In May 1926 a famous woman vanished while swimming off Santa Monica, only to stumble out of the Mexican desert weeks later with a wild kidnapping story. She was not a movie star but Aimee Semple McPherson, a preacher whose celebrity in the 1920s rivaled Charles Lindbergh and Charlie Chaplin. This episode traces how she blended old-time religion with Hollywood spectacle and helped invent modern media culture.

From a religious Ontario childhood through a Pentecostal mission and personal tragedy, she rose to build Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, pioneer radio preaching, and stage elaborate theatrical sermons. Her kidnapping scandal, media makeover, and later shifts on race and war reveal a life of striking paradox and enduring cultural influence.

• She raised 250,000 dollars in grassroots donations to build a 5,000-plus seat debt-free megachurch and launched her own station, KFSG
• Her healing rallies drew crowds so large that the military was called for crowd control, and an AMA investigation found no evidence of staging
• Her charity network is estimated to have fed 1.5 million people during the Great Depression, aiding migrants without moral tests
• Charges of conspiracy and perjury from the desert scandal were dropped by January 1927 as witnesses changed testimony
• She died in 1944 at age 53 from an accidental overdose of secobarbital, leaving a personal estate of only about 10,000 dollars