My journey ends here...
McPHERSON Aimee Semple
Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy.
Date of birth : October 9, 1890, Ontario, Canada.
Date of death : September 27, 1944, Oakland, California.
Portrait
,
Story
She began her career as Pentecostal Minister by preaching with wandering evangelists.
She made her first radio sermons aged 17, and it was in Los Angeles that she met the most ardent public.
Vital evangelist, doted with a certain charisma,
she had founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel;
Norma Jeane was christened on December 6th 1926 at the Hawthorn Foursquare Church
(4503 then 4511 West Broadway, Hawthorn):
.
After a conversion by her first husband, Robert Semple (
),
she became a Pentecostal evangelist and went in Asia as missionary.
Her husband died and she came back to the USA,
where she married Harold McPherson (
), settled in Los Angeles and
began holding meetings which attracted an important crowd.
Gladys Baker, Della Mae Monroe and the Bolenders attended her meetings.
In 1923 she founded the Angelus Temple (
,
,
;
), a 5 300 places building, exclusively financed by the faithful donations (about 1.5 millions $), located 1100 Glendale Avenue.
There, she preached her faith in the "Immovable Movement", a theory based on her idea of Jesus-Christ 4 roles "Redeemer, Great Healer, Christener by the Holy spirit and Great King whose time is close".
She didn't split up with her mother, Ma Kennedy,
whose vocation was to launch the applause which welcomed her daughter
theatrical performances :
,
.
To preach God's law, Sister Aimee wore a police officer uniform.
To pronounce the rules imposed by the decency, she chose a Victorian dress.
Lights, music and mirrors participated a lot to a show that Hollywood wouldn't have disowned.Vital and attractive, McPherson didn't ever lose her faithful's love; her popularity covered all the USA.
A 3rd marriage failed, trials accrued, and scandals mixing sex and money became more numerous, but the impression left by the exuberant woman remained engraved in the mind of those who had seen her.
Many of the scandals, in the middle of year 1926, (including a rumor about an affair with Charlie Chaplin and mostly the fact that she was an adulterous woman) turned the tendency around.
She died aged 53, in 1944, of a barbiturate overdose.
Websites
BACK TO ALPHABETICAL INDEX
NEXT FILE