Overview
- Gortner died on Friday, Oct. 2, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of congestive heart failure, his wife Susan Magestro told Variety.
- He rose to fame as a child evangelist who was marketed by his family and later agreed to be filmed on a final revival tour for the 1971 documentary Marjoe, which won the Academy Award for best documentary.
- As a young adult he left revivalism for acting in New York and built a steady screen career with notable roles such as Sgt. Jody Joad in the 1974 film Earthquake and a recurring part on the TV series Falcon Crest.
- In later years he produced the Marjoe Gortner celebrity sports invitationals that aired on CBS, which contemporaries like Ian Ziering say raised millions of dollars for charity.
- His story has been framed by reporting of early family exploitation — including reports that his father fled with roughly $3 million in donations — and by the documentary’s long cultural afterlife, which included strong festival notice and years in which the film was hard to access before its rights were reclaimed.