Terwillinger College and Mizpah Theological Seminary are both fundamentalist institutions. For the most part they are hypocrites, not even believing the doctrines they preach to their congregations every week. But it's Elmer's past, which catches up with him in Zenith, that may be his, and by association Sister Sharon's, downfall. Gantry was in the middle of trying to settle down and marry Sharon when she saw that shooting star at the end, and from that moment, she seemed to feel truly touched by God. WebWhen hedonistic but charming con man Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) meets the beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), a roadside revivalist, he feigns piousness to join Lewiss ingenuity was not exhausted on Elmer. Close Alert. He has an affair with his secretary, who then tries to blackmail him, and only escapes ruin because he has a clever lawyer. She tells Elmer that she has visions; God talks to her. McGarry is accused by the fundamentalists of heresy, and he does not seem to accept the traditional dogmas of the Methodist Church: [T]he only dogma he was known to give out positively was the leadership of Jesusas to whose divinity he was indefinite.. Afterward, he must resign himself to helplessness for the rest of his life. As the years went on, however, compromises were reached, and these can be seen in the career of Elmer, who begins as a fundamentalist and winds up as the pastor of a large, urban church. The ships captain who in the storm took counsel with the orphaned but righteous child of missionaries in Zomballa. cheyenne mountain resort presidential suite; spartanburg county building setbacks But Page plays the small role of choir leader Sister Rachel. Gaining and keeping followers is the key to the success of any religion, and religious leaders must recognize this and figuratively, though sometimes literally, sell the religion. 73738. When a charismatic preacher comes to town for a revival meeting, he seeks out Gantry and tricks him into attending. Disappointingly though, Pengillys arguments do not rise above the commonplace. "Elmer Gantry Jim is the college freethinker and the only person who has any influence on Elmer. Edward J. Piacentino, "Babbittry Southern Style: T. S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral". I am really and truly sanctified! Ed. Yet at the fire, it is Sharon who is heroic. What sort of a man is Jim? The target of his earthly desires is Beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) a sincere, but fallible woman out to build a ministry. PG. McGarry accidentally reveals Shallards doubts to Gantry, so Gantry uses them to defame Shallard as part of a campaign to raise money for a new church building. But in the house of Elmers mistress, Lulu Bains, they sing and read Seeing Nelly Home, Old Black Joe, Beulah Land, Farm and Fireside, and Modern Priscilla. Other Protestant groups also get their share of abuse, as do the Jews and the Catholics. Gantry is bored by school, but Shallard is drawn to a professor who eventually confesses his atheism to Shallard. Reverend Dr. Willoughby Quarles is president of Terwillinger College. Mark Schorer, in his biography of Lewis, records a remark that Lewis made to his friend Richards Brooks in 1946. Elmer Gantry is a fast-talking, hard-drinking traveling salesman who always has a risqu story and a hip flask to entertain cronies and customers alike. Harry Zenz vehemently disagrees with Eddie. WebElmer Gantry was a labor of love for Brooks, who had dreamed of filming Lewis's novel for more than a decade and spent two years writing the script, which won the Oscar for Best Elmers lawyer outwits Hetties lawyer, and she is forced to withdraw the charges she made against him and state that she was part of a plot by the liquor interests to ensnare him. Elmer Gantry may have a rather unsavoury past but the one thing he can do better than anyone is sell himself, pots, pans, anything. After two years as a salesman, Elmer meets Eddie Fislinger at his church in Kansas, and he decides he wants to be a preacher again. He denounces other churches for their laxity in condemning sin. Still the supporting cast is brilliant as well. A modernist movement, led by such preachers as Harry Emerson Fosdick and reinforced by the essays that appeared in The Christian Century, was concerned with making the church more of a live option for the intellectual and the sophisticated city dweller. | Schorer, Mark, Introduction, in Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mark Schorer, Prentice-Hall, 1962, p. 4. Fifty years since I married a preacher! You're all doomed to perdition. Fascinating - 1960's "Elmer Gantry," based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, could be made today with nothing changed and be as powerful - maybe more powerful - than it was in 1960. There are glimmers of this in Sister Sharon Falconer, like when she admits that she knows Gantry is lying but allows him to continue preaching because she believes it is for the greater good. During his Yale career Lewis also traveled widely, including a trip to England working on a cattle boat, and he also lived in the Utopian colony at Englewood, New Jersey, which was founded by the novelist Upton Sinclair. It is clear that the revivals rely on the approval and demand of the public and that the revivals certainly could not survive without the support of a large number of congregants; however, there are several points in the film in which it appears the congregants are being taken advantage of by town and religious leaders. Complex, Fascinating, Relevant; A Must See, A Much Better Than Average Literary Adaption, A thought-provoking look at revivalist religion in which includes the magnetic presence of Burt Lancaster. The last date is today's We're confident we succeeded and have no doubt you'll agree. Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. Elmer forces him to resign by questioning his religious beliefs, after which Shallard gets a job with the Charity Organization Society. However as the pressure builds to tear him down, can Gantry prevent his past from returning to haunt him? Lewis is like a ruthless hunter who spares nothing and still has ammunition left at the end of the day. He will begin as a preacher in a small town, will enliven it and lift it. Elmer loathes him but Frank Shallard regards him as a friend. Elmer Gantry subtitles. date the date you are citing the material. This is a film that has outlasted its time. The fundamentalists believe that if even one thing in the Bible is questioned it is only a matter of time before faith is undermined completely. After two years as a traveling salesman, Gantry attends a revival meeting and is immediately bewitched by the evangelist Sharon Falconer. Cecil Aylston is Sharon Falconers assistant. Form in the novel, he contends, requires that there be an opposition between the individual and society; yet in this book there are no impediments to Elmers barbarous rise from country boob to influential preacher. Elmer Gantry is a loosely episodic chronicle, he continues, which suggests at once that there will be no sustained pressure of plot, no primary conflict about which all the action is organized and in which value will achieve a complex definition. At each of the three climaxes in the book, Lewis retreates into melodrama. WebHollywood legend Burt Lancaster nabbed a Best Actor Oscar as glad-handing, soul-redeeming charlatan Elmer Gantry, a huckster who spins his talent for preaching into a mtier behind the pulpit. In many ways, of course, Elmer is the worst of them all. During this period, traditional religious believers were deeply disturbed by the encroachments made on faith by science and secularism. No! I think she does a brilliant job but I wished that she had more speaking moments. Gantry introduces savvy business practices to Sharons ministry and manipulative psychology to the services themselves, and Sharon becomes wealthy as a result. Grebstein, Sheldon Norman, Sinclair Lewis, Twayne United States Authors Series, No. Lloyd Naylor, who is in love with Lulu, complains to Lulus father about Elmers amorous conduct towards her. The consulting analyst's duties generally include planning studies and analyses of the business problems or issues, the consultants have been asked to help resolve. Its a movie about driving passions so hot and strongfor a sale, for salvationthey burn a person up. Thats Elmer Gantry. Published in 1922 Elizabeth S. Prioleau, "The Minister and the Seductress in American Fiction: The Adamic Myth Reduz". As the film progresses, we learned of Elmer Gantry's past especially his own previous desire to be a minister/preacher. Now dont you go explaining! The film's slant may be predictable, and it also suffers from some common flaws of its era (an ugly, intrusive Andre Previn score, and occasionally wooden acting); but it's hugely entertaining nonetheless. In a scene where Gantry and Falconer are hoping to get funding to set up their revival in the city of Zenith, lack of attendance is straightforwardly given as the reason for seeking out the revival. Part of a tipper lorry became wedged underneath a gantry in a crash on the M5 on Thursday, 2 March. Floyd Naylor is a large and rather stupid farmer in Schoenheim who is in love with Lulu Bains, whom he eventually marries. As Elmer (Burt Lancaster) is a saleman with a powerfully persusive tongue who joins up Sister Sharon Falconer (glamorous Jean Simmons) along with her colleagues , Sister Rachel (Patti Page) , William L. Morgan (Dean Jagger) touring grass-roots evengelist circus during the depressed twenties . J. E. North is the executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (Napap). Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on Elmer Gantry, in Novels for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006. ( Elmer Gantry stirs soul, provokes thought was the headline in that mornings Tennessean.) Jim doubts the literal truth of the Bible and has contempt for the church. That night she seduces him. He thinks they might, for all he knows, be true, and that is enough for him. Salesman Elmer Gantry, salesman teams up with evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer to sell religion to 1920s America. The impact of religion on Elmer Gantry symbolizes what it has done to the American spirit. He hires a new secretary, Hettie Dowler, who replaces Lulu as his mistress. But the arts and the sentiments and the sentimentalitiesthey were for Elmer perpetually associated only with the church. I can kiss you like this Quickly she touches his cheek, Yes, or passionately, terribly passionately, and it would only symbolize my complete union with Jesus! Source: James Lundquist, Moralities for a New Time, in Sinclair Lewis, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1973, pp. He long ago lost his faith in the literal truth of the Bible and has become an atheist. | He wears fine clothes, yet he rides the railways like a vagabond. Web1. For some reason Richard Brooks seemed to think of himself as the man best suited to turning great novels and plays into films, but if the results were at best entertaining ("The Brothers Karamazov", "Cat on a hot tin roof") they tended to fall far short of the originals. She teaches classes in Concentration, Prosperity, Love, Metaphysics and Oriental Mysticism, and invites Elmer to join her. He is influenced by the atheistic Dr. Zechlin who lends him theological works by liberals and skeptics. Dinner at the Governors Ball with Eddie Fisher. Lulu later meets Elmer again many years later in Zenith, where they resume their clandestine affair. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. It tells of people in troubled times trying to sort out life's essential challenges. The Lancastic! The novel is absorbing, and I should like to say a few words about it. It is the call! He follows her to her bedroom where he sees a couch high on carven ivory posts, covered with a mandarin coat; unlighted brass lamps in the likeness of mosques and pagodas; gilt papier-mch armor on the walls; a wide dressing-table with a score of cosmetics in odd Parisian bottles; tall candlesticks, the twisted and flowered candles lighted; and over everything a hint of incense. She gives him a robe for the service of the altar. After a brief interlude with Mrs. Evans Riddles New Thought movement, and teaching Prosperity classes on his own, Elmer joins the Methodist Church. Evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort". Like everything else in the Lone Star State, our dreams were big from the start. Be the first to contribute. Elmer himself had owned two volumes of Conan Doyle, one of E. P. Roe, and a priceless copy of Only a Boy. His literary inspirations were McGuffeys Readers, Nick Carter, Bible stories, and such stock characters as Little Lame Tom who shamed the wicked rich man that owned the handsome team of grays and the pot hat and led him to Jesus. He starts to teach Prosperity classes on his own but cannot make a living from them. Elmer Gantry is a film that exposes hypocrisy and greed among religious leaders who seek to exploit gullible citizens looking for something in which to believe. As in Babbitt and Arrowsmith, we are made aware that there are sinister forces combining to strike at the very foundations of American liberties. Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. The movie is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Minnesotas own Nobel Prizewinning author, Sinclair Lewis. One should imagine instead, I think, that she might have the same great-grandaddy as President Lyndon Baines Johnson: Baptist preacher George Baines. Then she performed a miracle cure and West, Rebecca, Review of Elmer Gantry, in Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mark Schorer, Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp. It is a fairly narrow assault, since Lewiss targets are confined to Protestant churches and revival campaigns, but within that range, Lewiss fire is deadly and continuous.