(soft orchestra music)
- [Voiceover] Though my parents lived in New York
for many years,
the European roots to find them.
My Greek mother boasted about the blueness of the Agean
and my father praise the Swiss Alps.
But for me,
none of Europe's shrines could compete with a place
that was only several blocks from my home.
Central Park is where my brother and I found native soil.
(boys mumble)
Years later,
Central Park's history and presence still fascinates me.
A few days ago,
I was sitting on a bench near the boat pond
trying to imagine my surroundings
as they looked a century ago,
without asphalt or car traffic.
Back then,
the park was stocked with wild deer
and it's meadows was home to sheep and horn cattle.
There were gilded birdcages
and children driving goat-drawn carriages.
My thoughts were in this Victorian park,
but a woman with a team of dogs caught my attention.
- Come.
Come.
- [Voiceover] Why would a professional dog walker
carry such a big backpack?
Then I see the backpack is loaded
with laundry and blankets.
Maybe it was her air of well-being
that made me curious.
When I introduced myself, she said her name was Maggie.
Then she calmly said that she had been expecting me.
That she had extrasensory perception
and had been communicating with me for several days.
(people mumble)
The next morning,
I find myself near Bethesda Fountain
looking for Maggie.
- Sometimes I forget I have a face.
I'm so used to doing this without a fountain.
I'm Hera, sister of Zeus.
Now (giggles) Jupiter on the same,
now that would be a relief.
But, uh, in Stairway to Heaven there's a little,
♫ And did you know
♫ Your stairway lies on the whispering
The whispering wind is the voices,
the radio control.
Jupiter controls the radio waves.
(soft brass ensemble music)
- [Voiceover] Things don't necessarily get clearer to me
the more Maggie explains them,
but I managed to piece this much together.
She claims her father was the Hollywood movie star,
Robert Ryan.
She once had an apartment on the upper west side
with a roommate name Pea Green Palmer.
She mentions a horse named Tangle
and having once worked in Central Park
as a carriage driver.
Her oldest son, Michael, was born in 1969.
The quintuplets, Justin, Elizabeth, two Tracys, and Izador
were born some time later.
When I ask her who her husband was
she says his name is Jupiter.
(jazz music)
- Prince William!
Ah, she wants all of it. (chuckles)
Put a lid on it, Mary.
- [Voiceover] Maggie tells me
that she's from the class of 86.
That's the year she became homeless
and took to the streets with all her dogs.
After a few months on the street,
or maybe after a year and a half or two on the street,
I'd meet these people who had shown up on the street
the same time I had
and I noticed that we
had pretty much evolved to a certain level
whereby we weren't doing soup kitchens anymore
and we pretty much had a network of friends
and support system.
And our clothes came from
reliable upper east side garbage.
(giggles) And, uh,
we had reliable upper east side dumpsters to dive and
we pretty much had ourselves worked into
a fairly comfortable situation.
We weren't beligered and lost and angry anymore.
We pretty much just sort of taking a breath and
gearing up for the next phase, I guess.
(dogs bark)
- [Voiceover] The next time I see Maggie,
she just found another mouth to feed.
A pit bull who she's named Sterling Silver.
I wonder how Maggie supports herself
and all her dogs.
She said that she relies on the kindness of strangers,
but she also mentions friends who live on
the upper east side.
Does Jupiter pay alimony?
In any case,
when Maggie invites me to go to the ASPCA with her
to get a license for Sterling,
I offered to pay for it.
She accepts.
- And we have no,
we have no known vaccinations history.
But you think, to you,
do you notice any complaints other than his skin problem?
He's acting like a normal dog to you?
- [Maggie] Yes, he's very nice.
He's Sterling.
- That's why his name is Sterling?
- [Maggie] Yes sir!
He's so amiable to suggestions,
he's easy to handle.
He's very nice and he likes me.
He prefers me to other people.
- [Veterinarian] He seems like he gets along with dogs.
He's still barking.
- Mmm-hmm.
Oh! He kissed!
What is your name?
- I'm Dr. Crominara.
- [Voiceover] While Maggie was filling out
the application forms at the front desk,
I noticed that she gave her current address as
865 Madison Avenue.
She even specified that she lived on the steps
of Saint James Church.
- [Maggie] Mika Little pups? (clicks tongue)
Forrest?
(clicks tongue) Mika Little pups.
Mika little pup.
(kisses)
I'm listening to the news.
The traffic report is very funny.
(clicks tongue)
Um, Michael Patrick was in the traffic pattern last night.
He just went by and said don't go.
So I'm not gonna go into all the cosmic gizmos
that I'm directing.
Traffic on planet Earth.
- [Voiceover] Maggie keeps telling me
that she spots her children walking in the park
or sitting in the back of a passing car.
But she says she's never permitted to talk to them directly.
Only telepathically.
Maggie also believes that the radio she listens to
transmits personal messages from Jupiter.
It's clear to me that Maggie is preoccupied
by extrasensory perception,
so I asked her to explain it further.
- It's to be in a position of
having a very finely tuned understanding
of other people and what they want
and how they feel they can achieve their goals
relative to your goals
so that we can all just
like move this everlasting peace grid
just down that much closer to the Earth.
It eventually covers the Earth so that there's peace.
It's a grid
but you have to bring it down with your brains.
What did I used to call,
a matrix or a grid.
I think they're similar, aren't they?
Matrix.
She the daughter of
a tricky one.
We're in the shadow of the living room.
- [Voiceover] The shadow of the living room.
What living room?
I'm fascinated by Maggie's language,
but I also feel like I'm in a foreign country
without my phrase book.
The more cryptic her remarks,
the more I strain to decipher them.
I can't see the shadow of the living room.
I don't know where or who Jupiter is.
But I don't think these phrases are arbitrary.
I think Maggie is trying to tell me something.
(jazz music)
It can be complicated to visit someone
who roams 843 acres.
Today I can't find Maggie,
but I'm struck by how things and people
have altered inside Central Park.
The stage is huge and open.
Sometimes the audience becomes the spectacle.
- So, I will burn this flag in protest.
In protest.
Liberty, vitality, egality, and fortune moon.
For everybody or nobody.
Remember the French Revolution.
Off with their head.
Hallelujah.
- [Maggie] Found and repaired a new umbrella.
Wanna see my new umbrella?
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
(giggles)
- Hi guys!
And a bee is buzzing above us.
Busy, busy, busy, busy. (giggles)
She's odd. I's odd.
Come and get it! Come get it!
Forrest, darling!
A rat!
Silver!
Oh, that is wonderful.
Boy, Sterling Silver, that really live us.
Completes the look.
Stop it!
No!
Stop it!
Anyway, there's a man in the park who eats these things.
He's been eating rats and pigeons for years.
He lives above the the eighties.
I'm taking this away from dogs.
(dog growls)
(gasps)
Okay, we're putting this in with the trophies.
(rock and roll music)
It's just a little ol' farm.
'Cause it isn't a very big farm.
Kinda looks like Wisconsin,
you know, all these trees.
It happens to be a city down there but
- [Voiceover] Maggie sees things that I don't.
But there's a dark side to this ability of hers.
I learned, for instance,
that she grew up with a family on Long Island.
But she insists that the couple who raised her
aren't her real parents.
She was switched with another baby at birth.
- The truth
of the circumstances around my birth,
after I'd been shifted from my birth parents
to this other set of parents
and these other circumstances,
were to create
the symptoms of Schizophrenia so that I,
my thinking
and my actions
would render me
invalid and therefore
not capable of handling anything like an inheritance.
And the, uh,
you know, the matter of hearing voices,
rather than being considered a gift,
would be considered a fault.
I've been framed.
I've been framed!
And then I met this Bobby who, uh,
had been adopted by the Caddy family
during the war.
And the things that happened to her
validated in my own mind
the suspicion that the link.
I have two and a lustrious family
is a real one.
- Banana hates me.
You'se mention, you mention my name,
you show my picture to Joe Banana.
I said Joe Banana, you are dead.
(giggles) That's the truth.
And you ask the preacher,
that's exactly what I used to tell Sam Jean Connor.
before he was killed.
I used to be on stage out in Vegas, sonny.
That's the preacher, that's why he hated me.
"You're not fit for a mother."
I was on stage and I had a comedy act,
similar to Richard Pryor's,
and the preacher took it the wrong way.
I was undercover, working as a waitress.
And seeing and telling dirty jokes on stage
so I can see in here what was going on
and know which mafia chiefs spit in what face,
what names, and who got together.
And he ruined the whole thing!
They would come in and drag me off the stage.
I'm not kidding you!
And I don't dance nude 'cause, see,
this happened because of who I really am.
Because I escaped Auschwitz,
I shouldn't have escaped Auschwitz.
- [Voiceover] Sam Jean Conner,
Joe Banana, Auschwitz, that's not all.
Bobby also tells me that before being adopted
by the Kennedy family,
she lived with either her father,
Albert Einstein, in Switzerland,
with her mother, Greta Garbo, in New York.
- [Bobby] That's my hand. That's me.
- [Voiceover] I'm fascinated by these stories,
but troubled as well.
- [Man In Suit] Come on, come on.
Come on. Come on.
- [Voiceover] These are dense plots in which
Maggie and Bobby appear as heroines,
but also as victims.
Since arriving in New York,
Bobby has spent her entire savings
phoning the FBI five to 10 times a day,
asking for her job back.
It's a high price to pay for her convictions.
- Yay!
(baby gibberish) Come down the road daddy.
Come down.
- [Voiceover] Can we stay up here?
- Yeah.
(baby gibberish)
- [Voiceover] I go to the Catskills
for a vacation with my family.
- I'm driving the car.
- [Voiceover] I'm a hundred miles from Central Park,
but Maggie's enigma will not release me.
In our first meeting,
she said she'd been expecting me.
How was I suspected to hear Maggie's riddles?
Why does she believe that Robert Ryan is her father?
And where are her children?
I wonder if it's appropriate for me
to pursue these questions.
Then a coincidence makes me forget my misgivings.
While visiting friends one day,
I admire a carved wooden bench on their front porch.
I'm told that it was a gift from Robert Ryan's daughter.
Did they once know Maggie?
I pressed for more information,
but it was 20 years ago and all pretty vague.
They tell me Robert Ryan used to live in the Dakota,
the legendary building whose Gothic spires
cast shadows on Central Park.
Roman Polanski filmed Rosemary's baby here
and John Lennon was murdered at its door step.
- Nobody suffers over squirrels like these dogs.
One,
Forrest!
Where is that dog?
That's why they're crying!
I'm missing (screams in surprise)
I almost lost a finger.
Okay, we'll leave without Forrest
and hope that he finds a good home.
Forrest?
Forrest McHand Ratty, the king of all dogs.
You're going to be a mommy
and you're running around looking for rats.
And you'll teach those babies.
They're gonna be good ratters too.
They're really gonna be good ratters.
(suspenseful music)
- [Voiceover] I begin to wonder if I romanticized
Maggie's outdoor life.
With the cold weather approaching,
how would Maggie keep herself and all her dogs
from freezing to death?
I'm becoming less patient with Maggie.
(clicks tongue)
- This is an official.
I'm a official (chuckles)
in the Vatican Army. (laughs)
I'm General Disturbance.
(crowd whistles and cheers)
- [Voiceover] For the next few weeks,
I try to convince Maggie to leave the park
and find an apartment.
I contact city and private agencies
that work with the homeless.
They already know Maggie.
It seems that nothing will budge Maggie
from her sacred ground
or separate her from her dogs.
When Maggie does move,
it's to a new camp under a bridge in Central Park.
It's here, in late October,
that Nika Little's puppies are born.
- [Maggie] Such a b-day.
(dogs bark loudly)
(dog whines)
- She's trying to hide them.
See? That's why she wanted to dig a hole,
she wants to hide them.
Even from you, Maggie.
You know, as close as she is to you.
This is new, only that's what she's supposed to do,
hide them.
See, it check it. "Is it alright? Is it alive?"
Did she let you?
Is it okay?
- [Maggie] Yes, it's just a mess.
Kicking around here too - [Bobby] Oh! There she goes!
Two.
Alive and kicking but
kicking the afterbirth out. - [Maggie] There's afterbirth?
Well, just wait then.
(dogs bark)
Little girl.
(sings happily)
(machine hums loudly)
(puppies cry)
Popeye here, Herculisa.
Could it be?
That's Seturna.
Oh, she's a little beauty too.
And she's the daughter of Boris.
She has little
big, fat duke claws
like Boris. Just like daddy.
Just like her daddy.
Hebe.
She looks a lot like Sterling Silver's markings,
but she has Boris's nose.
Ah! She is so beautiful.
She looks like my daughter, Elizabeth.
You do. You look like Elizabeth.
I hope Elizabeth becomes your new mommy.
Wouldn't that be fun to be with someone
that looks like you?
A Valkyrie.
- [Voiceover] It doesn't entirely surprise me
that the litter is christened after Greek divinities
such as Herculisa, Seturna, and Hebe.
Maggie promptly spins myths around her newborns,
making them puppies, children, and goddesses all at once.
The birth seems to spark Maggie's mind,
but it also brings back phantoms from her past.
- One particular thing about remembering
being kidnapped that always impressed me
and I just figured out this morning what it was.
When this nurse, or whatever she was,
walked into the nursery
and I was astrally projected on the ceiling
having a stomach ache,
the one thing I really noticed was the stitchery
or the stitching of the hem in her uniform
and how the hem had been folded over double,
once and a half
with little teeny, teeny frays
visible through the white fabric.
And it was very starched
and the stitching was very, very precise.
And that was her hem.
And the man who raised me
was the early Greek god Hemera,
the early god of the dawn.
Hem-era.
And yesterday when we were all standing around
in that amphitheater type arrangement
at the back of the tunnel,
a man who looked just like him walked by
and he was smiling at the fact that
so many people were standing around
all at once (giggles)
in this Elizabethan setting.
(somber jazz music)
- [Voiceover] Who is this Hemera
who kidnapped Maggie when she was several days old?
Did he and Jupiter correspond to real people?
Maggie's world reminds me of the Greek myths
my mother used to read to me.
I think of the murky afterworld called Erebus,
where souls take refuge after being separated
from their bodies and their earthly existence.
These trees are fall scenery to me,
but Maggie populates them with spirits and voices.
I'm in Central Park, Maggie's in Erebus.
- Boy that look good.
I mean, y'all getting too used to people food.
- Come on Boris.
- [Bobby] Boris!
- He'll come.
- [Voiceover] It's the onset of the coldest December
in New York City's recorded history.
So cold that on the anniversary of John Lennon's murder,
only a handful attend his memorial.
I invite Maggie to the Lennon vigil,
but she sees no reason to mourn him.
She has more recent news of John Lennon.
- Um, what year was that? 1980?
When he was dead about five years,
on his birthday,
there was an article in some Florida paper about
his having been dead five years
but there was also an article on the back of that page
about somebody who was
doing furniture repair of elegant old Spanish beds
and elegant old works of arts
from the 15th century, woodworking.
And the fellow in the picture was John Lennon.
So in other words,
he went from the dead to the bed, I guess.
Old Spanish bed.
So since my father,
who had lived in that apartment before
John and Yoko lived in that apartment
isn't dead either.
I guess it's a tradition with that apartment
to die Hollywood deaths artificially
and just continue on your life with some other name.
Or names.
This island is Many-hatta, yes? (laughs)
We wear many hats.
- What do you want?
- I'm sorry. I guess I must have the wrong place.
- What, uh, place you're looking for?
- [Army Man] Well I thought it was this apartment.
I was looking for a buddy of mine.
- [Voiceover] This is Robert Ryan,
the man Maggie claims is her real father,
appearing in the Hollywood classic, Crossfire.
I learned that after Robert Ryan's death in 1973,
John Lennon bought his apartment in the Dakota.
Both men had lived above Central Park
and Maggie had not allowed them to leave it,
not even by dying.
Apparently John Lennon and Robert Ryan
now reside in Erebus,
along with Maggie's children, her puppies,
and her deities.
But if Robert Ryan was Maggie's father,
then who was Hemera,
the man who raised her and who lurked near the site
where the puppies were born?
Fortunately, Maggie does have less elusive contacts.
After hearing for weeks about
Maggie's upper east side friend, Catina,
I finally meet her.
- Anyway, I'm so happy to see you! (laughs)
Very happy to see you! God!
We were all gonna leave notes for each other
behind phones and stuff.
I thought you'd be, um,
- I'm late.
I'm late because I was on the phone this morning.
I called those two people to make sure.
I went up to the vet
and the vet said yes,
the dogs could go into a home.
Even though there's another dog,
they're not contagious.
I mean, they're not contagious,
once they're on antibiotics, they're okay.
- [Maggie] They need a little care, that's all.
- They're fine
- [Maggie] They caught it real fast.
- Yeah, I know.
Yeah, 'cause of the weather.
So Lucy's giving them the antibiotic.
- [Voiceover] A few days ago,
when the puppies were sick,
Maggie permitted Catina to take them
to a local animal clinic for adoption.
Now Catina wants Maggie to get Mika Little spayed.
- She says you got to do that.
- [Maggie] She's been talking about it all morning.
- Who?
- [Maggie] Mika Little. - She, okay.
Well I'm calling her today.
I didn't have a chance to do it last night.
Had to go watch my husband perform Richard III last night.
- [Maggie] Oh yeah? Was that an opening?
- No, no. It's just a performance.
One of the performances. I haven't seen it yet.
- [Maggie] Oh yeah? - Turn over the riverside.
- [Voiceover] Winter is becoming so severe
that Maggie is forced to move into an abandoned
workman's shed in the park.
She calls her new home Sugar Shack.
Having a home makes it easier to receive things
and I'm surprised by the sudden accumulation
of Maggie's household.
- This is Jill St John's little jacket.
She came by and blessed us with
all the little extras that we needed.
Oh, goody goody.
- [Man] Oh my God. Wait a minute.
It got a hole.
Oh sheesh.
- So what?
How long have you been homeless? (giggle)
- Yeah, but I mean you know,
I didn't want to give you nothing raggedly, lady.
- This is all a fantasy set, you know.
There's a pool right over there where the dogs are.
You dig a pool and the horses come down the hill
and go into the pool
and have their arthritis treated.
- [Man] Alright, doggies. Let's go.
Lay down.
You got two seconds to lay down.
- [Voiceover] Maggie might fantasize Sugar Shack
as an outdoor animal hospital,
but to me it's a frozen wastefill in Central Park.
Catina visits often,
bringing Maggie food and other supplies.
One day, Catina arrives with Joan Coldpepper,
a psychic soul reader from Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
In Joan's view,
Maggie might be the victim of negative spirit entities.
Joan wants to contact the aggressors
and, if possible,
ask them a few questions.
One evening, Joan, Maggie,
and the spirit entities are all invited
to Catina's upper east side apartment.
Joan goes into frequency
- In six of your previous incarnations,
in the awakening state,
the totality of who and what you are,
which is fifth dimensional in nature,
this awakening took place
at a very young and very early age.
And as this awakening vibration began to take place,
you literally would see pictures and flashes
and hear voices and
ideas and concepts.
This traumatized you in all five of these lifetimes.
If you, at the fourth dimensional facade soul level,
you became very traumatized by this
and were placed in a position
of the family members around you
of believing that there was something
very very wrong with you.
- [Voiceover] Whatever the relevance of the
fourth dimensional facade soul level,
the session with Joan seems to provoke memories in Maggie.
I learn more about Hemera,
the man who would allegedly kidnap and raised her.
His wife, Maggie explains, is Eris,
the Greek goddess of discord.
Maggie and Eris are not friends.
- It was just a matter of
the goddess Eris being jealous to the death.
Jealousy is a poo.
There's no room for jealousy. - [Voiceover] But did she
beat you? Did she neglect you?
Did she?
- Nope. She played by the rules, she did everything right.
Except that, by the time I hit puberty,
she was hitting menopause
and boy did she lay it on thick.
She let it be known that she,
underneath all the smiling, she hated me.
So, you know,
I had wanted to be a loving daughter
and by the time I was 14,
which is when Tom Cogen revealed
that my mother was Maureen O'Sullivan,
in a moment when he, kissing me on the cheek,
said "You're getting to look more like your
"mother every day."
And Mrs. Cogen walked through the hall and said
"Oh, she doesn't look like me at all".
And he said "No, she looks like Maureen O'Sullivan".
And Mrs. Cogen went "Woah" (giggles)
and walked into the kitchen.
We had a very small hall, by the way.
All this didn't take much time.
- [Voiceover] After knowing me for six and a half months,
Maggie finally reveals her family name.
Hemera and Eris are Mr. and Mrs. Cogen
of New Hyde Park, New York.
- Oh look at all those other dogs. I wonder if,
(gasps) they've discovered the other dogs.
(dog barks)
- [Voiceover] At Sugar Shack,
Maggie repeats an address to me several times.
It must be the Cogen's retirement home.
I'm convinced that Maggie's asking me to contact them.
When I call,
the woman who answers says she's Maggie's mother.
She hasn't seen Maggie in more than four years
and is surprised to learn that Maggie's homeless.
After unsuccessful attempts to get her daughter committed,
Mrs. Cogen says she's given up.
Yet she adds that Maggie can come home
anytime she wants to.
(bells chiming)
I spend the family Christmas in California.
My son, Peter, takes center stage.
When I returned to New York,
I'm surprised to learn that a number of city agencies
had finally intervened in Maggie's plight.
A coalition force,
drawn from the parks department,
the sanitation department, the ASPCA,
and the police department
knocked down Sugar Shack.
Catina was there when it happened.
- That shack was home.
And to have someone come in and destroy it
in front of your eyes.
This is an extraordinary primal experience of,
just of, really.
I mean that your home.
It'll be somebody coming in and
setting your house on fire,
just evicting you.
I mean it's an eviction and it's your home
whether it's a shack in Central Park
or an apartment on Fifth Avenue.
It's still home and she had created,
she had made it into her home
and they just came with axes,
big axes and were chopping it down.
And she dealt with it brilliantly.
She dealt with it brilliantly, I thought.
- [Voiceover] Maggie is exiled from Erebus.
She's gone to Long Island City,
just across the East River from Manhattan,
with friends that found her an apartment.
Now installed at Ninth Street and 35th Avenue,
Maggie is able to discuss her recent eviction
with humor.
- Actually what happened is, uh,
the police descended upon us with the ASPCA
and somebody else, I guess the park's enforcement patrol.
And (laughs) the Department of Sanitation
and several sledge hammers (laughs)
and a few garbage men.
And there was that "Beep, beep, beep", you know,
that sound from the garbage truck when it's backing up?
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- You've heard that they, - [Voiceover] And they just?
- And they, the man said,
(rabbles)
- 'Cause natural gas doesn't have any odor
until we add it to it,
so that's why they do that, so you will smell it.
- So you'll wake up?
- Yep! Yeah, hopefully. (chuckles)
Okay, the super's calling the landlord now,
so he's gonna take care of it
and when it's done, we'll be back.
- [Maggie] Okay. Thank you. - Okay? Good luck.
Bye bye. - [Maggie] Bye bye.
(dogs wimper)
- [Voiceover] I meant to ask Maggie about something
Mrs. Cogen had proudly told me.
That Maggie had achieved success
as one of the first women carriage drivers
in Central Park.
Maggie had even been interviewed by Hugh Downs
on the Today Show in the 1960's.
But I postponed telling Maggie
about my conversation with Mrs. Cogen
because she seems preoccupied by the apartment
and busy introducing herself to her new neighbors.
- [Maggie] This Jason?
- That one's cuter. This cute.
- [Maggie] She's a chihuahua.
Are you Jason's sister?
- [Jason] No.
- [Maggie] No, you're not related?
(kids mutter)
You're certainly nice children,
it was nice talking to you.
- [Boy] Your dog is cold.
- [Maggie] What dog?
What dog? I don't see any dog.
- [Voiceover] I search everywhere
for Maggie's appearance on the Today Show,
which aired on June 27th, 1968.
I called television stations and libraries
all over the country.
Apparently, the segment was destroyed.
But when I looked in the national archives
in Washington D.C.,
I have a surprise.
(cheerful orchestra music)
- [Voiceover] In New York,
22 year old Maggie Cogen starts her work day
by harnessing her horse, Batman.
She is one of four female horse and carriage drivers
who take passengers for sightseeing trips
in and around Manhattan's famous Central Park.
Maggie's passengers will pay anywhere
from five to seven dollars for an average trip,
depending on length of time.
A carriage ride in New York
is like a gondola ride in Venice, a must.
Some drivers earn up to two thousand dollars a year.
Maggie is careful to point out
all important statues, buildings,
and other landmarks during the ride.
Maggie is never upset by barking dogs,
angry motorist, or teasing youngsters.
Once around the park, Maggie,
and don't spare the horse.
You're one woman who can't be called
a backseat driver.
(eerie music)
- [Voiceover] How did Maggie go from
circling Central Park in a carriage
to living there 20 years later?
As I struggle to piece together Maggie's past,
she continues to straighten out the details
of indoor living.
- Uh-oh. Uh-oh!
Uh-oh, little dogs!
Little dogs.
(dog growls)
- [Voiceover] The apartment is further evidence
of Maggie's knack for attracting generosity.
I learned that friends of Maggie
are sharing her rent with a federal aid program
called SSI.
But one formality remains.
To qualify for the government money,
Maggie has to persuade a shrink in Manhattan
the very things she herself doesn't believe.
That her voices are hallucinations.
Will she concede psychiatric disability?
I'm not allowed into the shrink's office.
- He asked if I ever been in a psychiatric hospital
and I named Hillside Hospital.
He asked the dates, so I gave him the dates.
And he asked me why I had been put there
and I told him "Because people wanted me to go there!"
I'm such an obliging character.
Then he asked if I had heard any voices,
I said yes.
"What were they like?"
And I didn't know quite what to say
because they're romantic voices
and it's a conversation I've been having
for 20 years with someone.
And it was over.
Just like that.
And he wasn't interested in
anything other than the questions he asked,
which he asks everyone, I guess.
I don't think there was any difference
in the questions he asked me
from the questions he asked 15 or 20 other people
before lunch. (giggles)
And 30 or 40 after.
- Stretch.
You let go of the buttocks. Stretch!
And bend from the leg
to your feet.
Stretch your arms in back of your head.
In back of your head.
There and slide down
till you're flat on your back.
Keep the legs, keep the legs down.
Alright, and open up.
Stretch, stretch.
Don't hold your toes.
(counts in foreign language)
Head up!
- [Voiceover] I'm continually surprised
by the extent of Maggie's social network.
Ednisval, whom she also met in Central Park,
has enrolled Maggie in her Times Square gymnastic workshop.
- [Maggie] The tension of sleeping in a
dangerous environment
had me sleeping in such positions and
with such tension that
I knocked my posture way off.
And also carrying a pack,
which wasn't always weighted right
and it was always overloaded,
threw my balance off.
- [Ednisval] And open.
- This Olympic workout
throws everything back in line.
And while it's
getting me back in shape,
back in getting my posture worked on
so that it's more like it should be
rather than this twisted thing I had,
I was all twisted.
My sciatic nerve became jarred or something.
I can't figure out what happened,
but boy, hell on Earth.
There's this thick band of fire
down my leg.
(dog plays noisily)
- [Voiceover] Maggie has moved from 843 acres
to four small rooms.
To receive SSI,
she's agreed to leave Eris, Hemera, and Jupiter behind.
Now to please her landlady,
Maggie must make her family even smaller.
- And you're gonna wow 'em with your long black nails.
"I'm gonna be lonely." I know.
- It's gonna be fine, yes.
It's gonna be fine, yeah.
- [Maggie] Boy, he's a happy one.
- It's gonna be fun, yeah.
- [Maggie] He behaved himself into the best situation!
- It's gonna be great.
- E-yo! Buster, get that off of me!
- Yo!
- Will you get this thing off of me?
- [Catina] (laughs) She's not gonna be an actress,
God knows.
- Jesus!
- [Catina] Audrey, listen at,
Audrey, did you hear what Maggie said?
- Opertune is not mine.
- [Catina] He is.
- You sure?
- [Catina] Yes! That's the surprise!
Audrey, you happy about this?
- [Audrey] Yes!
- Are you really happy?
- [Audrey] Yes!
- [Little Girl] Hug your mom more!
- Oh! No, it's okay.
- Get that thing off of us!
- I'm gonna hug your mom
'cause now I know my baby's safe.
I spent all that time making sure he's perfect,
he's perfect.
- [Voiceover] Two days later,
Mika Little goes south.
Maggie's friends, Charles and Lynn,
send Mika Little to New Orleans on a jet.
Charles's parents have agreed to adopt her.
Maggie sends along a letter of introduction.
- [Maggie] Dear new parents of Mika Little pups,
congratulations!
Mika Little is a fine and spunky,
charismatic, funny dog.
Lynn understands her better than I do in some respects
and I'm confident she'll be happy with y'all.
On December 7th, 1988,
there was an earthquake in Armenia
while Gorbachev was in New York City
and friends and I were at Rockefeller Plaza seeing him.
The next afternoon, Maya gave birth to eight puppies,
the fifth of which had to be hand delivered.
She was the only light colored one
and I named her after Mikhail Gorbachev.
This little piece of history will help you see into
Mika Little a little,
and we hope you will keep us informed of her silliness,
for whose first birthday we received a one month vacation
in the shanty at Central Park.
For her next birthday,
she may even take the cake. Who knows?
Yours truly, Maggie.
- [Voiceover] A few days later,
Maggie's reservations about having parted with two dogs
began to surface.
She mourns Mika Little's departure
on the bank of the East River.
Maggie seems edgy.
Tension mounts when I finally tell Maggie
that I've spoken with Mrs. Cogen.
Although Maggie admits having wanted me
to contact Mrs. Cogen at Christmas,
she now is upset that I actually consulted the woman
she calls Eris, the goddess of discord.
- And what am I upset about?
I'm upset because
when I tell you the truth about,
that I was born in Scotland
and I'm the daughter of these two particular people
and, uh, a cross of these three particular people,
two fellows and a woman,
and they had shipped me.
One of them or some of them had shipped me from
where I was born
to where I was claimed to be the child of
two other people.
You doubt that this really happened.
(fast paced drum music)
- [Voiceover] I agree never to contact
Mrs. Cogen again,
yet Maggie gives me a lot of new information,
including the name of a high school classmate
from New Hyde Park, New York.
Despite her anger, she wants me to continue.
Maggie tells me that she was raised here,
in the suburb of New York City,
with two brothers and a sister.
While Mr. Cogen worked in wholesale food distribution,
Maggie went to the local high school.
Joanne Burgbalm was a friend and classmate.
- She did stand out as looking
just a little bit different and yet very mainstream also,
which is really what my sense of Maggie
is in regard to everything.
She was very much part of everything
that everybody else was part of,
and yet there was something that was just
a little bit, I was going to use the word "off centered",
but I really don't mean off centered.
Just a little bit different from the mainstream,
something that made us take notice of her.
I guess that that's a better way to put it.
She was outstanding in her own right, always.
And I think that's why I was surprised
when I went back and started looking in the yearbook
to find out that she was part of the kickline
and that she was wearing a kickline uniform frequently,
with all the other girls who were wearing a kickline uniform
because I guess I had forgotten
that part of Maggie.
I remember the middle of a club involvement,
middle of the service organizations,
and I'd really forgotten that she was
up over on the net,
somebody on the kickline,
somebody who was a real "rah rah" person
out there at the football games.
And I think that I respected Maggie's mind so much
that I probably didn't remember that part of her
that was such a typical high school girl
in the early 1960s.
(bongo music)
- [Voiceover] Combining the evidence from Joanne Burgbalm,
Mrs. Cogen, and Maggie,
I managed to unravel more of her crinology.
After graduating from high school in 1961,
Maggie attended half a dozen colleges
over a four year period.
- [Maggie] I had been told repeatedly
that I couldn't do anything,
so I thought "Well, I can't do anything but go to college"
so I just went to one college,
and then I went to another college.
And I kept going to colleges, having nervous breakdowns,
being anxious, being upset, trying to find myself,
but, uh,
Life magazine was saying that
the whole generation was doing the same thing
that I was doing so I figured I was in step
with the times.
- [Voiceover] In the mid 60s,
Maggie abandoned college
and found her rare vocation in New York City.
By 1968,
Maggie was driving sightseers through the
cultural profusion of the 60s.
For five years, Maggie prospered as a carriage driver.
- [Maggie] Then I started buying my own carriage.
Gee, it was a beautiful outfit.
It was a little shaky,
the shafts weren't the right shafts.
But it was mine
and it was
wonderful to have a horse who talked. (laughs)
Well, in 1969,
if you weren't fighting in a war
on the other side of the world,
you had this obligation to explore
the other world
way up high.
So after
LSD told me to relinquish
all material goods
to the common wheel somewhere,
I let it all slip through my fingers.
The important thing seem to be
to continue this marriage with Jupiter,
which was billions of years old
and I hadn't seen him in 700 years so.
So we caught on with the business
of continuing the dynasty.
(brassy jazz music)
- [Voiceover] Who is this Jupiter who
lifted Maggie from her Central Park carriage
and exiled her to the airways?
What man deserves this powerful name?
Worshiping him,
Maggie was stripped at some point of her children
and her livelihood.
15 years later,
she's still engaged in what she calls
a "romantic conversation" with him.
As I wander through the park,
I sense Jupiter's presence here.
Herculisa, the runt of Mika Little's litter,
proved to be deaf.
So her disappointed owner has returned her,
much to Maggie's delight.
- Course like that I just get (kisses).
(dog growls angrily)
Oh Boris, go eat your Tylenol.
(dog growls)
Get away from him.
Oh.
I got a spoon.
- [Voiceover] Watching Maggie dote on her dogs,
I am more and more curious about her actual children.
Back in December,
Mrs. Cogen told me that Maggie had been married twice.
Though Maggie claims to have five children,
Mrs. Cogen only knows of two,
Michael and Justin.
Maggie says that she met Michael's father, Richard,
when he rode in her carriage
in the spring of 1968.
He was a tourist.
They had a brief affair
and Michael was born.
Richard gave Maggie child support and disappeared.
Mrs. Cogen remembers him fondly.
He was a Harvard MBA.
Justin's paternity is more vague.
Maggie says he was conceived in the summer of 1970.
- Well, the summer of 70.
And the music started to sound
familiar because I used to hear it
coming out of Jupiter's head
before it ever got down to vinyl or anything.
So I was hearing all this Led Zeppelin stuff in my life
before it was actually recorded.
- [Voiceover] Who is Jupiter?
- Yeah, that's a good question.
He's very tall and he said his name was John.
Maybe he's a drummer? He's a musician.
And later on he was a disc jockey.
He still is a disk jockey,
he just can't figure out which one.
Because if they told me that John wasn't the father
of Justin Case,
I probably would've died.
Because I was so in love with John
and one of the Johns, or two of the Johns,
or three of the Johns,
or four of the Johns had said
"I don't love you, Maggie".
So I was in a heartbroken condition
through the first trimester.
- [Voiceover] At last,
Maggie's revealed Jupiter's Christian name.
This man, John,
seems to have abandoned Maggie before Justin's birth
with very harsh consequences.
- [Maggie] The first voices I heard
were in September of 1970,
when this fellow, John,
was becoming real scarce.
I had nothing to do!
My husband was off in the airwaves somewhere so
I didn't have him, so I had these games I'd play.
I had to do something, I was desperate.
And I first, first thing I ever,
well, that wasn't the first,
one of the first things I ever heard them say was
"Don't wash your hair"
'cause I used to wash my hair all the time and
I felt very comforted by the fact that
even though he wasn't there physically,
I could hear him.
And then there was that wonderful record,
Radar Love by Golden Earring,
'cause the voices I could hear were of Golden Earring.
And Radar Love was how we kept our marriage together.
- [Ednisval] Ven, vena. Up, that's right!
You see how much smoother it is?
- Mmm-hmm.
- [Ednisval] Yeah. Get up.
- [Voiceover] Not only is Jupiter proved to be real,
but I received a letter from Robert Ryan's daughter,
Lisa, confirming that they knew Maggie well.
Back in the classless society of Central Park
in the 1960's, Maggie befriended Lisa.
They influenced one another.
Lisa took up carriage driving,
Maggie became a frequent guest at the Dakota.
- Robert Ryan and I passed each other in the hall
and my bone marrow began to sizzle
in a way that I understood that he and I,
somewhere out there,
had once upon a time been the same thing.
So therefore, we're doing the same thing.
Even if he's taking the longest road
and I'm taking the crookedest road,
we're the same thing.
So it turns out he's Saturn and I'm his daughter, Juno.
So it's the same thing.
(soft drum music)
- [Voiceover] It is Lisa Ryan who completes for me
the picture of Maggie's celebrity as a carriage driver.
She leads me to a rare piece of video tape.
- Well I'm gonna try and establish the means of propulsion.
Is it propelled by an internal combustion gasoline engine?
- [Announcer] An internal combustion gasoline engine?
- [Man In Plaid] Right, good. - No.
- Absolutely not.
That's three down, we go to Mariner.
- Is there a live animal connected to it?
- [Maggie] Yes.
- [Blonde Lady] Yes, that's what I thought.
Is it a horse?
- [Maggie] Yes.
- Alright,
I'm gonna say is it one of the carriages in Central Park?
- [Announcer] Yes!
(audience claps)
- I'm sorry.
- Thank you.
- What do you charge?
What do you charge for one trip through Central Park?
- I charge seven dollars.
- [Announcer] And why would a lovely young lady
choose this particular type of profession?
What made you get into this?
- Well, I type 18 words a minute with three mistakes,
so that's.
- [Announcer] (laughs) That's out.
- I don't like to be indoors,
I love horses, and I'm interested in antiques.
Everything went together. And that's,
- So you have an antique buggy and a horse
and you're outside in Central Park
making seven dollars an hour. And now it's--
- No, I'm not doing that!
It doesn't average out to seven an hour.
- But it's pretty good.
- Well alright. Make my mother feel good.
- Let's show them exactly what she looks like
when she's doing this in Central Park.
We have a picture here,
and lets one of our audience show you
exactly what she looks like.
There you are,
all decked out in your garb
and atop of your buggy.
(audience applauds)
And you've been doing this now
for about two years?
- Mmm-hmm! Two and a half.
- Two and a half years? - [Maggie] Mmm-hmm.
- And your future is in central park, right?
- Um, it could be.
- Could be. Alright.
Maggie thank you so much for being with us
on "What's My Line".
(audience applauds)
- [Voiceover] I'm struck by the contrast
between Maggie's poise in her 1968 television appearance
and her predicament only a few years later.
By the spring of 1972,
she was an unemployed single mother of two
living in Harlem.
Robert, Ryan, and her lover, John,
were now absent.
Saturn and Jupiter was larger than ever.
Comforted only by Radar Love,
she found raising her children an increasingly awesome task,
especially Michael.
- He was the child who
pulled the heavy psychic stuff on me.
So when he was
two and a half,
he was a little two and a half year old baby
behind me on
105th Street.
And I looked around,
but look at this little cute two year old.
And all of a sudden,
he was Saint Michael, the archangel,
in full regalia.
He had a sword, he had wings, he had a crown,
he had a long golden, white robe with gold edging,
epilepse. (giggles)
What else did he have?
Well, he,
was over six feet tall,
maybe he was about six feet tall.
And, uh,
his eyes were so cold and so greenish gray
just looking at me saying
"When I leave, don't follow".
And then it was over.
A month later, he left.
I had been raped, I had been robbed,
I had been the whole, you know,
holy macaroni thing.
And, uh,
the Cogens came to take him to
New Hyde Park with Justin Case.
And he just casually waved "Goodbye"
and right out the door.
And, uh,
that was the end of his being my son.
I wasn't able to hold the seam together
and it was obvious to me I wasn't supposed to.
And I went bouncing around the city
trying to find another place to live,
but the cards were
stacked in such a way
that Elizabeth from Houston came up to see me
and said "Hey girl! Let's hitch back to Texas!"
And so I went for a two week jaunt to Texas
and didn't come back for three or four years.
- [Voiceover] What drove Maggie
to make the fateful decision
to leave her very own children with the Cogens
and stay away for so long?
She cites many reasons,
among them, Jupiter's absence,
Saint Michael's commands, tension with the Cogens,
and a broken heart.
But whatever forces were working on Maggie,
one thing remains certain.
By staying in Texas, she was losing her children.
The Cogens returned Michael to his father
and put Justin up for adoption.
When Maggie returned to New York on July 7th, 1975,
both her children were gone.
Twelve days later,
she was institutionalized at Hillside Hospital
on Long Island.
She remained there for four months.
Maggie was on Jupiter's frequency.
(soft static)
(soft piano music)
I know that many things happen to Maggie
after her discharge from Hillside Hospital.
She was a roommate of Lisa Ryan's
and returned briefly to carriage driving.
She left New York and then lived with the Cogens
for four years.
But all these arrangements were fragile and doomed.
When Maggie returned to Texas to find her children gone,
she began her descent to that region
where I first encountered her.
- She's the daughter of a tricky one.
We're in the shadow of the living room.
- [Voiceover] That region in the shadow of
Robery Ryans's Dakota,
where Maggie could keep in contact with Jupiter,
Saturn, Hemera, Saint Michael, and Justin.
Maggie had taken all the necessary steps
to reassemble her family in Erebus.
With Maggie,
I'd entered a secret world that was as intricate
as anything I'd ever encountered.
But why did she create such a complicated language
to express herself?
It occurs to me that Maggie's mythology
is her self portrait.
On the canvas,
the figures of Jupiter, Hera,
and Saturn looms larger than life.
From a distance,
Maggie can see herself framed in this timeless drama.
I wonder if the distance also allows Maggie
to survive the pain and drama
of losing her children.
(psychedelic rock music)
Events in Maggie's life keep hinting
that it needs cinematic solution,
but don't count on it.
Maggie enrolls in a mental health clinic,
but drops out after several weeks.
She says she wants to get a job,
but she can't unleash herself from all her dogs.
A year ago,
the adoption of Mika Little's puppies
filled me with optimism.
But Maggie has collected more strays,
one of them has a litter.
The cycle repeats.
I'm busy too.
I don't know what to make of it,
but Maggie predicted that my daughter, Ramona,
would be born on the same day as her son, Michael,
September 13th.
She was even more specific.
She said at 4:30.
Astoundingly, Maggie was right.
Had I taken her more seriously,
I would not have had to deliver my daughter
in the back seat of a taxi cab.
(baby cries)
Maggie tell me a little more about Jupiter.
He also drove a carriage in Central Park.
He stood over six feet tall
and weighed 210 pounds in the summer of 1970.
I considered trying to find Maggie's Jupiter
and Maggie's children,
but they've been living separately from her
for more than 20 years.
What do they know about her,
and how would they react to meeting her?
How would Maggie react to meeting them?
Maybe fate can orchestrate a family reunion,
but I can't.
I decide to go no further.
- [Maggie] I met some kids in Long Island City.
Shamala's in kindergarten from eight something
to nearly three p.m.
He loves it
and his favorite thing to do is draw and play
with words and numbers.
Last night I gazed at him sitting beside me
and became aware of a brimming intelligence.
I could nearly hear the sound of his brain
and his brother, Mahlique, is so indescribably darling.
Maybe he can save the world with his charm
and Jamal can devise the scheme.
They're all coming with us
to a big horse farm.
Let's keep it practical so we can afford to give
every kid a pony.
- [Voiceover] Dear Maggie,
it's two years since we met.
When I met you, you had four dogs.
Now you have eight.
When I met you, you lived outdoors.
Now you have an address.
In Central Park,
you used to say that Jupiter would someday arrive
on a white horse.
Now you're not sure he'll ever come.
You once told me that Robert Ryan was a hundred feet tall.
More recently, you saw him on 80th Street.
And he was human sized.
Like the rest of us, you examine your assumptions.
You part with some of them, modify some,
and cling to others.
When I met you, you dreamed of living on a horse farm.
You still do.
(happy psychedelic music)