[Healer] 24 Film Negatives of John Cudney AKA Brother Isaiah the Miracle Man

Item Details

Film Negatives. Set of 24 film negatives 4 1/8 x 3 1/8 inches. All in fine condition. 24 photo negatives of John Cudney or Brother Isaiah, The Miracle Man and self-proclaimed 88th incarnate of the Prophet Isaiah. 

John Cudney (1847-1934) was a British Canadian-born Christian revivalist and faith healer active in New Orleans and Los Angeles in the 1920s, and founder of religious colonies near Fort Myers, Florida and Oroville, California. He was known as a faith healer and evangelist and dressed in a white suit or white robe with long flowing white hair and a long white beard. Like many healers he had huge followings, yet controversy dogged him, including an acquittal on manslaughter charges in California in 1921. 

From Melissa Polizzi regarding The Miracle Man's time in New Orleans, "Brother Isaiah's healing became so popular that thousands of people would wait in line to be cured. So many people were going to the miracle man that the city had to add an extra streetcar line in the direction of his houseboat. Concession stands began to pop up on the levee for the huge crowds, and local charities, like the Red Cross, started to hand out blankets and hot soup during the cold days." 

Our set of photographs are most likely from his time spent in California, 1921-1923 and 1929- 1934. He drew huge crowds of people looking to be healed in Lincoln Park, near Los Angeles in 1923, near his "Miracle Hill Commune. " He founded the Colony of the Saints near Oroville, California in 1929. Among the 24 views we find Brother Isaiah posing within a garden area and also inside a home, dressed in a floor length white garment holding a bible. Additional views are aeronautically themed showing Cudney, in a dark three-piece suit, in front of a Maddux Airlines Plane (southern California based airline), several posing near a Ford Tri-motor airplane, plus an additional view with what is likely a Continental Airlines Plane, this time in a tan suit. 

More enticing are the views with German pilots of the Graf Zeppelin during a world tour in 1929. The Graf Zeppelin landed at Mines Field (later Los Angeles International Airport) in Los Angeles California in August 1929. In one photo he is seen wearing a large Graf Zeppelin Service Badge on his pure white suit and ten-gallon hat. The aeronautical theme is not surprising. In the late nineteenth century Isaiah prophesied that "Man will find himself wings." A collection of sermons and testimonials by and about Brother Isaiah was published in Los Angeles in 1932 titled "The City of New Jerusalem."

We have digitally converted film negatives into positive images. You will receive the film negatives plus 10 positive photos on proof sheets.