Aimee Semple McPherson

Aimee Semple McPherson , 1890-1944, U.S. evangelist, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and, in the 1920s and 30s, one of the most famous women in America, b. near Ingersoll, Ont. Born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy, she was converted to Pentecostalism as a young girl and married a preacher, Robert Semple. The couple went as missionaries to China, and when he died a year later, she returned to the United States. Not long afterward she married Harold McPherson, but she left him in 1915 to take up a life of itinerant preaching, holding revival meetings along the Atlantic coast. With her mother, Minnie Kennedy, as business manager, she went to Los Angeles in 1918. There she became phenomenally successful and was noted for her healing sessions. In 1923, she opened Angelus Temple in Los Angeles and began to preach the foursquare gospel (see Foursquare Gospel, International Church of the ) at the temple, in an evangelical newspaper, and on her own radio station. Her disappearance in May, 1926, while swimming in the Pacific, and then reappearance in June with a bizarre tale of kidnapping caused a huge uproar that resulted in a trial for fraud. Although she was acquitted, her business activities as head of Angelus Temple resulted in numerous other legal actions. She died as a result of an allegedly accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

Bibliography: See biographies by R. Bahr (1979, repr. 2001), E. L. Blumhofer (1993), D. M. Epstein (1993), and M. A. Sutton (2007).

McPherson, Aimee Semple (1890–1944), evangelist and founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.Aimee Kennedy was born in Canada near the southern Ontario village of Salford, where her early religious impressions were shaped by her father's Methodism and her mother's enthusiasm for the Salvation Army. In 1908, Aimee embraced Pentecostalism and married Robert Semple, the evangelist who converted her. They sailed as missionaries to Hong Kong in 1910. Six weeks later, Robert died of malaria and other complications. Married again in 1912 to Harold McPherson, a bookkeeper, Aimee could not settle into a housewife's routine. In 1915, Living in Providence, Rhode Island, she left Harold and dedicated her life to Robert Semple's work of evangelism. The couple divorced in 1921.

Aimee enjoyed instant success as an evangelist. In 1917, she began publishing The Bridal Call, a monthly magazine that helped her build an international network. Late in 1918, she moved to Los Angeles where she opened the 5,300–seat Angelus Temple and a Bible school in 1923 and her own radio station in 1924. Her charismatic sermons, often illustrated with visual props, attracted thousands. Fame turned to notoriety in 1926 when McPherson disappeared for six weeks. The district attorney's office sought to disprove her widely doubted claim that she had been kidnapped, but eventually dropped all charges. Rumors persisted that she had spent the time with a male staff member of Angelus Temple. Her third marriage, in 1931, ended in divorce two years later. Ill health curtailed McPherson's activities thereafter, but her son Rolf McPherson carried on her ministry with considerable success.
See also Protestantism; Religion; Revivalism; Sunday, Billy; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Edith L. Blumhofer , Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister, 1993.
Daniel Epstein , Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson, 1993.

Edith L. Blumhofer

Hecht, Ben (1894–1964), playwright. Born in New York and raised in Wisconsin, Hecht made unsuccessful attempts at becoming an acrobat and a violinist before finding a niche as a flamboyant Chicago newspaperman. Besides his newspaper writing, novels, and other literary works, he wrote numerous plays, most memorably with Charles MacARTHUR (1895–1956), a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of a clergyman and a respected, if antic, figure in Chicago journalism, working for the Hearst papers. Broadway first knew MacArthur when he collaborated with Edward Sheldon on Lulu Belle (1926), followed by a thinly veiled exposé of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson called Salvation (1928), written with Sidney Howard. That same year, he teamed up with Hecht to write a marvelous comedy about the jungle‐like world of reporting, The Front Page. The twosome also wrote the show business comedy Twentieth Century (1932), the book for the musical Jumbo (1935), Ladies and Gentlemen (1939), and Swan Song (1946). On his own MacArthur wrote a failed political satire, Johnny on a Spot (1942), while Hecht wrote or co‐wrote The Egotist (1922), The Stork (1925), The Great Magoo (1932), To Quito and Back (1937), A Flag Is Born (1946), and the libretto for Hazel Flagg (1953). Autobiography (Hecht): A Child of the Century, 1954. Biography: Charlie: The Improbable Life and Times of Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, 1957.