AN EVANGELIST’S CREED

Hokitika Guardian, 7 October 1931, Page 7

AN EVANGELIST’S CREED

WHY “AIMEE” WED. LOS ANGELES, Sept. 14. “Every woman, I don’t care who she is, wants somebody to love, and be loved by.” So says Airs Aimee Macpherson, selfstyled “Star Saleswoman of God,” who has just crowded into a life already tilled with intrigue, love, dim-lit evangelism, costly silk stockings, but bursting collection boxes, another thrill—the “Four Square Gospeller” of Los Angeles has married again. Just when publicity was beginning to wane and the newspapers bad almost forgotton the time huge crowds knelt all night on the beach and aeroplanes and glass-bottomed rowing boats searched vainly for the body of the supposedly drowned evangelist, Aimee sprang her latest tit-hit. Into her bedroom was brought a microphone, and Aimee, sitting up in. pyjamas that are said to have cost more than Norma Talmadge’s, broadcast the news. Everybody else has a husband, so why shouldn't I?” she said. And then—“lt’s strange to wake up and know that there’s a man in the house,” she giggled. • The evangelist will retain the name Macpherson for business, or evangelical, reasons—the two are almost synonymous in the Angelas Temple, christened by her “The House that God Built,” and able to sent 5000 comfortably, Her latest husband, David Sutton, a singer in her choir of 50 white-robed’ choristers (supported by a brass band of 45 pieces that is said to have made Jack Hylton envious), is no usual man. He is fair, weighs 16st. 111 b., ancl his age is 30 to Aimee’s 40. In announcing their happiness, the evangelist explained that, although ordinarily she opposes the marriage of divorced persons, she considers that her case is unusual, especially as 17 years have elapsed since Harold Macpherson left her. Born in poverty, she began "her evangelism at 17, married unhappily, and, soon after Iter husband died, sprang into fame as a preacher. Ethner Gantry would have been a tyro to Aimee. .Her preaching is said to have smashed her other romance, Harold Macpherson leaving her—she divorced him for desertion, later—because she took to the pulpit, or platform, before her child, Roberta, was horn.

So tin* e vim (relist, kept under a tight rein bv her GO-odd-year-o]d mother—- “ Aimee has no idea of money; she’ll spend half the collection on a- pair of silk stockings”—went on her Biblespreading way, single again, divorced from love—until in 1926 wireless operator Kenneth Ormiston, well-known on the Australian Matson line run, became mixed up in the greatest sensation the West End of America has known. Aimee was believed to have been ddowned. Crowds oif her followers flung themselves in spiritual agony on the gold sands, and poured out their prayers for her return. Then suddenly the police stopped searching, and Kenneth Ormiston, who had been installed as head of the huge broadcasting station in the Angelus, which enables Aimee to preach to 50,000 people at the same time, came into the limelight.

He had disappeared a day or two before Aimee, and when l he turned up a few days later, was asked bluntly where the two of them had been, He denied everything.

A month later the evangelist was discovered in a hospital at Douglas, Arizona, with a romantic story of having been kidnapped by Mexican bandits.

“An absurd tale to cover a vulgar intrigue,” said the district attorney. “Like another Bunyan, I’ll preach the gospel back Aimee, and such a hold did she have on her converts that money continued to pour into the coffers on her behalf. A few months ago Mrs Maepherson took her daughter to Hongkong, where the latter was born, and Roberta was married in the East.