Marjoe Gortner, the famous children’s preacher who was the subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary and actress with roles in Earthquake, When will you come back, Red Ryder? And Falcon Crestdied. He was 82 years old.
Gortner died Friday of complications from congestive heart failure, his family said.
With a contract at Universal Pictures, Gortner made his on-screen acting debut as junkie Teddy Hopper in the 1973 Joseph Sargent-directed television film. The Marcus-Nelson Murderswhich served as a pilot for the CBS detective series Kojakwith Telly Savalas.
He also starred as Jody Joad, a grocery store manager turned National Guardsman, in the Mark Robson-directed disaster film. Earthquake (1974), and he played a hostage-taking psychopathic Vietnam veteran in Milton Katselas. When will you come back, Red Ryder? (1979).
On the sixth season (1986-87) of the prime-time CBS soap opera Falcon CrestGortner drew on his real-life experience to play Vince Karlotti, a colorful polygamist and fake psychic medium, over 17 episodes.
Hugh Marjoe (a combination of Mary and Joseph) Ross Gortner was born on January 14, 1944 in Long Beach, California. He spoke eloquently as a child, so his parents, Vernon, an evangelical Christian minister, and his mother, Marge, had him ordained as a preacher at age 4, when he performed a wedding ceremony for a Paramount newsreel.
Now famous, the long-haired Gortner delivered dramatic, whirlwind sermons at revival meetings across the United States as his family amassed a fortune estimated at $3 million, but he said his father left with the money shortly before Gortner turned 16.
He joined the ministry to earn a living, and in 1971 he granted access to a film crew during his final revival tour. The resulting 1972 documentary, Marjoéproduced and directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan, debuted at Cannes and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. (The poster called it “a true story that millions refuse to believe.”)
Marjoe Gortner in the 1972 documentary “Marjoe.”
Everett Collection
In the film, Gortner – who says he studied Mick Jagger as a model for his routine – recounts how he and other evangelists manipulated ordinary people into revivals, and is seen in his hotel room counting the money he had collected one day.
In his criticism for The New York TimesVincent Canby described the film as “less a documentary about Marjoe’s final weeks on the Pentecostal church and tent circuit than a feature-length test for a career in show biz.”
In 1972, Gortner recorded an album, Bad, but not badin which he sang “I Shall Be Released” and “Lo and Behold!” » by Bob Dylan, and with all this notoriety, he signed a contract with Universal.
Gortner also starred with Lynda Carter in Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976), appeared in the daredevil biopic Long live Knievel! (1977) and headlining a low-budget space opera, Star crash (1978).
His resume included appearances on Barnabas Jones, Medical center, Detective story, Laugh, Team A, Fantasy Island, Aerial Wolf And Hoteland he played a pastor in Wild Bill (1995), one of his last roles.
He also produced Circus of the stars special broadcasts and celebrity sports invitations that helped raise money for charity.
Survivors include his fifth wife, Susan, whom he married in 2019. He was briefly married to American graffiti actress Candy Clark – they starred together in When will you come back, Red Ryder? – at the end of the 70s.
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