‘Billy: The Early Years’ DVD due out next month

February 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

The Billy Graham biopic that divided the Charlotte-born evangelist’s grown children will come out on DVD on March 16.

“Billy: The Early Years,” filmed in Tennessee and released in theaters in 2008, chronicles his formative years. It’s a period that starts with a 1934 revival in Charlotte featuring fire-and-brimstone preacher Mordecai Ham that Graham said changed his life and ends with the 1949 crusade in Los Angeles that landed the young Graham on magazine covers.

Graham’s son, Franklin, who heads the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, gave the movie a thumbs-down. In a statement before it came out, he said the movie included a few scenes that never happened and called others “greatly embellished.” He also made it clear on the BGEA’s Web site that the ministry founded by his father had not authorized the movie.

But Graham’s oldest daughter, Gigi Graham, was hired as a consultant by the filmmakers and arranged for one of its producers, Larry Mortorff, to meet with the now-elderly Billy Graham at his Montreat home in 2008.

“Franklin called me and said he thought the movie was dorky. But I think it’s good and positive, and I think it honors the Lord and my mother and daddy,” Gigi Graham told Christianity Today. “I don’t know why Franklin felt like he had to make a public statement. I wish he’d just left it alone.”

The 96-minute film, rated PG, stars Armie Hammer as the young Billy Graham and Stephanie Butler as wife Ruth Graham. The cast includes a few famous names: Lindsay Wagner as Graham’s mother, Oscar-winner Martin Landau as a dying man who was Graham’s friend when they were young, and Jennifer O’Neill as a reporter.

The movie did poor business during its brief run in theaters, but its producers have hopes that churches and fans of Graham’s preaching will want a copy. Among the DVD extras: a behind-the-scenes documentary and what a press release calls “an exclusive 2009 sermon recorded by Billy Graham.”

Suggested retail price is $29.99.