The Fairmont Banff Springs Sports Invitational. He made enough money to take six months off every year, during which he returned to California and lived off his earnings before returning to the circuit. Check out our marjoe gortner selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. . The documentary cut between scenes of Marjoe preaching to an ecstatic crowd and behind-the-scenes footage where Marjoe talks about the tools he uses to manipulate worshippers and extract as much money as possible. He is perhaps best known for his role as Starbuck in the 1978 film "Battlestar Galactica". Marjoes father, Vernon, claims his son is a fourth-generation preacher. He was Jewish, so he found the whole thing like going to New Guinea. Marjoe later claimed that his parents forced him to memorize sermons by essentially waterboarding him. Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner (born January 14, 1944 in Long Beach, California) is a former evangelist preacher and actor. Disillusioned, Gortner then left his mother for San Francisco. Click to reveal It didn't even play in hip Southern cities like Austin. Marjoe alleges that he was subject to emotional and physical abuse by his parents, who he says subjected him to a type of waterboarding when he had difficulty memorizing sermons. A gifted speaker from a very young age, Gortner received his ordination as a preacher when he was only four years old and spent his childhood and early teenage years traveling throughout the United States as a celebrity Christian Revivalist movement member. As well as teaching Marjoe scriptural passages, his parents also taught him several money-raising tactics, including the sale of supposedly "holy" articles at revivals. His cinematic confessional, released in mid-1972, was a momentary cause celebre of the new film journalism. At four, he received national attention when he performed a marriage ceremony attended by reporters from Life Magazine. Marjoe Gortner is not listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having been the world's youngest preacher, but he should be. Gortner rejoined the ministry as a young adult solely as a means of earning a living, not as a believer. However, as he said to Roger Ebert in an interview, Some of the hard-sell radio preachers are attacking me. And when it came out on DVD, it reached the audience it was always meant to reach. I virtually supported them, he explains. That movie owes a great deal to Marjoe, and it makes religious people look stupid. I think it was an object of curiosity. I liked that, boy, I really did. As he grew to manhood, he traveled doing tent revivals, preaching, prophecying and working miracles. I must admit it is somewhat creepy. So that DVD came out at exactly the right moment to have the maximum impact. (His parents derived his name from a combination of Mary and Joseph.) Marjoe preaches like Tom Jones and Mick Jagger perform. VICE: What did you originally pitch to the studio as the idea behind Marjoe?Sarah Kernochan: The concept was to follow him around and do interviews explaining what he was doing. As prolific musician, he could play the drums, saxophone, organ, guitar, accordion and piano and performed with a Los Angeles rock band. This documentary now is noted as one of the most vehement criticisms of Pentecostal preaching. He first gained public attention during the late 1940s when his parents arranged for him at age four to be ordained as a preacher . As he says in the film, he was a religion addict. When approached by documentarians Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan, he agreed to let their film crew follow him throughout 1971 on a final tour of revival meetings in California, Texas, and Michigan. Later in life he turned away from that life and exposed many of the scams pulled by these 'preachers', including their money-grabbing and their tricks and fakery. Did you ever feel complicit in the act? Music at his meetings is provided by guitar, drums, piano, organ, and choirs and ranges from pure soul gospel through pseudo-rock to unadulterated hillbilly. His parents, he reasons, were just doing their thing. He performed "faith healings" and recited scripture from memory. An evangelist prodigy at the age of four, an adult Marjoe recounts how he discovered the seductions of the 60s counterculture and dropped out of preaching, only to return later, using his swaggering bravado, to woo Pentecostal audiences out of their offerings. However, Vincent Canby, in the New York Times, called the movie self-exploitation of a sort that strikes me as being exceedingly sleazy.. He was dubbed the miracle child and conducted his first marriage ceremony before he could barely even write. He first gained public attention during the late 1940s when his parents arranged for him to be ordained as a preacher at age four, due to his extraordinary speaking ability. He wanted to become an actor or a singer. Gortner capitalized on the success of the documentary. They were always careful never to leave bruises that might be noticed later. His camera had a really wide lens that made things look slightly distorted, and it took me looking at his footage to realize that it did make people look like fools. The film debuted at Cannes to great acclaim but struggled to find distribution in the U.S. outside of New York and Los Angeles because theatre owners were afraid conservative moviegoers would shun the movie. Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner was born in 1944 to Vernon Gortner, a third-generation evangelical minister, and his wife Marge. Evangelicals were still a fringe group then, so an expose on them wasn't as interesting. The camera man put two and two together and zoomed in on that. Protestants havent ignored this slight. Was it difficult for you to attend those church services, night after night, knowing what you knew about Marjoe and that industry? And I kind of envied them. After his last performance, he gave up acting and began producing celebrity sporting events to raise money for charity. desire to get the Holy Ghost. I used to ghostwrite his column, though I never got a byline. How'd you meet Marjoe? When he was four, his parents arranged for him to perform a marriage ceremony attended by the press, including photographers from Life and Paramount studios. I enjoy creating and spreading knowledgeable content for everyone around the world and try my best not to leave even the smallest of mistakes go unnoticed. He had tried to give it up before, but the money was too good. Gortner capitalized on the success of the documentary. The films narrative is not only for the crew but also for the audience, many of whom might not understand what happens during Pentecostal meetings. If you've never had the chance to watch the fascinating 1972 Academy Award-winning documentary, Marjoe take a look at it below. Marjoe was preaching from the time when he was just a child, around the age of four. They had been asking me about the negative, because they wanted to restore it, but I didn't know where it was. You weren't around at that time, but this was pre-feminism. He claimed they compelled him to do this by using mock-drowning episodes; they did not beat him as they did not want to leave bruises that might be noticed during his many public appearances. Born in 1944, the film's subject, Marjoe Gortner, was a child star of the Evangelical Christian circuit who became an ordained minister at the age of four. A glory, hallelujah meant that he was speaking too fast, a praise Jesus that he was going too slow. Well, Howard and I were boyfriend and girlfriend, living together in New York. He was very influential in giving me the confidence to have the career that I have. When approached by documentarians Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan, he agreed to let their film crew follow him throughout 1971 on a final tour of revival meetings in California, Texas, and Michigan. Prior to filming the documentary, Marjoe displayed his musical talents. He estimates that he made $3 million for his parents; he got none of it. He decided his performing talents might be put to use as an actor or singer. Share your feedback here. See terms and apply now - for PayPal Credit, opens in a new window or tab. And I had to keep proving it over and over and over again. At the time [2002], I was also editing a documentary short in the building that we had Marjoe processed. Heres what you need to know about Marjoe Gortner. As of 2023, Marjoe Gortner's net worth is $100,000 - $1M. In his early career as the 4-year-old "World's Youngest Ordained Minister," Pentecostal preacher Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner became a 'Miracle Child' extraordinaire. He also, unknowingly, tells us something more. Credit: Still from the documentary Marjoe, courtesy Sarah Kernonchan), See all episodes from The Outlook Podcast Archive, True stories of ordinary people and the extraordinary events that have shaped their lives. I thought, I went through all of this and there's nothing! Off-pulpit he was swinging Marjoe, who only dates stewardesses. His two lives never mixed, and no one on either side suspected him. However, the film is empathetic to the worshippers. He was the psychotic bad guy in Earthquake (the 1974 movie with Sensurround!). "First they started . At one point, he says, As screwed up as it is, they really get into it., When Marjoe tells his stories, you can sometimes hear his disappointment in how everything turned out. And I said, "Is there anything with the name Marjoe on it?" He also starred in the TV movies "The Marcus-Nelson Murders" (CBS, 1972-73) and "Pray For the Wildcats" (ABC, 1973-74). I thought that was really hypocritical. Shortly after Gortner's sixteenth birthday his father absconded with the money and a disillusioned Marjoe Gortner left his mother for San Francisco where he was taken in by, and became the lover of, an older woman. The film exposes Marjoe, who plays himself, as a confused, egocentric young mana self-developed, repressed schizophrenic. Entertainment will include rock, blues, and spirituals. Seriously. The NAL claims that the hierarchy spent $6 million last year on lobbying, mostly for aid to parochial schools and on the abortion issue. Child preacher Marjoe Gortner performs his rehearsed sermons. Marjoe booked a tour around the country with Smith and a film crew following him as he preached in different venues. But he kept putting it off through lack of money and focus. According to Larry Silk, Smith asked Marjoe if he thought he could go back and become an evangelist again. 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