Marjoe - on youtube - the full 1972 Oscar winning documentary about the con-artist boy preacher

[Douglas Carpenter]

This is one hell of a film to watch. It won the Oscar for best documentary in 1972 - It is one hour and 28 minutes long. This is the true story about the life of the child evangelist, Marjoe Gortner whose con-artist parents forced him to preach and then collected a fortune off of him. He ran away when he was 14 but discovered later on when he was in his early twenties that to make a decent living he would return to his preaching and fleecing. It is an incredible film and an incredible story prior to deciding to work with a film crew to do an expose film on himself.

This is a great documentary and there are any number of this kind of con artist. But it would be a mistake to imagine that all or most fundamentalist/Pentecostal type preachers are conscious and intentional con artist. There are a lot more poor preachers than there are rich ones. The biggest problem lies not with the willful con artist preachers - but with the true believers who spread this destructive and self-destructive message - not out of avarice but out of complete and utter sincerity.

I want to make it clear that I am not anti-religious - as anyone who knows me already knows - but I do think all forms of blind faith and absolutism whether secular or religious are intrinsically dangerous and harmful both personally to the individual and collectively to society and the world.

[Bluenorthwest]

1. I don't get your apologia for posting this great film. Oscar winning documentaries

do not need excuses.

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. nuance, nuance, nuance, I'm into nuance - in a very big way

in fact I don't believe in hardly anything anymore except nuance

[Heddi]

3. Ah Marjoe!

He played the crazy store clerk in Earthquake who tried to rape Victoria Principal

[Douglas Carpenter]

4. he also played an equally sinister characther in a film called: "When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?"

A terrifying and very obscure thriller from 1979, this film stars Marjoe Gortner as a psychotic Vietnam vet who holds an entire diner full of people hostage, forcing them to act out a demented play of his improvised creation. Co-starring Peter Firth, Pat Hingle, Candy Clark, Hal Linden, and Lee Grant. Rated R, for mature audiences only due to graphic language and scenario.

it is available in full on youtube:

I guess he was just a pretty good actor since he was four years old. As he said in the documentary that even with everyone telling him he was a miracle child - he cannot remember ever believing in God. He just knew that he could do the performance well and people loved him for it.

[Heddi]

5. he seems to be typecast

as playing psychotic Vietnam vets, as his character in Earthquake! was a Vietnam Vet as well....or National Guard I think. Anyways, it was implied that he was ex-Vietnam.... I just love that movie regardless. From Marjoe to Victoria P's delicious Afro and Walter Mathau as the Red Velvet Hatted drunk...good times

[Manifestor_of_Light]

6. Excellent documentary.

I saw it in the theater when I was a freshman in college. My religion professor suggested we go see it.

I've never seen anything comparable except the fictional Leap of Faith with Steve Martin as the con artist preacher.

I wonder how much Joel Osteen does for charity? Probably nothing since he preaches the bullshit prosperity gospel. I am more qualified to be a Christian minister than he is. He dropped out of Oral Roberts U. after one semester. I had 2 religion courses (required of all students) at a very well respected Presbyterian university.