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Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner (born January 14, 1944 (1944-01-14) (age 67) in Long Beach, California), is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four. He then gained outright notoriety in the 1970s when he starred in Marjoe, an Oscar-winning, behind-the-scenes documentary about the lucrative business of Pentecostal preaching. The name "Marjoe" is a portmanteau of the names "Mary" and "Joseph". When Gortner was three his father, Vernon, a third generation minister,... MORE

Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner (born January 14, 1944 (1944-01-14) (age 67) in Long Beach, California), is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four. He then gained outright notoriety in the 1970s when he starred in Marjoe, an Oscar-winning, behind-the-scenes documentary about the lucrative business of Pentecostal preaching. The name "Marjoe" is a portmanteau of the names "Mary" and "Joseph". When Gortner was three his father, Vernon, a third generation minister, noticed his son's talent for mimicry and overall fearlessness of strangers and public settings. His parents claimed he had received a vision from God during a bath, but this was later conceded by Marjoe to be a lie his parents forced him to repeat. He claimed they enforced this by mock-drowning him because they could not beat him which would leave bruises which might be noticed during his many public appearances. They began training him to deliver sermons, complete with dramatic gestures and emphatic lunges. By the time he was four his parents arranged for him to perform a marriage ceremony for a film LESS