Tony Alamo

About Tony Alamo

Tony Alamo (born Bernie LaZar Hoffman, September 20, 1934 in Joplin, Missouri) is an American preacher, singer, entrepreneur, and religious evangelist. He and his then-wife Susan are best known as the founders of a radical fundamentalist organization currently known as Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. The organization is based in and around Fouke and Alma, Arkansas, United States, and has been referred to as a cult.

Hoffman was born in Missouri to Jewish-Romanian parents in 1934. As a child he moved with his family to Montana, where he was briefly employed as a delivery boy for Helena's Independent Record newspaper.

In the early 1960s, Hoffman moved to Los Angeles, California. He assumed the names Marcus Abad and Mark Hoffman and pursued a career in music. He was briefly incarcerated for a weapon-related offense. Hoffman married Helen Hagan (Born Helen Alice Muller in New York, New York) in 1961. On May 25, 1964, the couple had a son, Mark Anthony Hoffman. While married to Helen, he met aspiring actress Susan Lipowitz (born Edith Opal Horn in Dyer, Arkansas), a Jewish convert to evangelical Christianity who was nine years older than Hoffman and married to a man whom Hoffman would later describe as a "small time Los Angeles hood". After both Hoffman's and Lipowitz' divorces, Lipowitz and Hoffman married in a 1966 Las Vegas, Nevada ceremony, and the couple legally changed their names to Tony and Susan Alamo.