Harris, 53, was surrounded by family and close friends when she died in Palm Beach, Florida, said attorney William J. Cone.
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“She remained a pillar of strength throughout”, the statement read.
However, there was at least one night that I can tell you that Miss Cleo was decidedly not pleased to know me. Miss Cleo first came to prominence playing a Jamaican character in 90s psychic informercials, and gained much fame through her singular catchphrase “Call Me Now!”.
Although the commercials stopped airing years ago, many of them still live online on YouTube. “I was at Best Buy one day, and a gentleman said, ‘Miss Cleo, aren’t you supposed to be on the phone?’ I said, ‘Honey, do you really think that I do that while I’m traveling and doing press?’ I said, ‘You have a better chance of talking to me right here than you do if you called”. She was recently hospitalized, but was transferred to a hospice center last week.
“I’m a proud voudou woman”, the Herald article quoted her as saying. In 2006, she came out as a lesbian in an interview with The Advocate, but also took the opportunity to address her lasting popularity in the interview.
“She had no Jamaican accent – she was born and raised in L.A.”, a former cast mate told the paper.
But when lawsuits started to mount against the network and its Fort Lauderdale-based parent company, with callers complaining they were overcharged, the Miss Cleo character disappeared from late night TV.
Harris, the face of the operation, faced deceptive business practice charges, but the state attorney general’s office dropped them.
Harris was actually born in Los Angeles, a fact that came to light after the Federal Trade Commission went after Access Resource Services, or ARS, the company behind the hotline. “Her voice kept me company during many a late-night infomercial insomnia attack”, posted one user.
Asked if Harris was indeed psychic, Crawford said that Harris did seem to know “some things about me that nobody else knew but my mother”. As a vividly colored background swirled or candles burned, Miss Cleo would sit and provide counsel to often sheepish callers.
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“She was not Jamaican when I met her”, Crawford said.
