Elmer Gantry begins in 1902. He sees her as a conquest. She is a widow who owns a millinery and dressmaking shop. Mark Schorer, in his biography of Lewis, records a remark that Lewis made to his friend Richards Brooks in 1946. Judson Roberts, the enthusiastic, apparently confident evangelist who converts Elmer, admits to himself that his preaching is dishonest. Or maybe as something more. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Tries to give the kid a break. Four men and two women crawled about a pillar, barking like dogs, barking the devil out of the tree.. This was not the last of McPhersons affairs; one of her lovers described the homemade altar in her apartment, in front of which they would make lovewhich is strikingly similar to the scene in Chapter 12 of Elmer Gantry, in which Elmer and Sharon also make love before an altar in her house in Virginia. Every decision Elmer makes thereafter is one of compromise. At a revival meeting he does not like to include all the preachers in town. He is an opportunist, a rogue, a charlatan. Weave will make its debut on Jan. 12 at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts, a co-commissioner in [], It was kind of a whimsical artistic impulse, recalled Antonio Duke, as he reminisced on this past spring when Ashawnti Sakina Ford drove him home each night after their rehearsals for a production of Imaginary Invalid, a play by 17th-century French actor and playwright, Molire. Earthy and real, she and Elmer both sing the hymn Im on My Way, a sort of religious counterpart to I Did It My Way. Elmer romances her only as a way to Sharon, but Rachel is the woman Elmer should have gone with. This abridged version of Sinclair Lewiss novel of the same name focuses on Elmer Gantry, a con man expelled from seminary school, and Sister Sharon Falconer, a character loosely based on evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. WebA second-division British psychedelic band with a tangled history, Elmer Gantry & the Velvet Opera recorded a couple of albums in the Pink Floyd/Soft Machine/Tomorrow/Nice mold in the late '60s without coming close to establishing a solid identity of their own. The title character of Elmer Gantry starts Eddie Fislinger is a student at Terwillinger College and the president of the Y.M.C.A. An example is the bizarre marriage ceremony which takes place between Elmer and evangelist Sharon Falconer before her grotesque shrine. 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. Despite their reservations about the dignity of revival-style preaching, many of the pastors agree that it would be best for their congregations to get excited about Christianity again in hopes that this would subsequently bolster attendance. It is easy to see why Burt Lancaster won an oscar for his excellent portrayal of Elmer Gantry. On the trip to his new church, he gets drunk and carouses with women; he is discovered and is dismissed from the seminary. Using his sales techniques, especially on one of Sister Sharon's underlings, the nave Sister Rachel, Elmer is able infiltrate her entourage. User Ratings To his understanding of Lewiss art, Jones seems to add firsthand knowledge about wartime religious revivals. Elmer Gantry subtitles. William Donninger Styles is a rich businessman in Zenith. But he is caught stealing from the collection and is fired. Real name: David Terry. Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. If a satirist depicts the object of his satire as based on humbug, advocated by humbug, and defended by humbug, he must employ a great deal of wit and fantasy to prevent his attack from seeming cross-grained and peevish. Elmer Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. Initially, he is an enemy of Elmer and tries to prevent him from becoming president of the student body for the second time. In a sense it is more centrally concerned because the pull between the old American and the new American was so apparent in the religious controversies of the time. After this catastrophe, he briefly acts as a "New Thought" evangelist, and eventually becomes a Methodist minister. Elmer Gantry was raised by his mother, a staunch Baptist, in the small town of Paris, Kansas. Eddie spreads the word that Elmer, who has never shown any zeal for religion, has been converted. Amoral and relentlessly ambitious, Elmer builds a statewide and national reputation as a fiery preacher who never tires of denouncing vice, while at the same time feeling no need to curb his own vices, particularly adultery. 3360. Within the Protestant church, a battle rages between the traditionalists, or fundamentalists, who believe in the literal truth of the Bible, and the liberals, who believe that some parts of the Bible may be understood in a symbolic sense. He joins the staff of a metaphysical cult but is fired when he is caught stealing from the collection plate. For the most part, he does not create complex human portraits but caricatures. Thanks to Stacia Kissick Jones and her movie review blog She Blogged By Night for the above, noted here: http://shebloggedbynight.com/2012/the-laughing-devil-in-his-sneer-brother-loves-travelling-salvation-show. And even if you saw the big sign outside, you probably wouldn't know that this is specifically an Ethiopian restaurant, and a very good one. Consider the character of Jim Lefferts, as revealed in the first three chapters. 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. Another minor character who serves as one small brick in the vast anti-clerical edifice that is Elmer Gantry is Dr. Howard Bancock Binch, a renowned defender of the literal truth of the Bible. 11744. But was booted out of seminary for seducing the preachers daughter, Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones). I kept asking him about steelwhat its made of, what its used foruntil one day he said in exasperation, I dont care about steel. His specialty is in denouncing vice, and in Zenith he even leads a police raid on the local dens of iniquity. George Killough, "Elmer Gantry, Chaucer's Pardoner, and the Limits of Serious Words". Binch stopped gulping his fried pork chops and held out a flabby, white, holy hand.. Richard Brooks spent years trying to bring ELMER GANTRY to the screen. FAQ Burt Lancaster's Oscar Winning performance in the title role was well-worth the accolades. Sin, Sin. Harry Sinclair Lewis, best known as Sinclair Lewis, was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Elmer moves in ever-higher social circles and goes on a three-month speaking tour aimed at the youth of America. WebDaily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state and national news along with advertising. Directed and written by Richard Brooks, based on the 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis. Sharon soon fires her assistant, Cecil Alyston, and appoints Elmer as his replacement. She wore expensive clothes and jewelry and put on a spectacular show. [4] One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. Elmer forces him to resign by questioning his religious beliefs, after which Shallard gets a job with the Charity Organization Society. Jones is too frothy, but when she appears halfway through, she adds bubbles to a long movie that was starting to go flat. Jim is the college freethinker and the only person who has any influence on Elmer. Welcome to the blog of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. After she admits to Elmer that she loves to dance, she says, Oh, of course I roast dancing in my sermons, but I meanwhen its with people like us, that understand, its not like with worldly people, where it would lead to evil. It is not hard to see how she and Elmer are a perfect match. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Lewis finished the book while mending a broken leg on Jackfish Island in Rainy Lake, Minnesota. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many evangelists, like Elmer and Sharon Falconer in the novel, who traveled around the country conducting revival campaigns for large audiences. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry. The Faithful Dog who saved his master during a terrific conflagration . (Later Elmer runs from a conflagration, saving no one but himself. Lancaster's vitality as a sinful preacher lights up the screen "Love is the morning and the evening star! One Sunday, he is surprised to see Lulu in church, and the next day he begins an affair with her. Movie Forums . The film is a triumph for Lancaster and Kennedy and for all those who wish to visit a confusing period of Americanna, when the word of God was infected by preachers, pushers and spiritual leeches. (February 23, 2023). Schorer discusses Lewiss research for the novel, including the clergyman he met in Kansas City. And yet Lewiss attitude to his character is a little more complex than this long list of his faults might suggest. Shallard attempts to stand against Gantrys attempts to destroy him, but eventually he resigns from his pulpit. Were in the temple of the Lord! She is flirtatious, and able to get men to do her bidding. WebElmer turns to Rigg for help, who hires a detective to dig up incriminating evidence against Hettie and her husband. WebBethel Merriday, by Sinclair Lewis, free ebook. Grebstein, Sheldon Norman, Sinclair Lewis, Twayne United States Authors Series, No. We're confident we succeeded and have no doubt you'll agree. He is taken with Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) who runs revival meetings. Sinclair Lewiss Elmer Gantry (New York, 1927) is a ferocious satire against Protestant fundamentalist religion in the American Midwest. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Should creationism be taught in public schools? West, Rebecca, Review of Elmer Gantry, in Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mark Schorer, Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp. There is no character development, and so Elmer, after his character is first established, does not change during the course of the novel. Harry Zenz does not believe a word of what he is taught at the seminary. However, the date of retrieval is often important. It's sophisticated script, complex characters, and wonderful acting opened a whole new world for me. Discuss the issue of creationism and evolution. Afterward, he must resign himself to helplessness for the rest of his life. He had been a solitary in college, generous but fastidious, jarred by his classmates belching and sudden laughter. Like Carol Kennicott, he suffers a betrayal by books, for his reasoning had been turned from an examination of men as mammals to the mystic theories of souls and their salvation. A lady runs by Elmer in a blue jacket, and her jacket is on fire. He dies in a gambling den. Source: David J. Dooley, Aspiration and Enslavement, in The Art of Sinclair Lewis, University of Nebraska Press, 1967, pp. His decision to enter the ministry is dishonest and contrary to his own nature, and it costs him the respect and friendship of his agnostic college roommate, Jim Lefferts. Starring Shirley Jones Arthur Kennedy Burt Lancaster Patti Page Jean Simmons. He denounces other churches for their laxity in condemning sin. Quarles has no time for vain arguments that lead nowhere! Quarles is hostile to the kind of free intellectual inquiry that the liberals advocate, and he relies instead on prayer and faith. "Elmer Gantry" United Artists Simon received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance as a runaway housewife in "The Happy Ending" (1969), Mahlon Potts is the influential minister of the First Methodist Church in Zenith. He uses the church to further his own ambitions for power and fame. You could even argue that Gantry is performing a kind of public service, meeting a need with maximum opportunism but without malice. More mundane examples include the star power of Scientology and Christian rock concerts. He takes care to point out that people return again and again to get converted, which would seem to negate the idea that they are saved in a once in a lifetime experience. Continuity mistake: At the end, there is a scene in a burning church. 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. The church filled him with awe, frightened him, became the center of all his emotions. It is a pity that Lewis did not choose to develop more fully the few exceptions to the prevailing mendacity, including the lightly sketched figure of Reverend Andrew Pengilly. A Best Actor Oscar went to Burt Lancaster for his outstanding performance as a con-man-turned-preacher in this provocative indictment of religious corruption. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize the working of quixotic elements throughout the novel, especially in the fancifully conceived Sharon Falconer and in the character who is a foil for Elmer, Frank Shallard. Lewis is like a ruthless hunter who spares nothing and still has ammunition left at the end of the day. The college president declares that he is a born preacher, and everyone urges him to become a minister. In his preparation for the ministry, it is ironic that Elmer plagiarizes his first (and most frequently useful) sermon from the social reformer Robert G. Ingersoll: Love is the only bow on lifes dark cloud. 23 Feb. 2023 . However, Roberts doubts the truth of the doctrines he preaches so convincingly. International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, "Elmer Gantry, a Flawed Preacher for the Ages", "The Censorship Crusade: A Story For Banned Books Week | Americans United", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elmer_Gantry&oldid=1142298283, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, A 1970 Broadway musical adaptation, titled. Nevertheless, it is soon apparent that he has gone too far; to him, Christianity is not only untrue, but inconceivable. The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. 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. The congregation slowly begins to join back in and Gantry begins to solo with the Drama. What are his leading characteristics? The merit of this argument is undermined because it is given by Babbitt, not out of caring for the citizens of Zenith, but rather because he stands to gain the most financially from the revival. The last date is today's A serious obstacle to her goal is Gantry, but more so is the cautionary and caustic pen of Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who questions the personal and financial motives of her entourage. When it comes to incarceration rates, Minnesota stands out as one of the few states who is experiencing an increase in their prison population despite prison overcrowding and crime at a 50-year low. Laws, the number of times youve explained! During the service one man begins speaking in tongues. Reviewers were divided on the merits of the novel. Philip McGarry is the minister of the Arbor Methodist Church in Zenith. 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. Elizabeth Taylor, Best Actress winner for Butterfield 8. He is invited by a group of scholars to go on a lecture tour to oppose religious fundamentalism, but his first lecture, in a city in the southwest, he is interrupted by local toughs. The affair threatens to destroy Gantry, but Rigg hires a detective to besmear Hettie, and she and her husband are forced to sign an affidavit declaring Gantrys innocence. Still the supporting cast is brilliant as well. Which man seems to have the more vitality? This is tantamount to an admission that the church is happy to receive money that is tainted by the very practices it denounces so vehemently. And he has involvements with several of his church secretaries. For several sessions of congress he had backed a bill for a federal censorship of all fiction, plays, and moving pictures, with a penitentiary sentence for any author mentioning adultery even by implication, ridiculing prohibition, or making light of any Christian sect or minister. Anative of the midwestern United States, Sinclair Lewis (18851951) chronicled through novels, THE LITERARY WORK He is a well-educated Englishman in his early thirties with a colorful past. He begins a course of home study, in a brief episode which must play ironically against Benjamin Franklins self-education. As he gains experience, Elmer attempts to broaden his mind. It is not so much that he does not believe in God. Ad Locust is a traveling salesman for the Pequot Farm Implement Company who befriends Elmer on the train to Monarch. I have told you a mystery. She is the supreme fantasist. We see Gantry the narcissistic conman, Gantry the philanthropist, Gantry the flamboyant showman. On publication, Elmer Gantry had a sensational reception. Lewiss personal life was troubled, and he and his second wife were divorced in 1942. Russia is a European country. In A Letter on Religion published in 1932, Lewis declared: It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living. He said that he had known several young people who had been reared entirely without thought of churches or of formal theology, and they seemed happy. In Nebraska, he attends a meeting of the evangelist Sharon Falconer. Gantry is portrayed as a smooth talking but frustrated salesman, struggling to make a living. Write a brief character sketch of Frank Shallard and describe his role in the novel. During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a sincere minister, Frank Shallard, who is plagued by doubt. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. There was a timebetween the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11when Elmer Gantry might have felt outdated. The adverse publicity helped sales, and 175,000 copies were sold in less than six weeks. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Webdc.title: Elmer Gantry. Cecil Aylston is Sharon Falconers assistant. He is a born salesman well versed with the bible. She ignores the warning and they become a great success in the big city. Gary H. Mayer, "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge". But he did not achieve the heights of success he had enjoyed during the 1920s. James Benedict Moore, "The Sources of Elmer Gantry". Well, he didn't disappoint here, either, with a fantastic performance as those of you who have seen this already know. Lewis divorced his wife in 1928, and married Dorothy Thompson. Id sell anything.. In 1928, he preached in a tent in Long Beach, California to more than 5,000 people, and on his return to America the following year, when he was nearly seventy years old, he attracted even larger crowds, including 15,000 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He manipulates his way into Sister Sharon Falconer (played brilliantly by the late Jean Simmons who should have won an Oscar for her performance in this role). Part of a tipper lorry became wedged underneath a gantry in a crash on the M5 on Thursday, 2 March. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. WebThere is a bit of a rough edit in the middle, because the scene is actually over 8 minutes long, and I needed to get it down to under 5 minutes. If "Elmer Gantry" worked better than most was largely due to Brooks ability to tell a rattling good yarn at a cracking pace and to the performances of a superb cast. Novels for Students. She is also an insane perversion of the sanctity of the elect, for she declares to Elmer, I cant sin! Religion is an aspect of culture that permeates all societies, and much of history is defined by religions in power at the time. The relentless, unrelieved exposure of religious hypocrisy, while amusingly presented in parts, tends to become wearying. Then read chapter 30, section 5, where Jim reappears. 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. Frank Shallard is a student at Mizpah Theological Seminary, but he doubts the literal truth of the Bible. More information about the Trylons Lancastic! 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. She engages in worthy activities at the church in Banjo Crossing, and falls in love with Elmer. Elmer is the great man steadily making his way upward in the worldthe man of immoderate personal ambitionand the great man hasnt time for scruples. You're all sinners. They hypnotize themselves, says Jim Lefferts to Elmer, trying to persuade him not to go along with it. 12631. He is a social climber and a publicity seeker. In it he established ties with Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. He is drawn back to preaching when he falls in love with Sharon Falconer, and he hones his publicity and fundraising skills with her for several years until her death. But the arts and the sentiments and the sentimentalitiesthey were for Elmer perpetually associated only with the church. He soon discovers he has a gift for preaching, and he loves the feeling of power he gets when his sermons move his congregation. I know its trueits in the Bible. The boy sees the preacher as a man who can possibly heal his crippled leg. Burt Lancaster gives a fierce, bellicose and frightening performance as a salesman turned preacher, brining religion to the people in this screen adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel. That night he has doubts, but he is persuaded to speak the following night at the Y.M.C.A. Even Gantry wouldnt have been such a bad fellow if hed been, say, a salesman. Only a very curious moral outlook could have permitted the creator of such a monster as Elmer Gantry to say that his characters lack of a sense of decency would not have been objectionable if he had changed his profession . He befriends Shallard and tries to answer Shallards doubts about the truth of the Christian faith. Elmer Gantry, like the big Lewis novels that preceded it, is centrally concerned with the struggle between the old and the new. Before long, he marries Cleo Benham, the choir director, but finds her an unenthusiastic lover. Elmer tries but fails to continue as an independent evangelist. Mrs. Gantry is Elmers mother. Lewis, C.S. As Mark Schorer has pointed out, Elmer is rarely aware of himself as a hypocrite and achieves neither insight nor growth. (film) Elmer Gantry is a 1960 film about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small town America. He is immediately taken He also forms a Committee on Public Morals, persuades the police to make him a temporary lieutenant, and personally leads raids on the red-light districts. 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. The steady accumulation of damning portraits of those whose spiritual home is the Protestant church, and the lack of any serious counterweight to them, led Rebecca West, in a hostile review of Elmer Gantry that first appeared in 1927, to write that Lewis lacked the necessary requirement of the satirist, which was to fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others. Wests point was that Lewis effectively exposes the charlatans and the way they misuse their power, but fails to show how that religious power might better be used. She is looking to work in Applied Business Anthropology. Overhead traveling cranes are used in industrial buildings to lift and transport heavy jobs, machines, and so on, from one place to another. He joins up with Mrs. Evans Riddle, who teaches New Thought, a Westernized version of Indian religion. Yet at the fire, it is Sharon who is heroic. Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. Lewis attacked it as no more than mass hysteria. However, these were exercises in popular, rather than literary, fiction. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Elmer at first returns her affection, and they get married. Continuity mistake: At the end, there is a scene in a burning church. His dissatisfaction with his life, as well as his drinking, lying, and philandering give the audience a portrait of an unsavory man. She has created an enchanted image of herself, and she has convinced her audience of that image, so that they see her as she wants to be seen, and only we, given glimpses of another self when she reveals herself to Elmer, come to know how complete and insane is her transformation. He relents and the dark fabric of the preachers suit is draped over a body that is full of blind, yet healthy and normal impulses. In his ever lustful sights is a voluptuous female preacher. . Named himself in honour of the character in the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry. He marries a woman he does not love. She cries out, Oh, dont! He goes to Mizpah Seminary, where he entertains his classmates with tales of his sexual escapades. Over seventy-five years after it first appeared, Elmer Gantry still has power to shock as well as amuse. I once dated (briefly) a guy who sold steel. Fire is mentioned throughout the film, and cinematographer John Alton sets the mood by casting dark red and brown shadows. He welcomes Elmer into the Methodist church. He meets Elmer on a steamer home from Europe and invites him to lecture on behalf of Napap. He says both. Most distressing of all, says Frank, the sermons of the preachers are agonizingly dull. So Frank leaves the church temporarily to enter the army where he learns to be common with common men; he schools himself further with Ethan Frome, Pre Goriot, Tono-Bungay, and Renans Jesus. D. J. Dooley remarks that to Lewis Christianity is not only untrue, but inconceivable. Dooley feels that Elmer Gantry is flawed because it is neither a realistic portrayal of the state of religion in America nor a caricature whose manifest unfairness can be forgiven because of the wit and humor which have gone into it. True, unless, taking our cue from Sharon Falconer and the multitude of fraudulent evangelistic minor characters in the book, we begin to see Elmer Gantry as Lewiss triumphant depiction of a land of demons and grotesques of all sizes and shapes, created from the extremes of human impulse and incapable of self-awareness because they are already beyond it, Elmer included. Schorer also says that, while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that: "He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." Every one knew of some case in which each of the others had stolen, or was said to have tried to steal, some parishioner, to have corrupted his faith and appropriated his contributions. When Deacon Bains discovers Gantrys affair with Lulu and forces him to propose, Gantry tricks another man into an entanglement with Lulu and is released from the engagement. Higher criticism also showed that some elements in the Bible were also found in other religions and mythologies (the virgin birth, for example).