Giving the Devil Two Black Eyes

Follow @listofsurprises The World's Youngest Evangelist Goes Hollywood

I spent my young life consumed with jealousy for child prodigies. I had to stop whenever I spotted the articles: “Fourteen Year Old Cellist Moves Yo-Yo Ma to Tears.” “Toddler Aces Med School, Astonishing Classmates and Science.” “Baby Somehow Writes the Great American Novel in Fingerpaint.” You know the drill. These kids have accomplished more by the sixth grade than I can hope to get done by sixty.

At 14, I came up with a master plan to achieve my own own youthful fame. I decided that I would lobby Congress or something and get Pennsylvania’s atrociously late election primary pushed up. The particulars of this plan were more than a little hazy, but I hoped that in the end I would both serve the good people of Pennsylvania and end up as a regular on the cable news circuit. My childhood crush on Tucker Carlson was behind a lot of this ambition (I KNOW, ok? I was confused. I like bowties).

Since I am currently sitting in front of Anderson Cooper instead of next to him, my dreams of childhood celebrity obviously never came to fruition. Now in my twenties, I guess I have missed the boat on joining the middle school branch of Mensa. I’m no longer sure it’s something to be bummed about. When I see the cocaine-fueled growing pains of child stars (I’m looking at you, Danny Bonaduce) or imagine just how awkward it must be to be a twelve year-old with a twenty-year old dorm mate, young fame seems less fun than it once did. Never is this more true than when I heard about Marjoe Gortner.

In 1949, Marjoe was five years old. Decked out in a fringed cowboy suit and stomping his tiny boot heels, he squeaked to a rapt audience of hundreds gathered in a massive tent. “There’s gonna be a great roundup one of these days: a roundup of the good and the bad,” he declared. “Let me ask you which roundup you are headed for!” With this, Marjoe’s adoring listeners rose to their feet and praised the Lord. Before he could even read, this mop-topped Californian had become a preaching sensation.

He had been born to Marge and Victor Gortner, both ordained ministers. Marge’s father had been a minister, and Victor’s father and grandfather had been too. When their son was born by C-section, surviving his umbilical cord wrapping around his throat, they were convinced that he was a miracle baby. He was given the name Marjoe because it combined the names of Mary and Joseph (similarly, my first child will be named Roskar, a melding of Robert Downy Jr. and Alexander Scarsgard).

Before he was three, Marjoe’s parents noticed their son was a natural ham with no fear of speaking to adults. It was a skill that was easy to exploit. While they were religious people, they were not good ones. Determined to mold Marjoe into the world’s youngest evangelist, they trained him mercilessly. When he would fail to please them, they would hold his head under water or smother him with a pillow- any punishment that wouldn’t mark his adorable face and give away their abuse. They drilled him until he could recite scripture from memory, give dozens of pre-composed sermons without notes, twirl a baton, and play the saxophone, accordion, drums, and tambourine. They coached him on dramatic delivery and timing. He learned to follow cues from his mother. Should she yell, ‘Oh Jesus!’, he’d know to slow down. If it was ‘Glory to God!’, he knew to speed it up. When she yelled, ‘Praise God!,’ that meant it was time to collect worshippers’ donations.

The donations were, after all, what it was all about. As an itinerant preacher, Marjoe could preach the good word to crowds of believers all over the country. If he impressed them with a compelling sermon or performed amazing faith healings, his collection plate would overflow. His parents had him offer to kiss old ladies on the cheek if only they would donate $20 to the ‘mission,’ and had him hawk ‘holy’ items to the faithful.

Overflow it did. Marjoe started publicly preaching when he was just three and a half. His parents toured him from coast to coast, and he became an instant sensation. Of course, they hid the reality of his coerced eloquence. They told stories of how they caught their tiny son speaking in tongues in the bathtub, or giving divinely inspired sermons in his sleep. “Marjoe would rather preach than eat,” his father attested. “Why, I sit in his services amazed- simply amazed- at what he says.’” Marjoe was instructed to repeat these stories and declare all of his sermons the spontaneous word of God. “The Lord called one me to preach. He showed me people with their arms outstretched for the Gospel. I am out to give the devil two black eyes,” Marjoe told the press.

The pint-sized pastor would usually wear a little velvet suit, but sometimes he would speak in costumes relating to his sermon’s theme. When he preached about ‘the bread of life,’ for instance, he wore a baker’s hat and apron. His sermons were delivered with fiery flair, and his listeners were routinely moved to tears. “Behind the pulpit, Marjoe is a hand-waving, foot-stomping preacher, beckoning to both adults and children to ‘repent, repent, repent before it’s too late,'” marveled the papers. In between sermons, he would give musical performances and dance.

Marjoe became particularly known for his excellent track record of prompting ‘spiritual rebirth’ (in which a worshipper connects with the Holy Spirit and perhaps speak in tongues) and successfully ‘laying hands’ (a healing process in which he would have the ailing in his audience come on stage to be theatrically ‘healed’). Later in life, Marjoe reflected that the contagious enthusiasm of the crowd, the genuine faith of his listeners, and the power of the placebo effect made him seem to possess powers he did not."You start with a guy who obviously has a problem," he explained. "You've got to begin on that premise. Things haven't worked out for him, or he's looking for something, or whatever. So he goes to one of these revivals. He hears very regimented things. He sees a lot of people glowing around him, people who seem very, very happy, and they're all inviting him to come in and join the clique and it looks great. They say, 'Hey, my life was changed!' or 'Hey, I found a new job!' That's when he's ready to get saved, or born again; and once he's saved, they all pat him on the back.” Marjoe enjoyed the approval of his abusive parents and adoring audience, and got a rush from the theatricality of the revivals. Yet in adulthood, he admitted that there was never a time in his life when he actually believed in a Christian god.

He was ordained into LA’s ‘Church of the Old Time Faith’ when he was five years old so that he could legally perform a marriage ceremony. As his parents had hoped, the press was present. He wedded a Navy storekeeper named Raymond Miller to his fiancee Alma Brown in 1949, with the happy couple putting his payment in his piggy bank. The ordination and officiating sparked a lot of controversy and a lot of publicity. Many critics were vocal in their opinions that no five year old should be performing marriages. Others found the increasingly famous boy to be something close to a miracle. Marjoe explained that it was silly to criticize him. After all, Jesus has started preaching at 12.

In this way, Marjoe and his parents carried on traveling the country for years. By the time he was nine, he ballparked that he had preached to 80 million people. Yet when they hit the late 50’s, Marjoe’s popularity started to wane. The novelty of his act had worn off as he had aged from a cherub-faced toddler into a skinny teen. In the middle of one revival in North Carolina, his father slipped out with all the cash he could. Left alone with his mother, fourteen-year-old Marjoe convinced her to let him quit the preaching circuit. He estimates that in his eleven years on the job, he had made over three million dollars in donations. His parents had gathered it all up, and Marjoe himself never saw a cent.

Starting a new life with his mother in Santa Cruz, Marjoe took on a job as a barker, enticing passersby to spend their cash at an amusement arcade by yelling on the streets. His charismatic pitches doubled their business within months. Marjoe, however, wanted a change. At sixteen, he left his mother, changed his name, and began a relationship with an older woman. For five years, he immersed himself in the hippie culture of California. He smoked, drove out west in a VW van, and played in a rock band. He hid his past. Even his closest friends didn’t know that he had once filled revival tents with fervent believers.

Marjoe became more and more committed to the ‘peace and love’ motto of the hippie community. He became a Bob Dylan fan and started to formulate his own ideas about social justice. These thoughts, and a lack of money, encouraged him to re-enter the preaching circuit. He found that most of the evangelical communities he had spoken to as a kid had seemed to miss out on the cultural revolution of the sixties. At first, he felt confident that he could convince them that miniskirts and rock n’roll were not humanity’s biggest enemies. When his non-traditional sermons met an unenthusiastic response, he decided to give the people what they wanted...and make a buck in the process.

Taking up his old talking points, Marjoe once again took the evangelical world by storm. He preached throughout his twenties, all the while never believing in what he was saying. Just as when he was a child, he enjoyed the energy of the revivals but felt ambivalent about the message. He wished that he could just lead “a group therapy session,” and flat-out hated the fire-and-brimstone elements that brought in the biggest donations. When at the pulpit, he healed and hallelughiaed as impressively as ever. At home, he lived with his girlfriend and cracked wise about the work with friends. He preached against drug use, pleading with his audience to bring him their sinful pot stashes. Then he’d bring it home to smoke. Above all, however, he felt hooked on the money and adulation the revivals gave him. “I think religion is a drug,” he said. “It’s addicting.”

Still, Marjoe started to feel uncomfortable with his dishonesty. In 1971, he partnered with documentary film makers Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan to bring his double life to light. He had a film crew follow him into revivals on a tour through Texas, Michigan, and California. He claims his motivation was three fold: he wanted to start an acting career, force himself to quit the religion business, and expose the ugly truths behind for-profit preachers. “I don’t want to do it anymore. What can I say. Sometimes I feel like I should get up and do repentance to the audience or something, you know. I have these fantasies- a lot of times I’d really like to get up and just tell them what I really think or where I’m really at, or what I’d like them to do,” he says on film. “Then when I get up I go right into my sermon...I just can’t go on doing it anymore.” He knew that the film would close out the possibility of ever returning to the evangelical community, and he wanted that door forcefully shut.

The result of the filming was the 1972 film Marjoe (both video clips I've used here are from the film, all of which is available on youtube). On screen, Marjoe demonstrated the ease with which he moved between his two lives. Moments before leading a packed tent in joyful praise, he openly discusses his best money-making techniques with the film crew. After a long night of faith healing, he is filmed going back to his hotel room and dumping a bag of cash onto the bed, jokingly singing a hymn. It’s compelling to watch such a total sham in action, but strangely, I left the movie feeling as sorry for this false prophet as I did angry. While he does knowingly manipulate the faithful into parting with their hard-earned cash- a process that’s painful to watch- he doesn’t come off as contemptuous of his devotees, and it is hard to forget where he came from. While he believes none of what he says, he makes it clear to the cameras that he disdains organized religion, not God. He seems to feel that preaching is the only reliable way he knows to support himself. “I like to think that I’m bad,” he reflects, “but not evil.”

The film was well-reviewed, winning the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary. His father called him after the release to say that he must be possessed. Marjoe and his mother remained on pleasant, if distant, terms. “There’s no point in hating anyone,” he says. The one-time evangelist was propelled into a modestly successful acting career. He appeared in the A-Team, Kojak, a bunch of B-movies, 1974 Academy Award winner Earthquake. Since he ditched out on one self-funded project without paying his crew, it seems that not all of Marjoe’s shuckstering ways were behind him. For the most part, however, he made a steady career as a small-time actor by tapping the same charisma he had once used to save souls. Today, he lectures at colleges and hosts charity golf tournaments.

Whether you find him a victim or a villain, Marjoe Gortner is one child star who saw it all. He suffered abuse, soaked up applause, befriended hippies and hypocrites, and finally brought the curtain down on his own show. I’m definitely not jealous of his story, but I sure am fascinated.

Works Referenced:

“Boy Who Married Couple Can’t Understand the Fuss.”Ottawa Citizen. 4 January 1949. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gv8uAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MtwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3074,759126&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en

“Child Preacher Defies Critics.” The Pittsburgh Press. 17 January 1945. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZHgbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=PE0EAAAAIBAJ&pg=2335,639207&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en

“The Confessions of Marjoe.” Life Magazine. 8 September 1972. http://books.google.com/books?id=WlUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA58&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en&ei=FltPTIGQG8T58Abl0r2tAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCwQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=marjoe%20gortner&f=false

Conway, Flo and Jim Siefelman. “Marjoe Gortner.” Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change. 1978. http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/marjoe.htm

Ebert, Roger. “Interview with Marjoe Gortner.” 25 September 1972. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19720925/PEOPLE/209250301/1023

“Evangelist, 5, Here to Preach the Gospel, was ‘Called by God.’” The Milwaukee Journal. 14 October 1949. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YlMaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=qyMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6149,2326880&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en

“Nine Year Old Marjoe Blacking Devil’s Eye.” The Palm Beach Post. 15 March 1953. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=4f0sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ws0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1288,2200263&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en

Meyer, Robert. “How Can They Condemn Me? Asks World’s Youngest Parson.” Owosso Argus-Press. 12 January 1949.http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=IJEnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1wQGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4956,977457&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en

“Marjoe: Evangelist to Actor.” Connecticut Sunday Herald. 15 April 1973. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=MWkmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_gAGAAAAIBAJ&pg=5956,5296736&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en

“Preacher with Lots of Tricks.” Daytona Beach Morning Journal. 21 February 1949. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=EWcpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=v8cEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2431,654912&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en

Wright, Fred. “‘Marjoe’ Kills Many a Sacred Cow.” The Evening Independent. 9 December 1972.http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gfcLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7lcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=920,2139534&dq=marjoe+gortner&hl=en