HAVING FAITH Chapter Ten BORN AGAIN

 

I was not surprised that just a month after the final break with her mother, in August of 1930, Aimee Semple McPherson suffered an almost complete physical and emotional collapse. She was diagnosed with Metabolic acidosis, when the kidneys are unable to remove carbon dioxide from the blood. The body tries to compensate by expelling more through the lungs, causing hypo-ventilation. The victim is left constantly exhausted. 

As a result Sister Aimee spent most of 1930 in a sick bed. The following year of 1931, Aimee returned to her demanding schedule. 

And then, in September, while heading to Portland, Oregon for a week long revival, she stopped off at San Quentin Penitentiary, to visit her old enemy, Asa Keyes.

A lot of people were suspicious of the way Keyes dropped the prosecution of Aimee. And even before he stepped down as District Attorney in 1928, a grand jury was looking into the matter. Although there were a lot of rumors about a payoff, there was not enough evidence to indict Keyes for that. However he was indicted and convicted of accepting a $140,000 bribe for undermining the prosecution of the Julian Petroleum scandal.

Asa Keyes (above, right) served 3 years, and upon his release friends in the movie business found him work in several courtroom dramas, punching up the scripts with legal jargon, occasionally working as an extra, always with his back to the camera, voicing objections. He died of a stroke in 1934.

Aimee's self appointed cross-town rival, the Reverend Robert Schuler (above), deplored the “loyalty of thousands to this leader in the face of her evident and positively proven guilt.” Typically for Shuler, it was an over statement, and a few weeks later an Aimee supporter punched “Fighting Bob” in the snoot. Fighting Bob did not fight back. Still the publicity was a victory for him. 

That Christmas he was presented with a $25,000 donation, specifically to build his own radio station, making him Aimee's equal -  at lest in wattage. The only difference was that Aimee's station belonged to the Angelus Temple, while Shuler put his station in his own name. However the new reach of his anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Aimee venom inspired the L.A. Times to note, “Unless you have been attacked by Rev. 'Bob' Shuler...you don't amount to much in Los Angeles.”

Bob's ministry profited in the coming decades, culminating in the 1980 dedication of the magnificent "Crystal Cathedral" (above), which housed over 2,000 of the faithful, and broadcast weekly to a world wide television congregation of 20 million.  Any way you measure things, Bob had beaten Sister Aimee. 

However, by 2010 Bob's church was forced into bankruptcy, and three years later attendance had fallen so far that the family and corporation was forced to sell their edifice to rivals Bob had once condemned, the Catholic Church.  In 2015, when 88 year old Reverend Shuler, died of esophageal cancer, his funeral was held in the church he built, by the permission of the Catholics. 

By 1932 Aimee (above right) felt the need to return to the revival trail, and started looking for help running the Angelus Temple while she preached - sort of a replacement for her mother, Mildred Kennedy . Aimee chose as her new co-minister a “blue-eyed (dirty) blond slip of a girl" named  Rheba Crawford Splival (above, left, looking up to Aimee). 

Rheba (above) was a Salvation Army convert known in New York as “The Angel of Broadway”. But her sudden rise allowed Rheba to dream of taking over Aimee's empire. 

However the Great Depression and the haphazard bookkeeping at the Temple drained even the flood of Sunday offerings. And in 1935 Aimee was forced to execute a coup, reducing Rheba's (above) power on the board and publicly blaming the angel of Broadway and her own daughter Roberta, for the mess. 

But Rheba was an experienced street fighter, and convinced Roberta McPherson to sue her mother for defamation. In a separate suit Rheba demanded $1 million for herself, claiming Aimee had called her a Judas. Mildred "Sister Minnie" Kennedy testified against  her daughter Aimee in both cases. A judge awarded  daughter Roberta $5,000, and Aimee settled out of court with Rheba for an undisclosed amount.

By 1940 the running of the Angelus Temple had been finally placed in the hands of professionals, with Aimee as the spiritual guide only.  It was the role she'd been born to. 

No longer speaking to either her daughter Roberta, or her mother "Sister Minnie",  Aimee had come to rely more and more on her son Rolf (above). And at ten in the morning of Tuesday, 26 September 1944,  it was Rolf who found his mother unconscious in her hotel bed.. There were rumors of course that the “Miracle Woman” had committed suicide. 

And the truth was that Aimee had taken sleeping pills the night before. 

But when they made her feel ill, Aimee had called two separate doctors seeking advice. The first was unavailable, and the second recommended she call a third.  She passed out before she could make the final call. Aimee Semple McPherson was declared dead at 11:15 in the morning of 26 September, 1944. Six thousand faithful attended her funeral in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Burbank, California, on a hill side overlooking the Burbank studio lot. 

At her death, Aimee's personal estate was valued at just $10,000. Daughter Roberta was bequeathed  $2,000. Her mother Mildred Kennedy got a mere $10, with the stipulation that if she contested the will, she was to received nothing at all. 

The remaining $8,000 went to Rolf, the only one who had remained loyal. He would lead the Angelus Temple for the next 44 years, the mother church to almost 9 million believers world wide.  The Temple's founder was not perfect, but the only people who expected her to be that, were the true believers.

- 30 -

HAVING FAITH Chapter Nine CALGARY

 

I suppose he was the most famous heterosexual male in the world. Originally trained as a dancer, Rodolfo Alfonso Gugliemi di Valentina d'Antonguella went into films because he'd been black balled in live theatre after having an affair with a rich producer's wife.  He was now earning $10,000 a week ($120,000 a week today) as a film actor.

Rich, handsome, and single again after a bitter divorce, the 31 year old year old went into a New York City hospital early in August of 1926 to have his appendix removed, and two weeks later he died from an infection. Over 100,000 fans attended his funeral in Manhattan, and they gave him another one in Los Angeles. His corpse was temporarily slipped into a borrowed vault in a Hollywood mausoleum, but he's been there ever since, under his film name, Rudolph Valentino.

“Hooray for Hollywood

That screwy ballyhooey Hollywood”

At a time when the average movie ticket cost a dime, one of the first films to gross over $1 million was Valentino's 1920 “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”.  This year of 1926, the most popular film was Harold Lloyd's “For Heaven's Sake”.   It had cost $150,000 to make (under $2 million today), and would gross over $2,600,000 (over $300 million today). With that kind of profit margin, the movie industry was growing up fast, and almost 90% of all films made in America were being shot in Hollywood. And it was here that a revolution was about to occur.

“Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic

With just a good looking pan”

It was being birthed on Sunset Boulevard in the center of Hollywood, by Harry, Albert and Sam Warner

The investment house of Goldman Sachs had financed the growth of Warner Brothers studio (above), allowing them to branch out the year before into radio, with KFWB.   But in 1926 Warner Brother's went $333,000 (over $4 million) into debt , to invest in an experimental short film called “A Plantation Act”, staring Broadway musical star, Al Jolsen.    

Eldest Warner brother Harry thought it was a mistake, saying, “Nobody wants to hear actors talk.”   But even though the final 89 minute film, released in 1927 as “The Jazz Singer” (above) had only a little over 2 minutes of sound, cost less than half a million dollars to make, it sold almost $6 million in tickets.   And between those two earth shaking events, the death of the biggest silent film star, and the birth of "talkies" occurred the preliminary hearing for Aimee Semple McPherson. And like all second acts, this one had an unsatisfying curtain.

“And any shop girl can be a top girl 

If she pleases a tired businessman.”

It was only a matter of time before the unstable Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff (above) cracked.  District Attorney Asa Keyes was hoping she would hold together long enough to convict Amiee, her mother and Kenneth Ormiston. Keeping her charged along with the conspirators she was testifying against was Keyes' way of keeping her under control.  But it didn't work. Shortly after the hearing, Lorraine gave a newspaper interview in which she tweaked her story. It was not much of a change. But it was fatal. 

Under oath she identified the man who had approached her with the $5,000 offer to lie for Sister Aimee as a mysterious “Mr. Martin”.  But to the newspaper she named him as Jack Wooley, working for his uncle, attorney and L.A. power broker, Roland Rich Wooley (above, left).

“Hooray for Hollywood,

Where you're terrific if you're even good.”

 Lorraine's story, as it appeared in the newspaper,  was, in all important aspects, the same as it had been under oath. And she was far from the only witness who placed Aimee and Kenneth Ormiston together in Carmel during the week after her supposed kidnapping.  But for some reason, Keyes grew increasingly doubtful about the coming trial. On Wednesday, 29 December, he called the case “muddled”.  The next day he insisted, “I will not drop this case.”  He then accurately called the  Lorraine's shift “more of an elaboration” than a change.  But after a weekend of thinking, on Monday 3 January of 1927, he began to shift himself, saying he would “take all the time necessary to make up my mind” - to formally charge Aimee with fraud.

“Where anyone at all from Shirley Temple to Aimee Semple

Is equally understood”

A week later Keyes made up his mind. “Without (the testimony of Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff) proof of the alleged conspiracy is now impossible.”  And that was the end of it.  Rumors were heard, of course, whispering that Keyes had been paid thirty thousand dollars in cash to drop the case. But whatever the truth it was the ultimate anti-climax.  It was all over. 

The Hearst owned Herald American wrote that after 3,500 pages of testimony and half a million dollars (in 21st century,  $3 million)  all that was achieved was that “the McPherson sensation has sold millions of newspapers, generated fat fees for lawyers, stirred up religious antagonism...(and) advertised Los Angeles in a ridiculous way."

“Go out and try your luck, you might be Donald Duck

Hooray for Hollywood.”

Within a week of Keye's decision, Aimee announced an 80 day evangelical trip, which the press immediately dubbed the “Vindication Tour”.  Mildred Kennedy did not want her to go, but Aimee insisted, so her mother joined her on the tour.  Also joining the church were new faces, hired to handle the press, people like Mae Walden (above left). She was not a fundamentalist, used make up and wore appealing clothes. And gradually, during the tour, Sister Aimee did so too (above center). The "miracle woman" dyed her air, began wearing lipstick, and tightened her corset to give herself a more comely shape.  After the tour the evangelist returned to a church in open rebellion, an uprising fermented by her mother.

“Hooray for Hollywood

That phoney super-Coney Hollywood.”\

To remove Aimee from a position of power before she bankrupted the place, “Sister Minnie” set up a vote of “no confidence” by the temple's board of directors.  But she miscalculated, and Aimee won the vote.  Gldwyn Nichols, the choir director, held a press conference to announce she was resigning from the Angelus Temple.  Her justification was “Aimee's surrender to worldliness--her new wardrobe of fancy gowns and short skirts, jewelry, furs, her new infatuation with cosmetics and bobbed hair, all specifically condemned by the Scriptures”  As read by the choir director. 

The fake drowning wasn't even mentioned. Still, the entire 300 member choir quit with Mrs Nichols.  

As did Mrs. Mildred Kennedy (above).   In 1927, in exchange for a $200,000 settlement, Mrs. Mildred Kennedy officially resigned from the board of the Angelus Temple she had helped to build.  Momma left with a typically Christian thought for Aimee. She told the press, “My daughter is like a fish on the beach when it comes to handling money, I don't believe if you put an add in the newspapers you could find anybody dumber when it comes to business. All they got to do is let her have her way for a year, and she'll bankrupt the place, mark my words.”

“They come from Chillicothes and Paducas with their bazookas

To get their names up in lights.”

 

Mrs. Kennedy's scolding advice was replaced by more positive voices, urging new investments, a condominium tower (above), and a cemetery, among others.  

Aimee released recordings of her sermons. She collected her sermons into books. Aimee Semple McPherson dolls were licensed,  Every way possible the money stream from the church was tapped. And  within a year Mildred's warnings were proven correct. The Four Square Gospel Church was almost bankrupt. 

Mildred came back for awhile, left again and returned again when the stock market crashed. But the fights were escalating, until Aimee finally punched her mother in the face, breaking her nose. 

“All armed with photos from local rotos

With their hair in ribbon and legs in tights”

In 1927, Dorthey Parker reviewed Aimee's autobiography, saying, “Well, Aimee Semple McPherson has written a book.. It is the story of her life, and it is called "In the Service of the King", which title is perhaps a bit dangerously suggestive of a romantic novel.  It may be that this autobiography is set down in sincerity, frankness and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.”

“Hooray for Hollywood

You may be homely in your neighborhood
But if you think that you can be an actor, see Mr. Factor
He'll make a monkey look good
Within a half an hour you'll look like Tyrone Power
Hooray for Hollywood!”

Music by Richard A. Whiting.

Lyrics by Johnny Mercer 1937

- 30 -