On publication, Elmer Gantry had a sensational reception. Lynnell Mickelsen: Why all the conspiracy theories and pearl-clutching in this years school board race. Gantry maintains friendships with most pastors in Zenith but loathes Philip McGarry, a pastor in a poor neighborhood who has been a friend and mentor to Shallard. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them the Reverend Leon Milton Birkhead, a Unitarian and an agnostic. retrospective of Burt Lancaster films continues at the Trylon Microcinema through November, the month marking the 100th anniversary of Lancaster birth (Nov. 2, 1913), withElmer Gantryon November 11 and 12. Already a member? 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. On the train he meets a traveling salesman who invites him for a drink, which results in Elmer failing to keep his appointment at the church. He is one haunted by his checkered past and his immorality. Religion, can't 'live' with it, can't live without it Good drama that had the potential to be one of the greats, Worth seeing even if time has lessened its controversial value. Im afraid! He replies, Thats damned nonsense! Later he says, Come on now, Clee, show some spunk! Making fun of her, he thinks, Fellow ought to be brutal, for her own sake. Brute, fake, or philanderer, Elmer Gantry seems nevertheless destined for a successful career. ****. I'm sure back in 1960, this film must have been pretty controversial, shocking and challenging in its portrayal of evangelistic religion as cynical, money-grabbing and being as much about show business as God. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. Should creationism be taught in public schools? Burt Lancaster in all his "scene chewing" glory. Sharon is supposed to be a firebrand, based on evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, part Houdini, part Teddy Roosevelt, who preached a dramatic God. Named himself in honour of the character in the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry. I believe! He badgers her until she allows him to preach. Higher criticism also showed that some elements in the Bible were also found in other religions and mythologies (the virgin birth, for example). North, who is in charge of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press, known as Napap. Is there really a conflict between science and religion, between reason and faith, or can the two live in harmony? One admirable character, Frank Shallard, makes an essentially quixotic response to Elmer and his deceits. Harry Zenz is a student at the Mizpah Theological Seminary. Elmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 that presents aspects of the religious activity of America in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. 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. 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 . His mind was shaped most of all by his souvenirs of his travel-adventures. 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. The attack on the hypocrisy of Protestant ministers continues throughout the novel. William Donninger Styles is a rich businessman in Zenith. The college president declares that he is a born preacher, and everyone urges him to become a minister. Elmer attends Mizpah Theological Seminary, a Baptist institution in Babylon, in the Midwest. Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on Elmer Gantry, in Novels for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006. Of the other characters, Frank Shallard and Dr. Philip McGarry are examples of the liberal tendency in the church. date the date you are citing the material. She sinks into Elmers arms. A more elaborate kind of fantasy arises out of Lewiss belief that formal religion is based on the self-interest of its leaders. Elmer Gantry subtitles. The growth of fundamentalist Christianity in contemporary America is a source of bafflement to those who just don't get it; including, by and large, the movie industry, which may like to end its films with sanctimonious moralising, but which usually reserves the right to serve us substantial portions of sex and violence beforehand. 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. Lewis said, flatly enough, that religion in the United States has become stifling; that, like the pioneer economy and the pioneer mentality of which it is a manifestation, it has become a threat instead of a benefit. Later he was to learn that references to Dickens, Victor Hugo, James Whitcomb Riley, Josh Billings, and Michelangelo give a sermon a very toney Chicago air. Though he does not have quixotic benignity, helpfulness, or idealism, he does have visions of how the ministry can be useful to him; he sees thousands listening to himinvited to banquets and everything , and he dreams of hundreds of beautiful women [who weep] with conviction and rush down to clasp his hand., In addition to his hypocrisy and his ignorance, Elmer is a liar, a sinner, and a coward. Their satisfaction comes from functioning healthily, from physical and mental exercise, whether it be playing tennis or tackling an astronomical problem. While this notion of religious rites on the tennis court is rather curious, Lewis seems nevertheless to acknowledge a religious impulse, even if he would eliminate God and organized churches. You're all sinners. 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. Kraus used []. Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely syndicated newspaper article called "The New American People", in which he largely based his observations of American culture on Lewis' novels. In it he established ties with Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. The dean sends Gantry and classmate Frank Shallard to pastor a nearby church. You have every right to an explanation. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/elmer-gantry, "Elmer Gantry Webthe return nicholas sparks ending explained; Nach Altersklassen. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Elmer Gantry is not, however, a movie about making good choices. He also raised large amounts of money at his meetings, and like Elmer Gantry, he was one of he first evangelists to spread his message through the new technology of radio. As a boy, the Baptist church was all he knew. She engages in worthy activities at the church in Banjo Crossing, and falls in love with Elmer. A lady runs by Elmer in a blue jacket, and her jacket is on fire. Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a slick traveling salesman who is a boozer and a dog hound. WebElmer Gantry has a great plot. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago who espouses a very liberal theology. His widowed mother was owned by the church, we are told, and the fact that the boy was fatherless is less important than that the church could not provide Elmer with principles. Elmer is soon preaching to crowds larger than almost all the churches in Zenith. Especially ironic is the way he champions love, an emotion he seems incapable of, in his sermons, preaches against ambition, when he himself is so patently ambitious, and organizes crusades against (mainly sexual) immorality, when he has difficulty resisting sexual temptation himself. As the good Sister employs him as a Bible-spouting person to expand the God Will and along the way he gets considerable success . On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The adverse publicity helped sales, and 175,000 copies were sold in less than six weeks. [2][3] I just spend two days at my best friends' home for his father's funerals, and during the obligatory moments of life contemplation, we were wondering what was awaiting us all. It seemed that perhaps the world had taken a step away from irrational belief. Webdc.title: Elmer Gantry. In Lincoln, he persuades her to let him speak at the meeting about how he, a businessman, was converted. There is no character development, and so Elmer, after his character is first established, does not change during the course of the novel. Philip McGarry, Ph.D. in economics and philosophy, is made to show that no educated person can believe in Christianity except in a very vague way: the only dogma he was known to give out positively was the leadership of Jesusas to whose divinity he was indefinite. The good pastor, the Reverend Andrew Pengilly, finds God in nature, feels religion rather than reasons about it, and doesnt give a hang for doctrinal differences. At the end he is still eyeing the women in the congregation even as he calls for a crusade to make America a moral nation. Bishop Toomis possesses a complete Dickens, a complete Walter Scott, Tennyson, Macaulay, Ruskin, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth of the German Garden, and books on travel and nature study: How to Study the Birds, My Summer in the Rockies, and Pansies for Thoughts. There, Gantry befriends the Methodist bishop and is appointed pastor of a church in Banjo Crossing. While working for the Daily Courier in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1908, he wrote an editorial about fraudulent evangelists, which suggests that the seeds of Elmer Gantry were already being sown. Encyclopedia.com. Bains initially forces Elmer to agree to marry Lulu, but later, after Elmer shows him Lulu kissing Floyd Naylor, he orders Lulu to marry Floyd. He rammed the fear of God into me so fast, Lulu says of her willing seduction behind the altar, I never heard my old mans footsteps.. WebOn publication, Elmer Gantry had a sensational reception. Mel Gibson aside, you don't expect to see a sympathetic portrayal of religion in the movies; from 'Night of the Hunter' onwards, the dodgy preacher has been a more common character than the saintly one, and there's another kicking for the born-again movement in 'Elmer Gantry'. Continuity mistake: At the end, there is a scene in a burning church. It is not so much that he does not believe in God. Sharon believes she is above sin and that she can do anything she wants to because she is Gods messenger. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry. [5], However, the book was a commercial success. Lewis seems determined to avoid religious discrimination: all sects appear in equally bad light. 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. And when his hero joins the Methodist Church, Lewis takes full advantage of the opportunity to satirize another sect. But Page plays the small role of choir leader Sister Rachel. Novels for Students. 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. As a character, Dr. Gantry lacks verisimilitude, and he lacks it more the longer he lives.. Mrs. Evans Riddle is the proprietor of the Victory Thought Power Headquarters in New York. Novels for Students. Source: James Lundquist, Moralities for a New Time, in Sinclair Lewis, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1973, pp. Elmer Gantry is as lost as those who followed in the tent revivals that swept the country during hard times. , Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, McGraw Hill, 1961, pp. When the pious Eddie leaves the room, all they want to talk about is sex. The woman who does match Lancaster is Oklahoma-born Patti Page, making her film debut. ( Elmer Gantry stirs soul, provokes thought was the headline in that mornings Tennessean.) Gantry's entire repertoire is performed with encyclopedic thoroughness and accuracy. A novel set from 1920 to 1922 in Zenith, an imaginary midwestern American city; published in 1922. Lewiss version of what passed for religion in the United States of the 1920s brought him threats against his life and gave his name the same rhetorical function in Protestant fundamentalist sermons as that of Clarence Darrow, Darwin, and the devil himself. The bill had always been defeated, but it was gaining more votes in every session [407408]. PG. Jean Simmons appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Drumhead (1991) as Rear Admiral Norah Satie. WebIn 1960, Elmer Gantry, based on the best-selling 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis, was brought to the screen by writer/director Richard Brooks. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she has played a variety of Gantry considers Shallards company an obstacle to his plans with Lulu, so he engineers Shallards resignation with accusations of apostasy. Then from 1918 to 1920 he is in Sparta, where the population is 129,000. Photographer Nancy Musinguzis recent photos captured the over 7,000 people []. His specialty is in denouncing vice, and in Zenith he even leads a police raid on the local dens of iniquity. Her maiden milk is proof of Gods goodness act supposedly converts tents full of adults, but one wonders if even Midwestern farmers without television (this is the 1920s) would find her compelling. Lloyd Naylor, who is in love with Lulu, complains to Lulus father about Elmers amorous conduct towards her. After a brief interlude with Mrs. Evans Riddles New Thought movement, and teaching Prosperity classes on his own, Elmer joins the Methodist Church. He wears fine clothes, yet he rides the railways like a vagabond. When Lefferts asks Reverend Quarles, the college president, an awkward question about some passages in the Bible, Quarles tells him not to question the ways of the Lord. Close Alert. In Nebraska, he attends a meeting of the evangelist Sharon Falconer. She teaches classes in Concentration, Prosperity, Love, Metaphysics and Oriental Mysticism, and invites Elmer to join her. Gene Warren and Tim Baar, The Time Machine. McPherson was involved in a scandal in 1926. Elmer borrows a hundred dollars from Shallard, who is now a minister and is married with three children. But for my money it is Jean Simmonds, surely robbed of her own Oscar here, who has the most impressive part. Elmer Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. Lewis made the point that Protestantism has nurtured America in the same way it has nurtured Elmer. After North invites him to lecture for Napap, Elmer is filled with ambition to combine all the moral organizations in America, with himself as the leader. According to Mark Schorer, in his introduction to Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, No novel in the history of American literature outraged its audience so completely, and very few novels in American literature had a larger immediate audience. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from hundreds of pulpits. Sharon is a woman of many selves: she is imperious and efficient, but also vulnerable. He marries Cleo but gets bored with her and resents her lack of sexual passion. British actress Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon, the evangelist Elmer falls for is similarly too airy. The target of his earthly desires is Beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) a sincere, but fallible woman out to build a ministry. Dr. Otto Hickenlooper is a prominent Methodist minister in Zenith, and one of Elmers rivals. J. E. North is the executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (Napap). Oh, my dear people, my dear people, I am not going to preach tonightwe are all so weary of nagging sermons about being nice and good! Based on the muckraker Sinclair Lewis' novel, and superbly translated to the screen by Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood , The Professionals, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), this story of huckster-ism by religion is a masterpiece. Jean Simmons is lovely and convincing as as Sister Sharon Falconer, the charismatic female evangelist who wins Gantry's heart (and lust)as they team up to jump-start America's dwindling religious beliefs. In the Shadow of No Future: Justice Claims and the Israel-Palestine Conflict? He was saturated with itthe sermons, hymns, Bible stories, funerals, weddings, Sunday schools. George Babbitt, the namesake of one of Lewis' best-known novels, appears in Elmer Gantry very briefly during an encounter at the Zenith Athletic Club. When a Salvation Army worker enters, Gantry shocks and moves the crowd with an impromptu, impassioned sermon equating God with love. 73738. He speaks in many big cities and acquires a new secretary, Hettie Bowler, with whom he has an affair. Bains and Naylor confront Elmer at the Seminary and tell him he must marry Lulu. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. It is success that proves faith in this religion, not the other way round. ." Miss West points to Frank Shallards accusation against Jesus: Did He ever suggest sanitation, which would have saved millions from plagues? She comments, As for the suggestion that Christ should have halted on the way to the Cross to recommend the American bathroom, it ought to go into the Americana section of the American Mercury. She concludes her essay as follows: If [Lewis] would sit still so that life could make any deep impression on him, if he would attach himself to the human tradition by occasionally reading a book which would set him a standard of profundity, he could give his genius a chance. Miss West expresses a prevailing attitude toward Lewis, but she does not, I think, understand what his best books accomplished. Known as the enfant terrible of the Methodist church, he is ruthlessly critical of others. Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger in 1914, and they had one son, Wells, in 1917. He is so good that it is hard to She had bought the plantation just two years before. Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. He has an affair with female evangelist Sharon Falconer, which ends with her death in a flaming tabernacle. I had boycotted it for years, thinking it was too anti-Christian to support with my money, either renting or buying it. Elmer loves to preach against immorality but feels no need to be moral himself. Elmer will end up using all of these strategies himself, to great success. But shifting moods again, she can acknowledge that she is just an ignorant young woman with a lot of misdirected energyand even an evil one: Oh, I hate the little vicessmoking, swearing, scandal, drinking just enough to be silly. ), Elmers friend Jim Lefferts, a freethinker, has a somewhat wider list than Elmer: an encyclopedia, Pickwick, Swinburne, Ingersoll, and Paine. As Mark Schorer has pointed out, Elmer is rarely aware of himself as a hypocrite and achieves neither insight nor growth. Sharon soon fires her assistant, Cecil Alyston, and appoints Elmer as his replacement. Lulu later meets Elmer again many years later in Zenith, where they resume their clandestine affair. As Granty flashes with his silver smile but he has a dark past . For example, the division between Northern and Southern Baptists is explained in this way: [B]efore the Civil War the Northern Baptists proved by the Bible, unanswerably, that slavery was wrong; and the Southern Baptists proved by the Bible, irrefutably, that slavery was the will of God. Later in the novel, Frank Shallard realizes how threatened conservative clergymen are by scientific knowledge and how inadequate they are to preside over educational institutions. Many of my neighbors and friends see the furious posts on Facebook, with all the hysterical warnings about the imminent destruction of public education as we know it, and are honestly confused. Pengilly sees through him with the spiritual eye of an eagle, and asks, Mr. Real name: David Terry. Also, Neil Diamonds 1976 live performance of his song Brother Loves Travelling Salvation Show, here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brt4r_y1y4Q#t=68In a very Elmer Gantry moment, starting at 2:54, after singing the Lord gave us two good hands, brothers and sisters, one for the givin and one for the takin, Diamond stretches out his hand toward a young woman who places in it the key to what must be her hotel room. Gantry is bored by school, but Shallard is drawn to a professor who eventually confesses his atheism to Shallard. He ends up as minister of a large church in a West Virginia mining town. 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. Welcome to the blog of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. For that matter, one year after Elmer Gantry, Burt Lancaster appeared in the same movie as William Shatner, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). As in the violent, unpredictable climax, Elmer Gantry lives and dies on a kind of roiling energy, a reaction that seems to be happening 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. This short scene is written from Elmers point of view. Pretending to be outraged, Elmer resigns his position. The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. cheyenne mountain resort presidential suite; spartanburg county building setbacks He is taken with Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) who runs revival meetings. He is not a deep thinker and does not really care whether the Baptist doctrines he preaches are true or false. He falls for her on sight, and follows her to Lincoln, Nebraska, for her next revival meeting. Some while later Shallard goes on a lecture tour to speak against fundamentalism. 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. He is out for money and pleasure and powerand the ministry is the career which gives him all three. Elmer meets up again with Lulu, now married to Floyd Naylor, and they resume their flirtation. He marries a woman he does not love. Don Pickens is Frank Shallards roommate at Mizpah Theological Seminary. One thing he is aware of is that professing belief serves his purposes very well, and for all he knows, every word of Baptist or Methodist dogma might be true. The ships captain who in the storm took counsel with the orphaned but righteous child of missionaries in Zomballa. The supporting staff performed equally well. I am not going to explain the Scriptures. Religion is an aspect of culture that permeates all societies, and much of history is defined by religions in power at the time. But soon the church tightens its grip on him; and for Elmer, there is no possibility of lighting out for the territory. One device after another is employed to introduce him to new denominations and round out the picture. But it's Elmer's past, which catches up with him in Zenith, that may be his, and by association Sister Sharon's, downfall. Frank Shallard is a student at Mizpah Theological Seminary, but he doubts the literal truth of the Bible. Garrison He is soon invited to preach at one of her meetings. Elmers start at religious leadership is rocky. She is volatile, self-dramatizing, self-deceiving, self-promoting, cunning, playful, cynical, ambitious, and ruthlessa Cleopatra of the revivalist circuit. He advises Elmer not to denounce vice directly, by naming names and giving addresses of illegal drinking places, because the owners of such buildingswho of course have no knowledge of any illegal activitiesare often leading church contributors and attacking them would jeopardize their support for the church.

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