Tammy Faye Messner, 'First Lady Of Televangelism,' Dies At 65

By DENNIS McLELLAN Los Angeles Times

Published: Jul 22, 2007

Tammy Faye Messner, the mascara-laden former wife of televangelist Jim Bakker, the charismatic TV preacher with the choirboy face with whom she appeared on their popular Christian talk-variety show until his downfall amid scandal in the late 1980s, has died. She was 65.

Messner, who underwent surgery for colon cancer in 1996 and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004, died Friday, CNN talk-show host Larry King told the network Saturday night.

In a letter posted on her Web site in May, Messner said doctors had stopped treating her cancer and that her weight had dropped to 65 pounds. "Now," she wrote, "it's up to God and my faith."

She revealed that she had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer during a March 2004 appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live." That Messner would publicly announce her diagnosis on King's talk show underscored her status as a faded-yet-enduring pop-culture icon.

"During radiation," she said at the time, "I did not lose my hair, but I lost my eye lashes. Which is the funniest thing in the world to me, because it's my trademark."

As Tammy Faye Bakker in the 1970s and '80s, she was known as "the first lady of televangelism," a high-profile pioneer of the "electronic church."

With her red hair and heavily made-up eyes, and as prone to giggling as she was to crying mascara-stained tears on camera, Tammy Faye Bakker proved to be irresistible fodder for late-night comedians.

"She was the most laughed-at woman in the Western world," Fenton Bailey, co-director of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," a largely sympathetic documentary of Messner's life, told the Los Angeles Times in 2000.

"I don't know of any woman in our time who has been so ridiculed, put down, maligned," singer Pat Boone said in the 2000 film. "Really, I equate her with Hillary Clinton, because these two women have both suffered tremendously by the things that their husbands may have done, and yet she just keeps going."

During the heyday of the Bakkers' television ministry, "The Jim and Tammy Show" reportedly was carried on more than 1,400 stations and their PTL ministry took in millions of dollars a month.

The centerpiece of their evangelical empire - Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre Christian theme park, resort and ministry headquarters in Fort Mill, S.C. - reportedly attracted 6 million visitors in 1986. Those who stayed at what was often described as "a Christian Disneyland" could buy eight different Tammy Faye record albums, not to mention items from the Tammy Faye line of cosmetics and pantyhose.

PTL stood for "Praise the Lord" and "People That Love," but critics insisted it stood for "Pass the Loot" and "Pay the Lady."

The downfall of Jim Bakker began in 1987 with the revelation that he had had a one-time sexual encounter with a former church secretary from New York, Jessica Hahn, in a Florida motel room in 1980 - and that $265,000 in ministry money was later used to keep Hahn quiet.

In March 1987, the scandalized Jim Bakker resigned as president of the PTL ministry and turned it over to the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

In 1988, Bakker and former top PTL associate Richard Dortch were indicted on federal charges of fraud and conspiracy.

Tammy Faye, who was treated for prescription drug dependency at the Betty Ford Center in Palm Desert, Calif., in 1987, was not named as a defendant in the indictment. She publicly defended her husband, who pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, and she complained that the media vilified both her and her husband unfairly.

In 1989, Jim Bakker was convicted on all 24 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy. He ultimately served about 4 1/2 years of an eight-year sentence and was released from prison in 1994. The Bakkers had divorced two years earlier, after three decades of marriage and two children, Tammy Sue and Jamie.