Marjoe Gortner was a child preacher, who was popular in the American South starting in 1949. His parents earned large sums of money off of his preaching; Gortner speculated their take to be in the millions. The novelty of Gortner's youthfulness wore off at age 14, causing his father to leave. At 16, he decided to stop preaching and left his mother.[3]
Gortner rejoined the ministry as a young adult solely as a means of earning a living, not as a believer. He spent the next several years using his fame and status as an evangelist to earn a living from both tent revivals and televangelism. In his late 20s, Gortner suffered a crisis of conscience of sorts and decided to give up the revival circuit, but not any of the money he made from it. He offered a documentary film crew unrestricted access to him during his final revival tour, which took place in 1971.
The film contains scenes from revival meetings showing Gortner preaching and praying for people in Los Angeles, Fort Worth, Detroit, and Anaheim. This is interspersed with footage of Gortner admitting on camera that he was a non-believer and revealing the tactics that he and other evangelists used to manipulate people and to move them during revivals. Some of the evangelists even revealed where they bought properties kept secret and gave him advice to follow. Gortner said he studied Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, as a model for his routine.[4]
Release
At the time of the film's release, it generated considerable press, but the movie was not shown widely in theaters in the Southern United States. The distributor feared adverse reaction to the film in the Bible Belt.[3][5]
Soundtrack
A soundtrack was released by Warner Bros. Records, consisting of sermons and spoken word segments by Marjoe (from age four), intermixed with songs.[6] "Save All My Brothers", the film's theme song, was written by Sarah Kernochan and Joseph Brooks, who also arranged it, and it was sung by Jerry Keller.[7]
Rediscovery and re-release
Although released on VHS, the film had long been out of print and had deteriorated.[8] In 2002 the negative and other elements were found in a vault in New York City.[3] The Academy Film Archive preserved Marjoe in 2005.[9] On November 15, 2005, in New York City, the IFC Center showed Marjoe[10] as the closing film in a series of documentaries called "Stranger Than Fiction". The restored film has since been released on DVD[11] and streaming services.
^"Marjoe". Horror Drive-in.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved January 30, 2018. Though Marjoe (the documentary) won an Academy Award, its release was limited. The distributor didn't wish to start a backlash in the deep south Bible Belt.
