HAVING FAITH Chapter Ten BORN AGAIN

 

I was not surprised to learn 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.”

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 at 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 power on the board and publicly blaming her and Aimee's 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.

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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 positivitely 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.”

“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 appeared, of course, whispering that Keyes had been paid to drop the case. But whatever the cause, it was the ultimate anti-climax.  It was all over. 

Wrote the Hearst Herald American, 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 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

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HAVING FAITH Chapter Eight RETREAT

 

I think most people in 1926 Los Angeles thought the District Attorney's case rested on Lorraine Weiseman-Sielaff  - the woman who was supposed to have saved Sister Aimee, but now threatened to destroy her. It did. But few knew how unstable the lady was. She was under the care of a psychiatrist, and had already spent time in a sanitarium. 

When no one came forward to bail her out of jail, and confronted with proof she'd been passing bad checks in L.A. during the last week of May, the very week her affidavit swore she'd been in Carmel-by-the-Sea, nursing the mysterious “Miss X”, companion to the limping bald playboy radio engineer Kenneth Ormiston,  Lorraine changed her story. Now she claimed to have been promised $5,000 for signing the false affidavit, and perhaps more for convincing her twin sister to claim being the mysterious “Miss X” .  This lady had more stories than Mother Goose.

But the prosecution had more than one unstable lady.  There was Walter Lambert, the owner of a shirt store on Hill Street in downtown L.A., across from the Hotel Clark, and the hotel's doorman Thomas Melville. Both men swore they saw Sister Aimee entering the 12 story hotel at about ten on the morning of 18, May -  the day of her drowning.  She only stayed 30 minutes. Kenneth Ormiston had been staying at the hotel since leaving his wife in January -  the same time he left the Angelus Temple. In an experiment, detectives left Venice Beach at about three in the afternoon (the time of Aimee's drowning) and drove the 300 miles north to the “love nest” cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea. They arrived at just about one-thirty the next morning, the same time Ormiston had admitted arriving there on 19 May, supposedly  in the company of the mysterious “Miss X” and her nurse.

There were half a dozen witnesses from Carmel who had seen and/or spoken with a woman they recognized as Aimee, or said “resembled” McPherson and Kenneth Ormiston.  

There were  Dennis Collins and Louie Mandrillo, graveyard shift mechanics at a Salinas garage. They testified that the owner of a sporty little Studebaker sedan (above), left in their garage for a refuel and fluid check, had picked up his car at two on the morning of 29 May. The man signed the receipt as Kenneth Ormiston and he was accompanied by a woman wearing a heavy black veil on a very dark night.

And then there was the testimony of Bernice Morris, secretary to a lawyer named Russel McKinley, who worked for Sister Aimee. Bernice had no direct knowledge of any conspiracy, but she had come to suspect that the kidnapping story had actually been concocted to fool Aimee's mother. She believed this because, at one point in a conversation with the mother and daughter (above), at the Angeles Temple, Russel McKinley had suddenly reminded Aimee (left) that one of the kidnappers had rubbed her neck to relieve a headache.

Bernice said Aimee had looked startled, but had turned to her suspicious mother and said, “Why mother, I do remember that perfectly. I forgot to tell you that. You know I’m always having trouble with my neck.” 

Morris added she did not think Mrs. Kennedy (above) believed her daughter.  Only later did it occur to Bernice Morris that Russel McKinley was must have been blackmailing Sister Aimee, and just wanted to remind her that he could pull the rug out from under her at any moment. But if that had been the lawyer's intent, Aimee's secret was protected when, a few day's later Russel was killed in an automobile accident.  Still, Morris's testimony was damning.

But, to my mind, the case against Aimee McPherson rested on a single question D.A. Keyes had asked her back in August, in front of the grand jury.  He had admired her watch, and then pointed out, “I seem to have observed a photo of you wearing that wrist watch which was taken in Douglas, five weeks after you went bathing on the beach. You are sure you did not have it with you?” Aimee could only reply, “I guess the watch must have been brought to me in Douglas by my mother.” A few minutes later, the hearing was interrupted when Aimee fainted. But here, in open court, Keyes would not have a chance to ask that question, because at least in this preliminary hearing, Aimee would never have to take the stand.

On the other hand there was Arthur Betts, a bell boy at the Hotel Clark who was supposed to identify Aimee as having entered Ormiston's room. On the witness stand he suffered a total memory loss. Two other prosecution witnesses suffered such a similar  memory failure under oath. And there was another problem, which the defense brought up in cross-examination with all the witnesses from Carmel. If they were so certain the woman in the “love nest” had been the famous evangelist, why had none of them claimed the rewards offered by newspapers for information on Aimee's whereabouts?

Then there was the lack of physical evidence. The Carmel “Love Nest” produced lots of fingerprints, but none belonging to Aimee Semple McPherson. And the grocery lists, recovered from the back yard, and identified as being written in Aimee's handwriting, had gone missing.  Photo-stats remained (above), but the defense never ceased in pointing out prosecution experts were now only working from copies. Besides, they had their own experts who insisted, it was not Sister Aimee's handwriting.

 

Aimee's kidnapping story was always a problem for Aimee's lawyers. Her escape from the kidnappers was just not believable. As D.A. Asa Keyes put it, “That was 20 miles in blistering, 120-degree sun…and yet she wasn’t blistered. Her clothes weren’t soiled. She wasn’t perspiring. Her heels weren’t broken. She didn’t ask for water. Taken to a hospital in Douglas, Arizona...she wasn’t dehydrated." Author Louis Adamic argued, “The only way she can convince me that she made that... hike across the desert...is to do it all over again, and let me ride behind her in an automobile equipped...with a huge canteen of water; and if she asks me for a single drink or a lift, I’ll give it to her and then laugh right in her face. “

Still Aimee's version of events never varied by an inch or an instant, under oath or from the pulpit. When challenged Aimee (above) would always say with a beatific smile, “That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.” She repeated that line so often it was eventually used with great effect by vaudeville and movie star Mae West, whose entire career was a parody of "the world's most pulchritudinous evangelist", Sister Aimee McPherson.. 

On Wednesday, 3 November, Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Samuel Blake concluded the hearing by telling the small courtroom (above) he found ample evidence that Aimee Semple McPherson, her mother Mildred Kennedy, and Mrs. Lorraine Weiseman-Sielaff. were indeed involved in a “criminal conspiracy to commit acts injurious to public morals and to prevent and obstruct justice.” It was assumed Weisman-Sielaff would at some point plead guilty to a lesser crime, in exchange for her testimony against the other two . Aimee and Mildred were facing a possible 42 years in prison, each. In Spartenburg, South Carolina, humorist Will Rogers was traveling with Queen Marie, of Romania. Referring to the queen, Rogers wrote, “Bless her heart. America owes her a debt of gratitude for running...Aimee McPherson back among the want ads.”

And then, while the shock waves were still roiling back and forth across Los Angeles' culture, the unstable Lorraine Weisman-Sielaff (above) changed her story again.

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