They were all young and ambitious, none more so than Gordon Bowen. He had come back west to Salt Lake City from Chicago, initially joining Fotheringham and Associates and promptly being promoted to the Management Advisory Committee.1 Bowen would soon jump to Bonneville Productions as an assistant creative director, but he would soon overthrow the man who had hired him, Ross Richins. According to Curtis Dahl, Bonneville’s Dick Allsop was told he didn’t have a choice in the matter, and Gordon Bowen had to be hired.
This was despite the fact that Bowen had never actually graduated from the University of Utah, a fact that he misrepresented throughout the Eighties. Regardless of his lack of academic credentials, Bowen would soon rise to head up the creative department at Bonneville. He would import his old friend Lynn Dangel from Chicago, while establishing a base of loyalists in Kevin Kelly, Parry Merkley, and Tom Pratt.
As he navigated his new company, Bowen realized that Heber Woolsey, the Church Public Relationships Director, was filtering his input to the authorities of the Church. Woolsey and Director of Media Programming John Kinnear were obstacles to Bowen’s vision, and he went about removing those obstacles. By the mid-Eighties, Woolsey and Kinner were moved out of their positions, and Gordon Bowen was realizing his ambition of unfiltered access to men like Boyd K. Packer. He was consolidating his power, even as he was falling apart emotionally and psychologically.
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Bowen claimed that evil spirits were attacking his home and his person. As such, he sought out help from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Boyd K. Packer gave him a blessing, while his bishop Gil Sanders performed an exorcism on Bowen’s 12th East residence. Bowen attributed the evil spirits to Satan’s desire to sabotage the work Bowen was doing for the Church.
After the exorcism and the blessing, Bowen claimed that his plight was continuing, and he solicited young men from Bonneville to stay overnight in his home. He had one bed, and he would insist that the men share the bed with him. This was the beginning of a pattern of behavior in which Bowen would manipulate his male coworkers and associates into sharing a bed with him. When he couldn’t find a coworker to stay with him, Bowen showed up at Brad Nygren’s home in the middle of the night and asked to sleep on the floor next to the bed Nygren and his wife were sleeping in. Bowen held Nygren’s hand through the night.
The next morning, Nygren took Bowen home. Thirty minutes later, he received a call from Bowen asking him to come back. When Nygren arrived, Bowen’s home had been destroyed. His sheets were cut, his windows were broken, and furniture was strewn about the home. In the snow, someone had carved Bowen and Nygren’s initials. The police assessed the scene as the product of a dispute between gay lovers, and asked both men if they were gay.
Ellen Richardson, Vice President of Human Resources for Bonneville, recounted going to Bowen’s home and seeing his shredded clothing, destroyed furniture, and potted plants thrown against the walls. She would date Bowen for two years, and claimed that he was abusive, frequently standing her up on dates and engagements. She described him as “devoid of human conscience,” stating that Bowen needed to create chaos to feed on like a vampire.
Stan Ferguson, another of Bowen’s Bonneville coworkers, recounted Gordon inviting him into his office only to sit and stare at him. He corroborated the stories about Bowen having his male coworkers sleep with him at the 12th East residence due to evil spirits. Scott Swofford, and other Bonneville coworker, alleged that Bowen would take him to dinner and then insist on Swofford staying overnight and sharing his bed.
Despite his obvious psychological instability, Bowen managed to remain immune from any serious consequences for his actions while at Bonneville, until he tried to undermine Dick Allsop. Allsop fought fire with fire, and found that Bowen had been abusing his expense account. This would be a common refrain throughout Bowen’s career, as he virtually every employer reported that Bowen had defrauded them through expense reimbursements. Bowen allegedly double- and triple-billed the agencies he worked with. His unethical tendencies gave Dick Allsop the excuse he needed to fire Bowen.
Bowen’s allies on the creative team marched to Arch Madsen’s house to ask that he rehire Bowen. Their pleas were unsuccessful. Bowen allegedly stood outside of Bonneville’s headquarters for three days waiting on Dick Allsop. His coworkers alleged that Bonneville had to change the locks on the doors and station a security officer outside due to Bowen’s behavior after he was terminated. Eventually, Bowen accepted reality. He assembled a portfolio of work, claiming credit for the Homefront commercials that had originated with others in the Seventies, which Bowen’s coworkers had carried through into the Eighties.
Throughout his career, Bowen would repeatedly pass off the work of his coworker as his own in order to gain new employment. He would be exposed in the Salt Lake Olympics when the slogan he pitched to Mitt Romney was revealed to be a trademarked and copyrighted item on a restaurant menu. Gordon Bowen was a thief of ideas, a man whose creative reputation was built on the work he stole from others. He had lied about graduating from the University of Utah, and he had lied about his role in the Homefront series, and he would continue to lie at every stop along his career. He was successful at stealing credit for creative work, and at making pitches to clients.
He was a professional and personal disaster otherwise. Incredibly, even though Bowen’s behavior at Bonneville was known, including his belief that evil spirits were tearing his home and his belongings apart, Lynn Dangel, Kevin Kelly, Parry Merkley, and Tom Pratt decided to uproot from Bonneville and follow Gordon Bowen to Ogilvy-Mather in New York City.
Next: Part 3: New York, New York
Area Business Tradewinds, Salt Lake Tribune, January 24, 1980, pg. G6.
Scott Swofford of Granite Flats fame? Great series that was reason I first started researching Mkultra. Very odd how the show abruptly stopped with huge success.