Aimee Semple McPherson dazzled Angelenos with flamboyant sermons. Then she disappeared

There are two kinds of Angelenos: Those who’ve heard of Aimee Semple McPherson and those who should. She was a showperson, a radio star, a publisher and writer, a beloved figure and a celebrity — hard to achieve as a Pentecostal preacher in the early 20th century. Her improbable success and unlikely downfall, and what her story says about belief and self-invention and fame, are in the lifeblood of Los Angeles.

The still-standing Angelus Temple across from Echo Park Lake sparked my curiosity years ago. I learned that McPherson built it and held pageant-like sermons there, walked into the sea and was thought drowned. Spoiler alert: Weeks later she appeared alive, in the desert, and her story (she’d been kidnapped) didn’t match up with the scandal that emerged (she’d allegedly been off in a love nest with a married man).

Claire Hoffman’s superb new biography “Sister, Sinner” tells that story and much more. She has a keen sensitivity toward McPherson’s religious beliefs and wide knowledge of the times in which she lived. Starting in McPherson’s native Canada, she follows the future evangelist through early marriages, itinerant preaching, her church in Los Angeles, her fame, her fall and what came after.

In 1890, mother Minnie marched through a terrible snowstorm into her church and, like a wintry Lion King, held her baby Aimee aloft and pledged the girl’s life to God. Minnie was devoted to the Salvation Army because of the church’s dedication to evangelizing and doing good works.

Throughout their lives, both mother and daughter would leave husbands behind for their church activities, eventually traveling America together in a car painted “Jesus Saves!” Fortunately Minnie married well enough that when her daughter needed help, she could provide it.

Growing up in rural Canada, Aimee was a dynamic teen drawn to a secular world until she saw Robert Semple, an Irish Pentecostal preacher. Smitten by him and enraptured by the practice of speaking in tongues, which was thought to be channeling the divine, Aimee married him in 1908. The two traveled to China to evangelize, but became severely ill. Aimee was pregnant and recovered; Robert did not, dying in Hong Kong before their daughter Roberta was born. Friends chipped in to bring the widow and baby home; the pair reached Minnie in New York City in 1910.

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

In her grief, Aimee found strength in preaching. Still connected to the Salvation Army, she went out on the streets of New York to share the good word. It was here that she met Harold McPherson, who by all accounts was kind of a dud. Yet they married and she dutifully moved with him to Providence, R.I., where Aimee was expected to stay home. He wanted her to cook and clean and raise their family — they’d had a son together, Rolf — which made her miserable.

Hoffman has done a marvelous job of reading through Aimee’s voluminous, florid writings and creating a narrative that works for the modern ear. For example, to describe her depression, Aimee wrote, “The loom of life seemed then to be but a tangled maze whose colorings had suddenly plunged from mountain-tops of sunlit glory to the depths of a seemingly endless valley of bewildering gloom.” Hoffman, paraphrasing her state of mind in Providence, writes, “During this time Aimee described herself as profoundly lonely, the emotion coming over her in those days like a ‘terrifying grip.’”

To suit Aimee, Harold packed up the kids in the car and they drove to Florida where she could preach. It was not easy — they slept in fields and pitched a tent for her sermons. As a lady preacher, she was a curiosity; as one who welcomed all races, she went against the cultural norms. During this time, Aimee was developing her own religious schema — she preached joy and love; said that everyone could connect to God personally; and that Jesus was about to reappear on earth. She traveled widely as her reputation grew. When Harold burned out on being the helpmeet to the rising star, Minnie took his place. She and Aimee arrived in Los Angeles in 1918, the children along for the ride.

In California, Aimee formed the Foursquare Gospel, Pentecostal principles repackaged with her own gloss. Her audiences grew in Los Angeles and on the road. She was chasing records set by the popular fire-and-brimstone evangelist Billy Sunday; where he preached damnation, she preached salvation. Eventually, she eclipsed him.

She was accessible, calling herself “Sister Aimee” (rather than, say, a priest’s “Father”). Her attire was exceedingly modest — full-length white dresses topped by a blue cape. She laid on hands and people said they were healed. She was so beloved that her followers didn’t mind when she and Harold quietly divorced. She captured the hearts of Angelenos and was swamped by donations. Her mother helped her manage the money, making a few key decisions that would help Aimee through tough times.

With the funds they raised, Aimee built what was called her Million Dollar Temple, the grand Echo Park church that opened in 1923. There, she solidified her reputation for putting on a great show. To accompany her flamboyant sermons, she employed a brass band, an orchestra and a 100-person choir. When radio came along, she had a station built on site so she could broadcast live. The day she theatrically wheeled a motorcycle on stage, press photographers just happened to be there.

It was a good time to be a good story in Los Angeles. Competing newspapers battled for stories, from the quirky to the scandalous. Sister Aimee, with her modest demeanor and overflow crowds, was a newsworthy curiosity. She learned to cultivate her press relationships, always ready with a quick, clever reply that would make great copy. She was so well-known that people called out to her on the street.

Author Claire Hoffman.

(Davis Guggenheim)

What happened next is told by Hoffman, a former L.A. Times reporter, as the story played out in real time. On the afternoon of May 18, 1926, Aimee went for a swim at Venice Beach while her secretary waited on shore. Aimee did not return. A huge search followed for the evangelist, during which a diver died when his equipment failed. Crowds of her distraught followers gathered along the beach, one of whom drowned when she threw herself into the sea to follow Aimee to the next world. Was she possibly just missing? Sightings were reported; tips flooded into Angelus Temple, which offered and then rescinded a $25,000 reward. Thirty-three days after Aimee’s disappearance, her mother held a funeral service for her; 20,000 people attended, emptying their pockets in tribute.

And two days after that, Aimee walked out of the desert in Mexico, just across the border from Douglas, Ariz. She was alive.

“Aimee’s disappearance had made national news, but her resurrection made global headlines,” Hoffman writes. Aimee’s story was this: She had been walking on the beach and went to aid people who asked for help, they abducted her, moved her from one safe house to another and threatened to sell her into sex slavery in Mexico. She escaped, walking 22 miles across the desert until she found a house around 1 a.m., collapsing at its gate. To her dying day, she never changed her story.

Informed Aimee was alive, Minnie and McPherson’s distraught children went to meet her in Arizona. Media outlets raced each other by plane to be the first to get a photo of the miraculously alive evangelist. When Aimee returned to L.A., the crowd welcoming her was estimated at 50,000 to 150,000 people.

From the start, though, Aimee had her doubters. Asa Keyes, the anti-corruption L.A. district attorney (who would himself be jailed for corruption), publicly questioned how a woman of her renown could be grabbed off the street. The physical evidence strongly suggested that rather than hiking across a blazing desert after enduring weeks of torment, Aimee had gotten out of a car and walked a short distance to be discovered.

Meanwhile, Aimee and her supporters demanded the kidnappers be found and brought to justice. Keyes launched a high-profile, high-stakes investigation that soon spun out of control.

A grand jury inquiry into whether charges should be brought against Aimee’s kidnappers — but which actually served to challenge her tale — was conducted publicly. This unusual circumstance meant each twist and turn of the story played out in the headlines. Witnesses appeared and were discredited. Aimee testified, and perhaps for the first time in her life, was unable to use her words to sway an audience. The grand jury didn’t issue any charges, but let it be known they didn’t believe her.

Just days later, a woman came forward claiming she knew that Aimee had been in a love shack in Carmel with Kenneth Ormiston, the radio operator from her church. A married ladies’ man, Ormiston had been seen flirting with Aimee quite publicly, and he’d left his job shortly before her disappearance. Aimee wasn’t kidnapped at all; she’d been hiding out at a romantic cottage.

The story had a ring of truth. An investigator was dispatched to Carmel, trailed by newspaper reporters whose race for scoops effectively helped him gather evidence. There was a grocery list, spice cans, copies of L.A. newspapers. Some witnesses swore yes, it was Aimee, while others said no. Finally Ormiston, who’d stayed beyond the reach of the press, released a statement saying yes, it was him, but he was with a “Miss X,” not Aimee.

Keyes was reluctant to push the matter forward, but the story was being spun out like a trial in the press. A zigzag of courtroom drama and media scoops ensued, thrillingly described by Hoffman. The jaw-dropping narrative includes, to support Aimee’s story, a blind lawyer being approached by an agent of her kidnappers, an overlooked ransom note and a twin who claimed it was her sister impersonating Aimee in Carmel. To contradict it, a trunk Ormiston left behind while fleeing reporters appeared to contain Aimee’s underthings. On top of that, Aimee had coached the twin to convincingly be her double to support the story, and the woman switched sides, exposing Aimee’s manipulation. And the blind lawyer died in a car accident.

Still, Aimee stuck to her story. Eventually, her legal ordeal ended. Aimee maintained that she’d been set up by L.A.’s underworld, the people involved in dance halls she’d protested, booze imports and graft. Hoffman speculates that Aimee might have taken a nod from them, however, possibly resorting to payoffs in order to get free of her legal problems.

Her reputation was bruised, but Aimee survived. She continued to preach at the Angelus Temple, and continued to draw adoring crowds. She still did good works, running L.A.’s largest soup kitchen during the Depression. And she still hit the road, traveling to reach new audiences.

Something, however, had deeply changed. Hoffman describes a shift in the content of her sermons — more persecution, less light. And a rift formed between her and her mother, with Minnie splitting off from Aimee’s church. This is where nonfiction can be delightfully tantalizing — we are left to imagine why. Was it because she was left out of the truth of Aimee’s disappearance, mourning her death while her daughter was off on a tryst? Did she believe Aimee’s story to the end, but lose faith otherwise? Was it because of Aimee’s next husband, another dud, who mismanaged their resources and kept Aimee isolated from friends and family?

Today, we are accustomed to religious leaders being exposed for hypocrisy, but in 1926, Aimee’s story was a must-read thrill ride. As it is again today in “Sister, Sinner.”

Kellogg, a former books editor of the L.A. Times, is a writer and editor in Los Angeles.