Alex Horn


Alexander Francis Horn, known more often as Alex Horn, was a playwright and actor and the leader of a series of controversial groups which claimed a linkage to the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff.

Overview

His groups have been classed by some as cults, although others believe he was attempting to promote the Fourth Way, which can involve a degree of intense confrontation on a personal level. Alex was married to Anne Burrage in the 1960s during which time he was running Red Mountain Ranch, a part-time commune located on Sonoma Mountain in northern California. The order of events is unclear, but Anne left this group in 1969 around the time that Alex became involved with and eventually married Sharon Gans. Anne took many of the members from the ranch and started The Group, amid claims that Red Mountain Ranch had become violent and dangerous, and that Alex was becoming a cult figure. Alex and Sharon ran the Theatre of All Possibilities until 1978 when it received unfavorable press from the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Progress in the wake of the Jim Jones tragedy in November 1978. Alex and Sharon both left San Francisco with Sharon's children in 1978 and continued to run various groups in New York and Boston. Alex Horn had five children with Anne Burrage, Maurice, Elaine, Matthew, Mary Ellen and Benjamin. He died on September 30, 2007.
An article about Alexander Francis Horn, then five years old, appeared in the Chicago Tribune on February 9, 1935. The child Horn was alleged to have spread the alarm for a fire that broke out in his home. 1940 census records show Alexander Horn, aged 10, as an inmate of the Marks Nathan Jewish Orphan Home in Chicago, where he is reported as having lived for the previous five years.

Names of related groups