actually get her on the phone. Calling the 900 number put you in touch with one of the psychics working for the network.
They even had a scripted tactic to use when someone really wanted to speak directly with Miss Cleo. They were supposed to pretend to be trying to find Miss Cleo in the office, and to make this search last as long as possible. After all, they were charging by the minute. Eventually, they would explain to the caller that Miss Cleo was out of the office.
6 – Miss Cleo Was an LGBQT Activist After Her Career as a TV Psychic Pitchman Ended
She went into seclusion for a few years after her career promoting PRN ended, but when she returned to public life, she was active as an LGBQT activist. She came out in 2006.
7 – Miss Cleo Died in 2016 of Colon Cancer
She died in hospice care in Palm Beach, Florida.
Independent and skeptical thinkers like James Randi or like Nicholas Bredimus might easily debunk various telephone psychics’ work, but that doesn’t make their work or lives less interesting. In fact, I’d suggest that the true story is often even more interesting.