Occult Research Gladiator.
Defender of Truth and Liberty / Devoted to Power of Suggestion, New Thought and Science / Published Monthly for Thinking People.
Suggestion is the Basis of Education. All that We Are Shows What We Have Thought
Other titles: Research Gladiator
1912--1913? Monthly
Traverse City, MI.
Succeeded by: Research Gladiator (Cincinnati, 1932) 1/1, September 1912-1913(?). 1932.
$1.00 a year, 76 pp. 10x7.

The journal was still being advertised in February 1913 but may have had only one issue. Its stated purpose was "to arouse the PUBLIC to search the Scriptures, -- which the GREAT MANITOU hath given through all his Holy PROPHETS Since the WORLD Began, Where-in He hath abounded toward us all Wisdom and Prudence. If by Recognition, Harmonizing and believing In the Power of Suggestion, It will prove to be Educational and Preparatory to the Ushering of Human Kind into the Gates of Paradise." To this end it promoted the Occult Research Gladiator Society, with unspecified annual dues. Despite this, it is hard to tell from the journal what its intended purpose actually was, other than as a place for minor healers, dubious colleges of suggestion, character readers, and the like in the small towns of America to advertise. It consisted largely of "filler" (Fate of the Apostles, A Charm Against Nightmares, A Biographical Sketch of George Washington, Principal Dates of Ancient History, Will Power and Personal Magnetism, Mother's Love, etc.) and sage counsel: "The mother who allows her sixteen-year-old daughter to float around the town in a top buggy or automobile until 2 a. m. with a counterfeit sport with a weak jaw and weaker morals opens the door to grief and disgrace. . . . We had sooner see a girl kiss a blind shoat through a barbed wire fence than have her change partners six times a week in the front parlor with the lights turned low." Contributions by the likes of Bert Brookhart, Jean Stewart, B.V. LaViere, W.E. Fish, F.H. Ervans, Omar Marette, et al., many of whom seem to have been Pierree under assumed names. The journal carried one advertisement ("Life or Death, which is it to be?") by the Philosophical Publishing Company of Allentown, Pennsylvania (i.e., R.S. Clymer). The journal was revived in 1932 as the Research Gladiator, published by "Dr. Pierre Valjien," devoted primarily to astrology and graphology. Valjien, as it turns out, was Burton (or "Bar Pierre" or "Bae Perrie" or "Burtis") V. Brookhart (1880-1942) who also used the names "Bae Pierre" and "Bae La Pierree," the editor of this journal, who described himself in advertisements as "the Great French-Indian Mentalist." He was an Ohio farmboy turned vaudevillian (on the Orpheum circuit with his then-wife Princess Cena San Lu Valjien, a supposed princess who was a wizard on the Hawaiian guitar), numerologist, and producer of silent movies in the small towns of the midwest (with local talent and capital, with his La Frances Motion Picture Company or Parillo-Brookhart Players Film Company, as producer). To help make ends meet, he occasionally sold stock in his current company to his players, offered courses in movie making, and, when all else failed, skipped town leaving his players (and family) to fend for themselves. The journal is unique in that it reappeared twenty years after this first issue under the name the Research Gladiator in December 1932 (13 issues a year on the full moon) in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Brookhart then presenting himself as "Dr Pierre Valjien" of the American Institute of Numerical Astrology.

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