LA Public Library: The Woman Nobody Knows

Press release from the Los Angeles Public Library:

Nicholas Beyelia

March 16, 2022

While scouring microfilm in the History & Genealogy Department at Central Library a few months back, I was startled to see a name that seemed entirely out of place in a particular publication. The name seemed out of place because it was in the theatrical section of a 2012 New York newspaper and, despite some opinions to the contrary, the individual mentioned was neither an actress, a director, or producer. In fact, she had no connections to modern New York’s theater scene at all because she had died nearly 70 years earlier. The article was related to the closure of a Broadway show called Scandalous and, while the columnist’s intent was largely to take a swipe at the show’s writer, a well-known television personality, the critic also managed to make the statement that the show was about a woman that “nobody knows.” My initial reaction upon reading this was surprising because the idea that “nobody knows” Aimee Semple McPherson was just ludicrous.

The founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (and the person responsible for the landmark Angelus Temple in Echo Park), “Sister” Aimee was one of the most beloved and controversial figures in our city’s history. Originally from Canada, Aimee arrived in Los Angeles in 1918 after finding her calling as a Pentecostal preacher. Aimee’s niche was faith healing and sermons that were brought to life through lavish stage productions—a style that was well-suited to a town that would become synonymous with the entertainment industry. By acquiring a broadcasting license she was able to spread her gospel far and wide and she built a devoted following. Outside of the movie colony, Aimee was, perhaps, the most famous and powerful woman in 1920s Los Angeles, but her style of evangelism ruffled the feathers of more orthodox religious leaders. Aimee gained her share of critics and slogged through blatant misogyny from civic leaders who were unaccustomed to women attaining prominence (and power) through religion. She was subject to intense scrutiny during her first decade in L.A. but her resilience in the face of this criticism was remarkable. Aimee remained a prominent Angeleno throughout her lifetime and helped our city with some exceptional charitable work during some very dark times. Not only did she and her church feed countless Angelenos during the Great Depression, but her sermons also helped to keep many spirits buoyed as L.A. struggled to get back on its feet. Much of the popular preoccupation with Aimee, however, hinges on a single incident: her 1926 disappearance.

When Aimee disappeared while swimming off Venice Beach in May 1926, it was initially believed that she had drowned. A month later, however, she miraculously reemerged with a wild story about being kidnapped, taken to Mexico, and tortured before escaping. Her critics challenged that story, claiming it was a hoax and countered that she had actually run away to Carmel-by-the-sea with a married employee, Kenneth Ormiston, using the kidnapping story as a front for romantic indiscretions. For better and worse, this incident coupled with a trial (where charges of criminal conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice were ultimately dropped) propelled Aimee into the role of a nationally recognized celebrity. Her name was splashed across newspapers and magazines from D.C. to San Francisco for months prompting endless speculation about her moral character and morbid fixation on “what really happened.” While Aimee quickly put this incident behind her, the public never really did and endless speculation persists to this day. This lone incident and the fact that it was never really resolved constructed mythology around her that has kept the public intrigued for more than a century. Consequently, Aimee has a permanent “is she a sinner or a saint?” footnote tacked onto her legacy, and nowhere is this more apparent than in popular culture where novelists, filmmakers, songwriters, and poets (just to name a few) are all free to speculate, ruminate, and reimagine events in the life of “Sister” Aimee Semple McPherson.

Appearing as herself or veiled as a “character-based upon,” Aimee has been the subject of countless narratives both fictive and factual for nearly a century. Her spirit is invoked to add dimension, create moral ambiguity, explore faith, humanity, or hypocrisy within the lore of Los Angeles. She has been depicted as both sinner and saint, venal and altruistic, charlatan and miracle worker. In the popular imagination, she may be all these things or she may be none of them but she is far from forgotten. Let’s walk back that grossly uninformed statement that Aimee is an evangelist that “nobody knows” by looking at the works she has inspired throughout the past century. In no way is this intended to be a comprehensive list, just a reminder that for nearly 100 years, this Los Angeles woman has never been forgotten.

The same year Aimee disappeared, Sinclair Lewis began writing a scathing novel about religious hypocrisy. The book, Elmer Gantry, was published the following year and people couldn’t help but draw comparisons between evangelist Sharon Falconer and Sister Aimee. A few months after Aimee’s trial ended, The Leader-Post, a Saskatchewan newspaper wrote about Elmer Gantry and pointed to recent events, “One Aimee Semple McPherson, an evangelist of sorts, was much in the mind when this book was first distributed. It seemed to most readers that the book pointed at her type, if not directly at her. This same Aimee Semple McPherson is again on page one of the newspapers and the new incidents remind us strikingly of the book Elmer Gantry.” Falconer, a holy woman in the mold of Aimee, fills tents with parishioners eager to hear her preach and give their money to witness her perform miracles. Much like McPherson, Falconer’s faith healing became a vital part of her sermons and Lewis’ cynicism is less focused on the evangelist than the people who followed her: “It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence and the whole evangelist business was limited since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three or four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.”

Falconer seems to alternate between a fervent belief in her own divinity and undermining it completely. In one conversation with the title character, Elmer concludes that Falconer is “crazy” as he watches her become possessed with a spiritual zeal that consumes her: “I can’t sin! I am above sin! I am really and truly sanctified!...I can do anything I want to! God chose me to do his work. I am the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, of Catherine of Sienna! I have visions! God talks to me!” The following day she has come back down to earth and tells Gantry “What I need tonight is some salve for my vanity. Have I even told you I was a reincarnated Joan of Arc? I really do half believe that sometimes. Of course, it’s just insanity. Actually, I'm a very ignorant young woman with a lot of misdirected energy and some tiny idealism. I preach elegant sermons for six weeks but if I stayed in a town six weeks and one day, I’d have to start the music box over again. I can talk my sermons beautifully...but Cecil wrote most of them for me, and the rest I cheerfully stole.” Sharon’s story ends with her belief that she can walk, untouched, through a fire that has consumed her tent. Her charred body is found the following day with a cross still clutched in her hand.

“The story spread all over the front page day after day. The body of Eli could not be found. The people of the temple employed divers—they had searchlights sweeping the water at night, and thousands of the faithful patrolling the sands, holding revival services there, weeping and praying to God to give them back their beloved leader in his green bathing-suit.”

Like Aimee, Eli miraculously returns to a joyful congregation with a story about being kidnapped that causes many naysayers to raise an eyebrow: “Of course there were skeptics, people with the devil in their hearts who refused to believe Eli’s story and persisted in talking about a blue-colored automobile driven by a good-looking girl, having a heavily veiled man wearing goggles in the seat beside her. They talked about signatures on hotel-registers, hand-writing experts, and other such obscenities; but all that made no difference to the glory-shouters at the Tabernacle, which was packed all day and all night, as never before in the history of religions.”

By switching the gender of the character, Sinclair avoids scrutiny for sexism but Oil! is very much reflective of the author’s deep disdain for organized religion which he called the “source of income to parasites and the natural ally of every form of oppression and exploitation.” It is worth mentioning that this is, very likely, the first in a long line of works that are focused on Aimee’s infamous disappearance but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

The year after Aimee’s disappearance, a play called Bless You, Sister premiered on Broadway. The play, written by John Meehan and Robert Riskin, starred actress Alice Brady as a preacher’s daughter named Mary McDonald who has lost her faith and is convinced by a slimy conman to become a phony faith healer. Mary’s love for a man complicates her particular grift and threatens to undermine her deception. Brady was unanimously praised for her performance but reviews for the play were mixed. Critics, of course, saw the parallels between Mary McDonald and Aimee Semple McPherson and were eager to report. The New York Daily News wrote that “Alice Brady is playing the first of the dramas inspired by the “religious racket” of which Aimee Semple McPherson and William Sunday are the conspicuous representatives.” Writing for the Chicago Tribune, critic Burns Mantle stated that “the assumption is natural that the recent adventures of Aimee McPherson inspired the writing of the play, but here again, the authors cannot be fairly assessed of lifting more than the idea.” In a profile of the play’s authors, the New York Times stated that “Riskin told Meehan about the play that he had in mind—a play which seemed to naturally to follow in the wake of Elmer Gantry and the Aimee Semple McPherson business, a play based on fake religions and lady evangelists...” The similarities between the play and recent events were not likely to be lost on theater audiences.

Evelyn Waugh’s satirical novel, Vile Bodies, takes place in England during the interwar years and skewers the generation of idle rich young men and women commonly referred to as the “Bright Young Things.” Among the minor characters is a garish American evangelist named Mrs. Melrose Ape who was based on, you guessed it— Aimee. Mrs. Ape is touring Europe with a gaggle of singing, religious-minded young women in tow to help spread the gospel. These women, known as the “Angels,” are dressed in white robes and have ersatz wings on their backs. These “girls” have all been improbably named to correspond with virtues: Faith, Fortitude, Humility, Prudence, Temperance, Chastity, etc. While in England, Mrs. Ape is the guest of honor at a party thrown by the preposterously named aristocrat, Lady Margot Metroland. Simon Barclain, a gossip columnist who crashed the party, twists details of the soiree into salacious fiction after he is forced to leave. Barclain’s libelous reporting involves aristocratic dowagers turning into proverbial “holy rollers” thanks to the sermon Mrs. Ape delivers to partygoers. Barclain escapes the “orgy of litigation” by putting his head in the oven and turning on the gas. Angry partygoers mentioned in the column sue Barclain’s newspaper but “the proceedings were considerably complicated by the behavior of Mrs. Ape, who gave an interview in which she confirmed Simon Barclain’s story. She also caused her press agent to wire a further account to all parts of the world. She then left the country with her Angels, having received a sudden call to ginger up the religious life of Oberammergau.”

Waugh’s novel is incredibly dated and the humor is unmistakably English but it conveys what many people thought of Aimee—that she was a ridiculous self-promoter. By the time Vile Bodies was published, Aimee had visited Europe at least twice: once in April 1926 shortly before her disappearance, and once in 1928, two years after her disappearance. By 1928, Aimee’s infamy had spread around the world and there is little doubt that Waugh wasn’t aware that the flashy “disappearing” American evangelist had landed in Europe while he was working on the book. It should also be noted that Waugh was raised Anglican and he wrote Vile Bodies right before converting to Catholicism so it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that his cynicism of Protestant religions was in full gear.

“Reno is based on two real-life women from the 1920s and 1930s; evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and famous “speak-easy hostess” Texas Guiene [Guinan]. Both women embraced and used to their advantage all the breakthroughs in multimedia and women’s liberation to become the successes they were. They’re both great examples of the modern 1920/30s woman…It’s quite a contradiction that the other side of Reno is so religious and that her nightclub act is a mixture of entertainment and preaching to people to confess their sins. This is the part of Reno that is based on Aimee Semple McPherson. Aimee made a name for herself because of her faith healings. She toured the country with her children and mother preaching the word of god and excited crowds into a state of hysteria. Her healings were widely documented and there was never any evidence of fraud. She was one of America’s first female evangelists, which brought her hardship in some ways but made her very popular in others…Her sermons preached a conservative gospel but used progressive methods. They were incredibly visual and at times would have a company of 450 people performing her sacred operas or dramatic bible re-enactments. She wanted to avoid the usual church service that she felt people were just going to out of duty and wanted to compete with popular entertainment such as vaudeville and the movies, keeping the message serious but told in a light-hearted way. She didn’t hesitate to use the “devil’s tools'' to tear down the devil’s house. She was an American phenomenon, more than just a household name. I found it hard to find the balance between these 2 completely different women—the sinner and the saint, but it all makes sense when you take into account the era and what was happening socially in New York during that time. These women, including Reno, were in their prime in the 1920s, a decade where everything was being turned upside down, especially for women.

Further Reading

Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister The Vanishing Evangelist The Story of My Life: In Memoriam, Echo Park Evangelistic Association, Los Angeles Storming Heaven: The Lives and Turmoils of Minnie Kennedy and Aimee Semple McPherson Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America

This press release was produced by the Los Angeles Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.