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It took 15 minutes to expose a wannabe legend of her time as merely a legend in her own mind, reports Hazel Friedman
A pseudo-American accent, liberal dropping of Hollywood’s hottest names, a surplus of arrogance and extreme delusions of grandeur. That was all it took for con- artist Tracey Morrison to infiltrate the uppermost echelons of Johannesburg’s star- struck social circles.
The self-appointed casting director pretended to represent Miramax Pictures — a hip production company established in the 1980s, which is now owned by the Disney Corporation.
She conned her way into dinner parties and soirées frequented by the famous, fortuned and fickle, seducing them with promises of movie parts. She performed her award-winning charade on and off over a 15- month period, from November 1996 to January this year.
But this week it took the Mail &Guardian a mere 15 minutes to expose the wannabe legend of her own time as merely a legend in her own mind.
Posing as an industry wannabe, an M&G journalist met Morrison at the Sandton Sun Hotel — one of her favourite hunting grounds — where she confirmed her fake persona. She claimed to have visited South Africa nine times in the past year and had a three-year movie agenda.
But, on discovering that she had been beaten at her own game, her jaw dropped, followed in quick succession by her accent and the rest of her persona. She admitted that she had no connection with Miramax, but insisted that she really wanted to make a movie and was having “a meeting” with actor Deon du Plessis the following day.
Then the once camera-happy social climber tried to hide her face from the M&G photographer before fleeing tearfully.
Morrison’s con has left members of Johannesburg high society cringing with embarrassment and anger. All have requested anonymity.
She succeeded, albeit temporarily, in moulding herself to fit the persona of a persuasive, charismatic United States movie mogul, replete with a twang, designer clothes, flashy cars and fast money.
In November 1996 she “arrived” in South Africa claiming to be a movie mogul from Miramax, with Hollywood heart-throb Antonio Banderas and wife Melanie Griffith allegedly in tow. In reality, Banderas was shooting a film thousands of kilometres away and Griffith was comfortably ensconced in her Bel Air mansion, not in the Roosevelt Park house where Morrison claimed to have put up the famous couple.
Initially describing herself as a casting director, she soon extended her job description into the realm of locations manager, music director and executive producer, inviting prospective actors, musicians and investors to dine at the Sandton Sun’s expensive Vilamoura restaurant. Here she entertained her hosts and guests with spicy snippets on Mel and Tony’s volatile marriage, Sean Connery’s personal habits and erotic details of her former (fictitious) marriage to the Latino star of The Mambo Kings, Armand Assante.
Her props included a strawberry-sized diamond ring allegedly given to her by Assante and some publicity pics of the actor.
Morrison’s romantic sights were also set on Jo’burg’s homeboys. Despite her claims that she was merely a visitor to South Africa, Morrison grew up in Yeoville. At the age of 21 she developed an obsession for a local disc jockey who never reciprocated her passion.
According to the object of her desire, who is now a major media personality, Morrison has badgered him constantly over a 10-year period. She was allegedly forced to leave South Africa in the mid-1980s after being arrested for fraudulently using his name to rent a car. On her return to South Africa, she made constant references to their “passionate” relationship.
However, her focus had already shifted to a local musician whom she tried to bribe into her bed by bestowing expensive gifts on him and persuading him to go on trips “to source movie locations”.
“At first I thought she was pretty harmless,” he recalls. “I had known her when she was younger and was aware she had problems. When she showed me a script and offered to pay me to take so-called location shots with a video camera, I thought, what the hell!”
Falsely claiming to have received permission from her programme manager, Morrison initially paid her one-man location crew R400 to film in the studios of 702 Radio. A second cheque bounced.
By then, Morrison had already fleeced a young Westdene couple of R15 000 , on the pretext of looking for “potential investors in her multi-million dollar movie”. The couple were too embarrassed to press charges.
But her ruse reached an ignominious climax during her birthday bash at the Vilamoura restaurant. Her guests included, not the rich and the renowned, but a bunch of starving musicians eager for a freebie, as well as an irate car rental sales executive from whom Morrison had rented a state-of- the-art Mercedes Benz.
He promptly repossessed the car, claiming that Morrison had defaulted on payments. Morrison in turn pretended that she owned the car. Later that night she claimed it had been stolen from the Sandton City parking lot and went so far as to make a statement to the police, which she subsequently withdrew.
After that, no one knows when, or even if, she left South Africa. But suddenly she reappeared on the Johannesburg scene in November 1997. While her victims differed in name, her modus operandi was the same.
She dined at Anneline Kriel-Bacon’s home, was photographed at socialite Jenna Clifford’s Christmas party, shmoozed with the likes of Edith Venter and snogged up to the local entertainment fraternity. She invited local musicians to compose the soundtrack to her movie, offered prominent roles to local actors and even appropriated office space at the SABC for her “business calls”.
Another Miramax movie, Mambo, was in the pipeline, this time starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. To stay on top of developments, she changed cellphones three times in as many months. She also claimed that two of her three (rented) BMWs were “loaned” to her by her “former husband”, the local media mogul. His name, alongside Assante’s, peppered her dinner conversations.
As did sports hero Hansie Cronje’s and the rest of his cricket team, all of whom she claimed to have either wined, dined, wedded or bedded.
And her predilection for plucking ripe, homegrown hunks via the casting couch continued. She offered a young actor R700 a day to act in her movie, without even an audition. Although she dismissed his inquiries about contracts, he insisted on consulting his agent, Moonyeen Lee, about the offer. Fortunately for the young actor, the street-smart Lee was all too familiar with Morrison.
The previous year Lee had investigated her credentials, only to discover that Morrison was connected to neither Miramax nor Banderas.
“I was suspicious of Morrison when I first met her in November last year,” recalls Lee, “because I knew that no company would allow anyone except an executive producer to negotiate finance for a movie.”
But it was Morrison’s script that raised Lee’s hackles.It was so badly written that it wouldn’t have even been accepted from a fourth-year film student, let alone be considered for a multi-million-dollar movie.
“I get so angry when people think we’re still a mining village and come here expecting us to roll over and say ‘rape me, rape me’,” said the incensed Lee.
But that, it seems, is what Johannesburg’s otherwise worldly celebrity circles almost did. The shallow fishbowl that constitutes South Africa’s small socialite circle can’t resist celebrity bait, particularly when flavoured with flashy accoutrements and accompanied by a nasal twang. All Morrison had to do was play the domino game by leaning on one celebrity, who would then introduce her to another, and another …
One affluent couple offered to assist her with payments for her BMW; another celebrity covered the costs for Morrison’s 1997 birthday bash; and yet another couple was in the process of planning a trip to Cape Town to attend the star-studded opening of Planet Hollywood on January 25, on Morrison’s invitation, when they discovered that in fact the extravaganza had been postponed until February.
And it was on the minor details that Morrison was unmasked.
An obsessive stargazer, she obviously memorised every piece of fluff ever written on the celluloid galaxy. But in her compulsive search for the spotlight, she overlooked the, er, less visible, seemingly innocuous — and often unpublished — bits that ultimately serve to distinguish true insiders from impostors.
She has finally got her 15 minutes of fame, but the ending of Morrison’s movie was never part of her script.