Transcript

10.10.25 · History Hour

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Radioized History Show. I'm your reader
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and hosts for today, Joseph Bolt. I'm so glad to
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be with you. And before we begin today's program, we
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always need to remind you that Radio I is listener driven,
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So if you have any thoughts or comments suggestions about
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four two two six three nine zero and let us
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know what you are thinking. As you know, Radio I
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is a reading service that's intended for people who are
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blind to have other disabilities and make it difficult to
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read material. Okay, I'll cite the sources at the end
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of this session. Today, I think I've got a pretty
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interesting program today, maybe somebody you've not heard of before
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in history, but nonetheless an interesting story. It's about a
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lady by the name of Amy Simple McPherson. So let's
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read about Amy. Give me a little baby girl, the
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Canadian farm wife prayed, and I will give her unreservedly
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to your service, that she may preach the word en quote.
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In eighteen ninety, Minnie Kennedy gave birth to a girl
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she named Amy and promised God her daughter would save souls.
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Three decades later, Amy Simple McPherson was the most charismatic
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and controversial evangelist in America, A flamboyant preacher whose tempetuous
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personal life inspired countless tabloid headlines, police inquiries, and a
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Broadway musical. Young Amy propped dolls on chairs and preached
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to them. At twelve, she won a Christian oratory contest.
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At thirteen, she preached at church picnics. High school stole
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her faith. A science text declared the earth eons old
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and man a descendant of apes. Well, if that's true,
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Amy thought the Bible's faults. She confronted her teachers and preachers.
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None could allay her doubts. Amy rejected religion and began
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living a worldly life of reading novels, playing ragtime piano,
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and dancing. Until she was seventeen and transfixed. She heard
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the preaching of Robert Simple, a fiery Irish evangelist. Simple
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was tall and handsome, and Amy fell in love with him.
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She burned her novels, her sheep music, and her dancing shoes.
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Within the year, she and Simple married and traveled to
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China as missionaries. He died of malaria there in nineteen ten,
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a month before she gave birth to her daughter, Roberta. Amy,
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twenty years old, moved to New York. There she wed
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Harold mac Pherson, an accountant, and settled in Rhode Island,
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where Amy bore a son by the name of Rolfe House.
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Wiffery bored and depressed her. She heard the voice of
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God preached the word. He told her preach the word.
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In nineteen fifteen, determined to be an evangelist, Amy fled
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with Roberta and Ralph to her mother's home in Canada.
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Her husband begged her to act like other women, but
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Amy left her children with her grandparents or with their grandparents,
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and set off her nineteen twelve packard convertible. A rolling
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billboard blared slow logans Jesus is coming and where will
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you spend Eternity? For six years she roamed America, preaching
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in parks, cotton fields, tents, and auditoriums. She touted the
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joy of salvation while denouncing dancing and drinking and card
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playing and other worldly pleasures like theater. The last she
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condemned as the Devil's workshop, even though being in the
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theater was her stick. Besides preaching, she sang played piano
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in spoken tongues, drawing ever larger crowds thirty thousand to
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San Diego's Balboa Park in nineteen twenty one, and moving
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onlookers to weep, faint and roll on the ground. Some
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claimed Amy haled their ailments. They are cured by Christ,
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Amy would say. In nineteen twenty one, Harold Macpherson filed
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for divorce. Amy settled in Los Angeles with her children
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and her mother, who handled the books. As sister, Amy
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created America's showiest ministry. She founded the Church of the
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Four Square Gospel, and on Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park
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built Angelus Temple, which seated five thousand people and had
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a stage big enough to hold her two hundred voice choir.
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In trademark white dress and blue cape, Amy starred in
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illustration rated sermons, which were musical plays she wrote and directed,
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basing some on Christ's life and some on her own.
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For instance, when ticketed for a moving violation, a transgression
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widely wildly covered by the press, she transformed the experience
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into a sermon. Arrested for speeding was the title of
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her sermon that she delivered in a police uniform, punctuating
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her recitation with the wails of a police motorcycle siren.
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McPherson's vivid theatrics attracted Hollywood stars, including Charlie Chaplin. An atheist,
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the Little Tramp nonetheless appreciated a good show. Half of
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your success is due to your magnetic appeal and half
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as due to the props and lights, Chaplain told mc pherson,
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Whether you like it or not, you're an actress. The
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self proclaimed evangelists found a Bible college and a magazine.
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She bought radio station k f s G to carry
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her sermons. She denounced Darwinism, defended prohibition, and lobbed unsuccessfully
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to keep Los Angeles from legalizing dancing on Sundays. She
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peddled several autobiographies along with records of her sermons, plus
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souvenirs decorated with her picture. Her most popular sermon was
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entitled The Story of My Life. After just seven years
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in Los Angeles, thirty five years old and wildly famous,
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Amy Temple macpherson had become the most recognizable woman in
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a city that was already specializing in fame. Just after
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lunch on that warm afternoon in May of nineteen twenty six,
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Amy was headed for the beach. Behind her was the
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Angelus Temple, one of the largest churches built in the
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history of the world. Seating almost six thousand people, the
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groundbreaking megachurch hosted what the papers called the greatest show
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in town. The building stood as a monument to Amy,
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the pioneer of a new global religion. Well, the dark
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side of fame had beset the lady evangelist. As her
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congregation and fortunes had grown, so too had ominous incidents,
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obsessed fans showing up in the middle of the night,
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and a mad woman arrested for trying to murder her.
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But earlier that spring, something even more frightening had happened
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to Amy. A woman had appeared at the temple and
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accused Amy of sleeping with her her husband, Kenneth Ormiston,
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Amy's chief radio engineer. The woman threatened to go public
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with accusations of infidelity if Amy didn't stop the affair.
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Amy had been married twice, but she was a born
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again fundamentalist Christian. To her thousands of followers, Amy preached
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a strict moral code. Amy cruised down that afternoon the
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smooth asphalt of Venice Boulevard. En route to the beach.
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She was accompanied by her dutiful, perpetually anxious secretary, Emma Schaeffer.
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At approximately one o'clock, the women entered a beachfront hotel.
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Amy would reserve a room for the day, then head
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to the beach to work on her sermons under an umbrella,
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taking breaks to swim in the day. Once in room
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two two, Amy changed into an emerald green bathing suit
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and cap, put on a robe, and padded downstairs. In
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her bare feet, the two women walked a few blocks
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to the beach. The day was pleasant, calm, sunny, sixty
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nine degrees. Amy spent the next hour scratching out ideas
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about good and evil in the Bible, and in the world,
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and in one's self. At three o'clock, Amy announced to Emma,
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I'm going to take a little dip. So Emma watched
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her boss swim back and forth in the surf for
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about ten minutes. When Amy finished, she trotted up from
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the water and playfully dripped on her secretary. Wrapped in
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her robe, Amy went back to work on her sermon
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while about three thirty p m. Amy asked her secretary
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to call the temple and tell them that she would
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be late. Well, Emma went to the drug store to
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call the church. Amy sat down her notes and made
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her way back to the water, and she began to
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swim again, but this time away from the shore. Emma
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made the call and returned to the sand to wait
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for Amy. Fifteen minutes passed before Emma began to worry
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that something was wrong. She anxiously watched the ocean as
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other swimmers returned to the shore. As the sun lowered,
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Emma paced the shoreline. She still couldn't spot Amy. Anxiously,
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she asked two boys coming out of the water if
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they'd seen the evangelists, describing the bright green of her suit.
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She found a lifeguard and told him that the most
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important woman in the world was missing well. The lifeguard
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gathered a group of other lifeguards and they made their
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way into the ocean. Some one set out in a
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small row boat. Emma began to cry. She begged the
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hotel manager to help her. The waves pounded the shore.
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All of the swimmers had left the ocean. At four
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twenty p m. The manager called the police from the hotel.
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Emma called Angelus Temple, demanding that Amy's mother, Minnie Kennedy,
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come to the phone. Emma couldn't get the words out
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at first. She wept so hard. She had disappeared in
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the water, and I can't find her, she says. Many. Kennedy,
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thinking her daughter had drowned, announced sister is with Jesus.
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But in her wildest dreams Many could not have conjured
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up what would come next, the demented and dark frenzy
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of scandal that would soon consume her famous daughter, herself,
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and their legacy. Followers and authorities continuing to search for
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Amy for weeks. In the coming days, her followers would
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dynamite the waters of Santa Monica Bay, hoping to raise
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her body from the depths. Yet the blast surfaced only
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dead fish. Her followers and her mother mourned her death,
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while newspapers featured the continuing search and rumors of sightings,
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rumors that she had disappeared to have an abortion or
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maybe plastic surgery. More rumors began to spread, linking Amy's
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disappearance to that of her friend Kenneth Ormiston, whose wife,
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as we read before, had reported him missing. Also there
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were reports that a woman who looked like Amy had
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been seen in a resort town with Ormiston during McPherson's disappearance.
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On June twenty third, after a month of morning an
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unending rumor, Amy appeared at Agua Pria, Mexico, across the
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border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming that she had been abducted.
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She claimed to have walked across the burning sands of
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the desert to flee kidnappers and then collapsed. She was
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taken to a hospital, and in a phone call with
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the staff, Minnie Kennedy confirmed her daughter's identity by telling
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them of the location of a scar on her finger
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and of her daughter's ability to provide the name of
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her pet pigeon. Once she'd recovered from her state of collapse,
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McPherson gave a bedside interview, saying she had been lured
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to a car after swimming and taken across the border
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by three Americans, including a man named Steve and a
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woman named Rose. She had been drugged and held in
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a Mexican shack for weeks, she said, and her captors
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had planned on keeping her until they received a ransom
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of a half a million dollars, but she foiled the plan,
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she claimed, when she saw through the ropes that were
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restraining her and staggered twenty miles through the desert. Many
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Kennedy rushed to Arizona to reunite with her daughter. My
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God's sister McPherson is alive, she told followers. Run up
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the flag on the temple and send out the word
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the Lord has returned his own. When McPherson came home,
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a throng of more than fifty thousand showed up at
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the train station to welcome her in a massive parade
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featuring airplanes that dropped roses from the sky. The evangelists
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made a grand re entrance, but despite the attendance of
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Los Angeles officials and dignitaries, not everyone was thrilled. The
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Chamber of Commerce viewed the event as a gaudy display,
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and the Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keys called for
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an investigation into the evangelist's account of a kidnapping. Within
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two weeks, McPherson voluntarily appeared before a grand jury. As
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newspapers continued to trumpet accusations of fraud, accompanied by witness
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spottings in northern California. Gaining the most traction was a
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story that centered on the fact that Kenneth Ormiston, the
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married engineer at the Christian radio station, again as we know,
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owned by McPherson's church, disappeared just when Amy did. The
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two worked together on McPherson's radio broadcasts. Police were dispatched
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to a cottage and carmel by the sea where Ormiston
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had been seen with an unidentified woman during McPherson's disappearance.
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Ormiston admitted to having an adulterous affair at the time
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of McPherson's disappearance, but denied that the stranger known as
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Missus X was Amy. After dusting the cottage for fingerprints, however,
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police found none that matched the evangelist, neighbor or newspapers
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rather bally hood the story while America debated was it
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a kidnapping or a canoodling? The headline's gossip and in
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the window continuing throughout the fall until a judge was
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determined that there was enough evidence to proceed with the
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charges of conspiracy an obstruction of justice against McPherson. A
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jury trial was scheduled for January the following year. However,
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Keyes had begun to determine that some of the witnesses
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were unreliable, and he decided to drop the charges. The
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kidnapping remained unsolved, and the controversy over a possible hoax
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went unresolved. Critics and supporters alike thought McPherson should have
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insisted on a trial to clear her name. Instead, she
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gave her account of the kidnapping in her nineteen twenty
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seven book entitled In the Service of the King, The
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Story of My Life. She would be mocked in the
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media for years, but the scandal did not diminish her popularity.
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Notoriety made McPherson even more famous. Eager to cash in,
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she toured the country, pulling five thousand dollars a week,
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telling her life story in vaudeville houses. She announced where
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she planned to be interred, then sold plots in that cemetery,
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promising buyers would rise with her. In the second coming,
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her mother criticized her for being greedy and told reporters
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Amy had punched her. Amy fired mother Minnie, foreshadowing family
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friction to come years later. That led macpherson to even
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pink slip her daughter Roberta in another headline, generating spat
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For one of her showbiz sermons, Amy hired a roly
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police singer, David Hutton, to play fayroh In nineteen thirty one.
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She and Hutton eloped next morning. As a publicity stunt,
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she invited press photographers into her room. A few days later,
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a young woman sued Hutton for breach of promise. Well
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Amy vowed her man would fight the suit and win.
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When a jury ruled against him, Amy fainted, fell and
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fractured her skull. Recovering, she fled to Paris without Hutton,
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who filed for divorce in nineteen thirty three after a
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two year marriage, saying she wasn't Amy's pet poodle. He
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was granted that divorce one year later in nineteen thirty four. Despite,
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or perhaps because of the lure of publicity about her
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personal life, Amy kept filling Angelus Temple. In September of
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forty five, Amy was in Oakland, California, to preach the
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Story of My Life. After the Oakland event had finished,
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she returned late that evening to the Lemington Hotel, an
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opulent twelve story downtown hotel. She chatted about the night
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with her son Rolf. Her energy high inside her dark room,
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a mandatory wartime blackout was in effect. She tried to
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unwind from the show. She stood at her window watching
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the planes flying in and out of the airport and stated,
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I wonder when we die, if we will be riding
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around in airplanes. She told Roff she was in a
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funny sort of mood, contemplative and giddy keyed up, as
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Roff would describe her later, but still very much herself.
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She tried to get him to stay up with her,
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but it grew late, and he finally kissed his mother
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good night and went to his room, leaving her alone. Actually,
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I feel I have done so very little, Amy wrote
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in her last memoir. Though I have preached around the
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world and seeing thousands of people saved, I feel I've
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done virtually nothing. If I were a man, I could
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do a lot more. Quote. Amy was alone. She had
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lost three husbands, she had lost her mother and then
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her daughter. At some point, as the hours passed, she
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took out a bottle from her handbag. She had been
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prescribed sedatives by our doctor, but the white pills she
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took on this evening were a hypnotic sedative with the
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name of her doctor. Doctor Wilburn Smith on the label.
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The next morning, when Rolf came to awaken his mother,
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he found her unconscious, breathing heavily. Several capsules were strewn
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on the floor beside her bed. He called for help,
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and for an hour efforts were made to revive her.
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Amy was pronounced dead at eleven fifteen in the morning
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on September twenty seventh, nineteen forty four. During a visitation
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period for Amy, forty five thousand mourners filed past her
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casket at Angelus Temple. The Four Square Gospel Church was
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worth millions at the time, but when Amy Simple McPherson's
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estate was sorted out, the evangelist had just ten thousand
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dollars to her name. Three years after Amy's death, Amy's mother, Minnie,
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died in her sleep, and according to Wikipedia, Amy's daughter Roberta,
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died on January twenty five, two thousand seven, at the
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age of ninety six. For the next forty four years,
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Rolf McPherson ran the Church of the Forest Square Gospel
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with no hint of flamboyance or scandal. Roth died on
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May twenty third, two thousand nine, of natural causes. He
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was ninety six, the church went international and now claims
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eight million members in one hundred and forty countries. In
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twenty twelve, for Square Gospel invested two million in Scandalous,
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a Broadway musical about Amy Simple McPherson written by Kathy
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Lee Gifford. The show died, closing after twenty nine curtains,
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and the church lost two million dollars. Sources for today's
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program came from smithsonianmag dot com The Incredible Disappearing Evangelists,
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written by Gilbert King in June of twenty thirteen, Thought
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dot com Amy Simple McPherson written by Joan Johnson Lewis
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in January twenty twenty, HistoryNet dot com American Schemers Amy
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Simple McPherson written by Peter Carlson May of twenty twenty five.
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And Sister Sinner, a book The Miraculous Life and Mysterious
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Disappearance of Amy Simple macpherson written by Claire Hoffman, published
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in twenty twenty five by far Strauss and Gireau of
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New York, New York. And finally, Vanity Fair dot com,
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Amy Simple McPherson, The Vanishing Evangelists, Faith Fame, and her
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alleged kidnapping again, written by Claire Hoffman in April of
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twenty twenty five. Well that does it for this chapter
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of Radio Eye history. I sure hope you enjoyed today's program.
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I thank you for listening and giving me your time. Today.
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I'm your host, Joseph Bolt, and I'll be back with
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another chapter of Radio eye history. Until then, happy trails
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to you,