Miss Cleo, who seemed to be 72 twenty years ago, just died at 53.
The TV infomercial “seer” came to prominence in a time not so long ago when people had landlines and still talked on the phone and listened to each other’s voices, even one enlivened by a faux Jamaican accent. The Ron Poppeil of psychic powers, Cleo was a fake, obviously, and only fools could have believed it a good idea to pay a stranger 99 cents a minute for life advice because a woman in a headdress on TV urged them to. Enough of the gullible retained lawyers, however, and eventually the Federal Trade Commission interceded on their behalf against the Psychic Readers Network, though Miss Cleo was never charged with any wrongdoing.
The opening of her smart New York Times obituary penned by Katie Rogers:
Youree Dell Harris, whose Jamaican-accented character Miss Cleo was the face (and voice) of ubiquitous psychic hotline commercials in the late 1990s before the company was fined by the federal government, died on Tuesday in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 53.
The cause was cancer, William J. Cone Jr., a lawyer for Ms. Harris, said in a statement.
Ms. Harris first entered the pop culture zeitgeist in the late ’90s, arriving with a humble set of tools built for late-night TV audiences: a deck of tarot cards, a skeptical facial expression and an oft-uttered catchphrase — “Call me now!”
As a vividly colored background swirled or candles burned, Miss Cleo sat and provided counsel to often-sheepish callers. Many of the commercials followed a cheating-lover theme:
“Who asked you to go out of town, the stupid young one or the married one?” she asked a caller in one commercial.
“The married one,” the caller answered.
“That’s what me thought,” Miss Cleo said with a knowing nod.
The commercials made her a star of the Psychic Readers Network. The Miss Cleo character also inspired spoofs on late-night TV and gave Ms. Harris other business opportunities, including a book, Keepin’ It Real: A Practical Guide for Spiritual Living. She voiced a character in a 2002 video game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
But her fame also led to questions about her past.•