The documentary went on to capture a Golden Globe Nomination and win the 1972 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature for its co-producers and co-directors Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan.

The film traces the life and career of the then-27-year-old Marjoe Gortner, featured at one time in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” and “Life Magazine” as “The World’s Youngest Evangelist.”  A fourth-generation born-again evangelist, Marjoe --- his name a combination of “Mary” and “Joseph” --- was a high-stepping, hallelujah-hollering preacher in an era just prior to the arrival of America’s televangelists:  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart et al.

His days were spent at the merciless tutelage of his mother, who sewed extra pockets into his Lord Fauntleroy suits for offerings and punished him for lapses in memory or recitation by smothering him with a pillow or holding him under a running faucet, “so it wouldn’t mark me.”  The training paid off.  Little Marjoe once on stage preached seemingly miraculous amounts of gospel from memory, performed faith-healings, officiated at the age of five at his first wedding ceremony and drew capacity crowds during barnstorming revival meetings in places as diverse as New York and Fort Worth, Detroit and Anaheim.  At the age of 14 he quit the revival circuit, No longer able to be billed as a miracle child because of his age, he was also sickened by the hypocrisy of it all, including the corrupt behavior of his fellow evangelists.

In his twenties, he returned to the holy roller circuit of his own accord, as a self-confessed “religion addict” – and for the money.  To the Pentacostal congregations, he seemed just as filled with rapturous religious ardor and over-the-top Lord-praising energy as he’d ever been, but now he’d added a Mick-Jagger-Jumpin’-Jack-Flash preaching prance. His ability to enthrall, energize, hypnotize and seduce his audiences away from their money reached new heights.

A fully cooperative participant in the making of the documentary “Marjoe,” Gortner himself served as the primary vehicle through which Smith and Kernochan’s film exposed the hypocrisy, greed and gimmicks of his preaching-for-profit fellow revivalists.  “I don’t have any power,” he is quoted as saying.  “And neither do any of these other guys.”

His own indictment of the “religion business” arena in which he succeeded so spectacularly:  “When I was traveling (as a minister), I’d see someone who wanted to get saved in one of my meetings, and he was so open and bubbly in his desire to get the Holy Ghost.  It was wonderful and very fresh, but four years later I’d return and that person might be a hard-nosed intolerant Christian because he had Christ.  That’s when the danger comes in.  People want an experience.  They want to feel good, and their lives can be helped by it.  But then as you start moving into the operation of the thing, you get into controlling people and power and money.”

Yet, as Judith Crist pointed out in reviewing “Marjoe” for “New York Magazine” (1972), “Nor for a moment, in his preaching, is there the mark of the phony on Marjoe.  Perhaps more important, as we see him working his magic on a black congregation in Detroit or a white meeting in Anaheim, California, there is never a sign of scorn for the people, only for their exploiters, on the part of either Marjoe or the filmmakers.”

Amazing Grace?  Once lost, now found --- The film print’s 30-year disappearance

Originally released through Donald S. Rugoff’s Cinema 5 Distributing company, the original print negative and all original elements for “Marjoe” had been lost since the 70’s.  A single beat up 16mm release print was all that remained.  The print stored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was fast degrading.  Any prospect of salvaging something of quality seemed dim at best.

While co-director Kernochan was finishing up post-production work at DuArt Labs on her film “Thoth,” winner of 2001’s Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar®, someone mentioned  that they were in the process of cleaning out the DuArt vaults.

“I remembered that DuArt had done the original release prints,” recalls Kernochan.  “With no real hope that they’d have kept a print for nearly thirty years, I asked if they had anything at all labeled ‘Marjoe.’  Not only did they have a print, they had everything!  Original negative, a blow-up, trailers, outtakes, tracks… you name it!”

Kernochan immediately set about acquiring all rights so that the Academy could restore the film from the original print, and theatre audiences could again see “Marjoe” in its pristine form.