Preacher Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944)

Many’s the time I drove past the Angelus Temple on Glendale Boulevard and wondered about its founder, the late Aimee Semple McPherson. She regularly packed the five thousand seats of the temple with her fiery preaching. Then, suddenly, in 1926, she was reported missing after swimming in the Pacific at Venice Beach. Feared drowned, she was reported quite alive in Douglas, Arizona a month later under highly suspicious circumstances.

You can read the story of her re-emergence in this article from Arizona Highways magazine.

Whatever the reason for her disappearing act, she is one of the reasons that Southern California got such a squirrely reputation in the 1920s. That and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust and Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One. I always wanted to read a biography of Aimee, but never got around to it. Maybe next Thursday, when I go to the Central Library for one of my Mindful Meditation sessions. (Wait! Does that make me sound like a squirrely Southern Californian?)

McPherson’s Angelus Temple in Echo Park

The Angelus Temple built for McPherson’s International Church of the Foursquare Gospel is situated just north of Echo Park Lake, which was the shooting location for a number of Laurel & Hardy two-reelers, most notably “Men O’War” (1929).

Within a few hundred feet is my favorite French restaurant in Los Angeles: Taix, pronounced “Tex.” It was founded in 1927, during Aimee’s “second act,” and is due to close forever on March 29 of this year.