Faye Dunaway as Aimee Semple McPherson in The Disappearance of Aimee
“I’ll take Jesus for mine! I’ll take Jesus for miiiine! You can have the whole wide world, but I’ll take Jesus for mine!”
Just try to dislodge this song from your overheated brain after watching The Disappearance of Aimee, an oldie but also a so-baddie-it’s-goodie Hallmark TV movie (Thank friend of Filthy Dreams Graham Russell for showing it to me). An impossible feat. And thank god, as it’s perfect for an impromptu rendition at the Christmas dinner table this year! Impress all your relatives with your born-again conversion! And who wouldn’t relent and give themselves over to Christ as this holy repetitive refrain is replayed reverentially, over and over and over again, to maddening effect in this 1976 film, the best when blasted straight from the throat of Faye Dunaway in her transcendent turn as the perpetually white-wearing (like Jesus’s bride), redheaded evangelist pioneer and just-maybe-grifter, Aimee Semple McPherson. Faye’s presence alone should explain what makes this long-forgotten TV movie a camp pleasure. Sprinkle in Bette Davis as her scowling, judgmental mother, Minnie Kennedy, and you’ve got yourself an unmissable camp classic.
Of course, The Disappearance of Aimee isn’t exactly a good movie. But who cares?! The film focuses on the biggest controversy of Aimee’s life, of which there was no shortage: her dubious disappearance and presumed drowning, swimming off the shores of Venice Beach in 1926, and her miraculous reappearance, weaving a wild tale of kidnapping, torture, and escape at the Arizona-Mexican border when she may really have been love-shacking up with Kenneth Ormiston (here played by hunky, cleft-chinned William Jordan), the engineer of her groundbreaking radio show. The film forgoes any glimmer of suspense about Sister Aimee’s whereabouts by opening with the evangelist already back from the dead, preaching to her flock about her and her mother’s upcoming court date, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and criminal conspiracy after wasting the government’s time on this kidnapping saga. What the film loses in mystery, it gains in overblown performances as seen in this initial scene with Aimee raising her arms aloft to scream: “MOTHER AND I WANT TO GO THROUGH IT ALONE AS THE LORD DID ON THE CROSS!” Hallelujah, Aimee, our scammer queen!
Most of this abridged version of Aimee’s saga is told through a staid courtroom drama punctuated with copious flashbacks during witness testimonies, including an extended, seemingly endless, unconvincing hospital bed monologue from Aimee about her kidnapping. Beyond these flashbacks, about half the movie is dedicated to closeups of the many pregnant stares between Aimee and Minnie, Aimee and Kenneth, Captain Cline (John Lehne) and Assistant District Attorney Joseph Ryan (a very young James Woods), etc. So many weighty stare-downs! And while we’re on the subject of complaints, British director Anthony Harvey doesn’t fully comprehend the heightened emotional instability of American evangelism since Aimee’s mega-church flock for the most part politely sit like tight-lipped elderly Anglicans.
Best buds Faye Dunaway and Bette Davis as Aimee Semple McPherson and Minnie Kennedy in The Disappearance of Aimee
Even still, I can forgive all these flaws due to the celestial tension and bursts of hellfire between Dunaway’s Aimee and Davis’s Minnie. Any scene with this deific duo is pure electricity. Take, for instance, the scene upon Aimee’s rapturous return when Minnie sneers a contemptuous finger-wagging, “I’ve been through HELL these past five weeks and it’s YOUR fault…If you think you can strooollll right back into my life as if nothing has happened, think again.” This outburst earns Aimee’s snide response to those who may not believe her, like Mama, “I’ll just have to get along without them.” “Don’t threaten me, MISSY,” Minnie retorts. Much of this acrimony feels real. (For instance, when Aimee says to Mama, “It’s a joy seeing you…but also a strain,” you sense she means it!). And that’s because it was! According to a 1993 interview with Harvey, Davis, “absolutely took a dislike to Faye Dunaway.” Davis admits as much in her memoir This ‘n That, in which she reveals Dunaway would arrive on set hours late, including one memorable tabernacle shoot when Davis burst into What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’s caterwauling “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy” to keep the 1,800 extras from fleeing. This is briefly observable in the TV movie itself as Davis channels atonal Baby Jane Hudson for an instant when Minnie sings a hymn after announcing Aimee’s likely death, only to quickly dial it back to a softer croon. Not that Davis’s Minnie is much less threatening than Baby Jane herself, looming menacingly (and hilariously) behind Ormiston as he whispers sweet nothings into Aimee’s ear on the telephone.“It’s been a long time,” he says, turning around. “Not long ENOUGH,” Minnie sneers.
And, as an extra kitsch bonus, this YouTube rip appears straight from a recorded VHS tape that includes all the original advertisements from a British airing of the film (observable in its Brit-centric commercials for Boots drug store). A perfectly tacky time capsule made even more seasonally appropriate by all the Santa-starring ads–some holiday help for convincing your relatives, including your Minnie-mimicking overbearing Mama, that yes, MOTHER, this IS a Christmas film!
