So Who Was The Real Tammy Faye Underneath All The Makeup?
John Wigger, University of Missouri-Columbia
What is it about televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker that continues to fascinate nearly 35 years after the fall of their evangelical empire?
Jim Bakker still makes headlines selling survival food and miracle cures from his television compound near Branson, Missouri. While Tammy Faye died in 2007, a new biopic about her, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” stars Jessica Chastain as Tammy.
Jim and Tammy rose to fame in the 1970s and 1980s as the married hosts of a Christian television talk show called “The PTL Club.” The show was broadcast live, with a studio audience, five days a week, with little scripting. It was reality television before there was a name for it, and the show, at its peak, was beamed via satellite into 14 million American homes.
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