Marjoe Gortner, the actor and former child revival preacher who exposed the revival business in the Oscar-winning documentary “Marjoe,” was 82 when he died on Oct. 2, 2026, in Santa Fe, N.M.
Heart complications caused the death, his family said in announcing it. For years he had been living with congestive heart failure, according to his wife, Susan Magestro.
In a memorial notice she gave to Variety, dated Sunday, Oct. 4, Magestro said: “Marjoe lived an extraordinary life, shaped by his imagination and rare gift for bringing people together.”
Sarah Kernochan, co-director and co-producer of the 1972 documentary “Marjoe,” announced his death in a Facebook post Saturday, Oct. 3.
Gortner is survived by Magestro, whom he married in 2019. He was married five times, including to Candy Clark, his “Red Ryder” co-star, whom he divorced in 1979.
A Child on the Circuit
A family of evangelical preachers and grifters received him on Jan. 14, 1944, in Long Beach, Calif., where he was born Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner. His name was a portmanteau of Mary and Joseph.
His parents noticed how fluently he could hold a room and had him ordained at four. In 1949 he performed a marriage ceremony for a Paramount newsreel, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not billed him as the world’s youngest minister. On the Pentecostal revival circuit he was known simply as Marjoe.
His parents, he later charged, had forced him to deliver sermons stuffed with invented visions and miracles, and had done so on fear of death. The family, by his own estimate, had taken in more than $3 million through him by 16. He said his father, the preacher Vernon Gortner, later stole that fortune.
Accounts of how early he started differ. In the documentary, he said he began preaching at three and a half years old, while the longstanding account of his childhood says he was ordained at four. He also said in the film: “I can’t really think of a time that I ever believed in God or in you know, ever thought that was a miracle of God that I preached.”
An Oscar for “Marjoe”
The grifting life he privately renounced in his late teens pulled him back in his 20s, when he drifted into evangelism again. Disillusionment with the movement followed, and an aspiring actor arrived in New York.
Documentarians Howard Smith and Kernochan accepted his 1971 invitation to follow what he said would be his final revival tour. He made that decision partly to publicize the acting career he was chasing.
“Marjoe” traced his childhood as a Pentecostal preacher in the American South and laid bare techniques used to bilk believers out of their money. The Academy Award for best documentary feature went to the film.
Describing crowds who were certain God had called him, Gortner said in the documentary: “I just knew that I could do it well and my parents had trained me.”
Vincent Canby, the New York Times critic, read the film as something closer to an extended audition, and Gortner used it that way. The documentary was long considered lost until its negative was found in a New York vault in 2002.
Disaster Movies and TV Villains
Gortner released a record, “Bad, but Not Evil,” in 1972 and guested on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” “The Mike Douglas Show” and “The Merv Griffin Show.” In 1973 he took an acting job in the TV movie “The Marcus-Nelson Murders,” the pilot for “Kojak.”
His breakthrough came the following year in director Mark Robson’s disaster epic “Earthquake.” The role was Sgt. Jody Joad, a grocery store manager turned National Guardsman who stalks a woman played by actress Victoria Principal. “Earthquake” was the first film to use Sensurround, the system that set cinema seats shaking, and a box office hit despite dismal reviews.
Crazed drug dealers, outlaws, fake psychics and preachers across 15 feature films and more than 20 TV series made up the career Gortner built — charismatic, handsome and topped with a mop of curly dark-blond hair. His films included “Food of the Gods,” “Acapulco Gold,” “Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw,” “Viva Knievel!,” “Starcrash” and “The Survivalist.”
In 1979 he starred in the film adaptation of playwright Mark Medoff’s “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” Milton Katselas directed, and the part was a troubled Vietnam veteran who terrorizes a diner full of strangers.
Television took him next: he appeared in “Medical Center,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Police Story,” “Airwolf,” “T.J. Hooker,” “Street Hawk,” “Otherworld,” “The A-Team” and “Fantasy Island,” and in the TV movies “Pray for the Wildcats” and “The Gun and the Pulpit.” Jayne Kennedy and Rhonda Bates joined him in 1980 on the topical talk show “Speak Up America,” which he briefly hosted. The corrupt psychic Vince Karlotti, whom he played in 17 episodes of “Falcon Crest” in 1986-87, was his most pointed casting.
His final film role was in 1999’s “The Debtors.” He was sometimes a guest at autograph shows.
Charity Work and Tributes
The Marjoe Gortner celebrity sports invitationals, which he produced, aired on CBS Saturdays for years and raised millions of dollars for charity. Actor Ian Ziering credited him with shepherding celebrities around the world for those events and with raising enormous sums for a range of causes.
Principal remembered him in a Facebook post: “He was complicated, generous & kind.”
In her Facebook tribute, Principal also wrote, “We met in 1973 while we were making Earthquake,” and, in a separate passage, “It’s because of Marjoe that I discovered the freedom of moving out of Hollywood to Malibu. I hope he is at peace now.”
