Marjoe, Vernoe, and Brian Gortner

From Philosopedia

Marjoe Gortner (14 January 1944 - )

Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner (born January 14, 1944, (age 66) in Long Beach, California), is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four, and then outright notoriety in the 1970s when he starred in an Oscar-winning, behind-the-scenes documentary about the lucrative business of Pentecostal preaching. The name "Marjoe" is a portmanteau of the names "Mary" and "Joseph."

When Gortner was three, his father Vernon Gortner, a third generation minister, noticed his son's talent for mimicry and overall fearlessness of strangers and public settings. His parents claimed he had received a vision from God during a bath. They began training him to deliver sermons, complete with dramatic gestures and emphatic lunges. By the time he was four, his parents arranged for him to perform a marriage ceremony for a film crew from Paramount studios, referring to him as "the youngest ordained minister in history." Like much in Gortner's early life it is hard to say for sure who exactly ordained him, if his father ordained him, or if he was even ordained at all.

Until the time he was a teenager, Gortner and his parents traveled the United States, holding revival meetings. As well as teaching him scriptural passages, his parents also taught him several money-making tactics, involving the sale of supposedly "holy" articles at revivals which promised to heal the sick and dying. By the time he was sixteen, he later estimated, his family had amassed maybe three million dollars. 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. He spent the remainder of his teenage years as an itinerant hippie until his early twenties, when, hard pressed for money, he decided to put his old skills to work and re-emerged on the circuit with a charismatic stage-show modeled after those of contemporary rockers, most notably Mick Jagger. He made enough to take six months off every year, during which he returned to California, surviving on the previous six months' earnings.

In the late 1960s, Gortner suffered a crisis of conscience � in particular about the threats of damnation he felt compelled to weave into his sermons � and resolved to make one final tour, this time on film. Under the pretense of making a documentary detailing a viable ministry, he assembled a documentary film crew to follow him around revival meetings in California, Texas, and Michigan during 1971. Unbeknownst to everyone else involved � including, at one point, his father � he gave "backstage" interviews to the filmmakers in between sermons and revivals, explaining intimate details of how he and other ministers operated. After sermons, the filmmakers were invited back to his hotel room to tape him counting the money he collected during the day. The resulting film, Marjoe, won the 1972 Academy Award for best documentary.

After leaving the revival circuit, Gortner then attempted to break into both Hollywood and the recording industry.[3] He cut an LP with Columbia Records, entitled "Bad, but not Evil" (Gortner's description of himself in the documentary), which met with poor sales and reviews. He began his acting career with a featured role in The Marcus-Nelson Murders, the 1973 pilot for the Kojak tv-series.[4] The following year saw him featured in the Academy Award-winning ensemble cast disaster film Earthquake as Sgt. Jody Joad, a psychotic grocery manager-turned-National Guardsman and the film's main antagonist, and in the television movie Pray for the Wildcats. Oui magazine hired Gortner to cover Millennium '73, a November 1973 festival headlined by Guru Maharaj Ji who was sometimes called a "boy guru".

During the late 1970s, Gortner attempted to self-finance another similar film, this time a pseudo-fictional drama about an evangelist con-man and based in part on Gortner's real-life experiences. The film started shooting in New Orleans, Louisiana, but went bankrupt less than 6 weeks into production. Gortner disappeared late one night with several thousand dollars worth of film stock, most of it unused, and left the crew stranded in Dallas, Texas where they had been moved for shooting. The film was never completed and the film stock was never recovered.

Gortner was married briefly to Candy Clark, from 1978 to December 14, 1979.[6]

Gortner's most memorable film performance was as the psychopathic, hostage-taking drug dealer in Milton Katselas's 1979 screen adaptation of Mark Medoff's play When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?, also starring Peter Firth, Lee Grant, and Hal Linden. He also starred in several B-movies such as the television film The Gun and The Pulpit (1974) {also released onto home video as The Gun and the Cross}, The Food Of The Gods (1976), and Starcrash (1978). He appeared frequently on the 1980s Circus of the Stars specials. He hosted an early-1980s reality TV series called Speak Up, America and appeared on Falcon Crest as corrupt psychic-medium "Vince Karlotti" (1986-87) before ending his movie career in 1995 with an appearance in the western Wild Bill in which he played a preacher.

Today he sponsors charity golf tournaments and other events, as well as working as a public speaker.

In 2007, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival commissioned actor and writer Brian Osborne to write a one-man play about Marjoe Gortner. The play, The Word, was presented as a work in progress.

In 2008 The Melbourne Underground Film Festival held the first retrospective of the cinematic works of Marjoe Gortner as part of their 9th festival.

References

Interview with Roger Ebert, The SunTimes, September 25, 1972

New York Times Movies Academy Award listing

"Who Was Maharaj Ji?" Marjoe Gortner, OUI Magazine, May 1974

State of California. California Divorce Index, 1966-1984. Microfiche. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California. p 8613.

Article in the November 1972 issue of Playboy, page 191.

Vernoe Gortner (14 January 1944)

Marjoe's ability to handle�some would say manipulate�people dates back to his 15 years touring the Bible Belt. He was 12 when his dad, the Rev. Vernon Gortner, left home, leaving unaccounted for the $3 million Marjoe's evangelism had reaped. At 16, Marjoe married and became the father of a daughter, Gigi, now 17. That marriage floundered in the '60s; so did Marjoe. Then in 1971 he edged into showbiz, playing himself in his screen autobiography before landing the lead in a TV movie, The Gun and the Pulpit, followed by a string of B film roles and TV guest shots.

Long estranged from his family, Marjoe saw his father for the first time in six years last October. When he asked about his father's evangelical church in Escondido, Calif., the elder Gortner replied, "Didn't you see the revolving cross on the roof? How could you miss it?" Marjoe laughs, "He still hasn't forgotten how to promote."

While Marjoe has turned much of his charisma toward business�he charmed $1.8 million out of Indianapolis shopping center tycoon Mel Simon to finance Red Ryder�he still lectures on crowd manipulation and faith healing at colleges. He won't return to preaching�even though "I could be more successful than ever. I could say I had seen Hollywood and now I knew that God was real. They would love to hear me tell them I had sinned."

Candice June Clark was raised a relatively sedate Southern Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas. "We didn't like those Holy Rollers," she recalls. The eldest of five children of parents divorced when she was 10, Candy helped raise her brothers. "I still iron a great shirt," she says. Her interest in having children is only just returning. "I diapered so many behinds and bottled so many mouths, I needed a 15-year rest."

At a trade high school in Fort Worth, she studied secretarial skills, but her school career was Graffiti personified�"All it was good for was socializing." She never even bothered to pick up her diploma. She moved to New York at 18, living at first on 50 cents a day ("one day cigarettes, one day food for me and one day food for my cat") before working as a secretary.

A photographer suggested modeling. (Candy winces: "You should have seen me! I thought I was Twiggy incarnate.") She was finally hired by the Zoli agency, which persuaded her to restore her blond hair to its original brown, and she began appearing in Mademoiselle and Glamour.

That led to a crowd scene in Who Is Harry Kellerman? ("I wanted to get a close look at Dustin Hoffman") and ultimately a screen test for Fat City. She got the part�plus leading man Jeff Bridges for most of three years.

Graffiti brought her an Academy Award nomination in 1974. She lost Oscar but caught hepatitis on a promotion trip to South America. The illness cost her six months, a part in Report to the Commissioner and, she estimates, nearly $50,000.

The Man Who Fell to Earth with David Bowie brought Candy her first nude scene. Handle with Care and The Big Sleep�both critical successes and commercial duds�followed. In Red Ryder, which was wrapped in May, she plays a '60s flower child to Gortner's bullying drifter. While he is in the throes of editing and cutting, the newlyweds have moved into Marjoe's L.A. hilltop home, using one wing as production headquarters.

A friend who didn't yet know Clark and Gortner were married predicted their romance wouldn't outlive the Ryder shooting. Gortner himself jokes, "This marriage might last six or eight months." She ripostes, "I'm going to pick his brain while it lasts." But he adds seriously, "Many people in this town are jealous when they see a good relationship because they're not happy." Candy doesn't mind a little envy. "I'll bet all Marjoe's old girlfriends got so mad when they found out we were married."

Brian Gortner

Hi, I was just trying to contact Warren Allen Smith.I don't know if this is his e-mail but I will give it a shot.So disregard this if it is wrong. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate his work and I am currently reading Who's Who in Hell.I collect antiquarian freethought books and anything to do with Atheism.My father and his brother as children were forced to be child evangelists and traveled constantly around the country.His brother went on to make a movie about his life self titled Marjo. They experienced lots of abuse as children. Anyways, I'm just a huge fan and am thankful for your work. I'll include a few pics.

Cheers, Brian Gortner

bkgortner@yahoo.com