Elmer Gantry, like the big Lewis novels that preceded it, is centrally concerned with the struggle between the old and the new. | With the characterization and strong personalities of these two characters, it is easy to assume a one-sided relationship between Gantry and Falconer and their congregants, but this is not the case. He is a complete hypocrite and a complete opportunist. Some day he would be a bishop, yes, but even that was nothing compared with the fact that he had won a victory over his lower nature. He kneels in prayer, but in that instant he sees Cleo and at once thinks of seducing her. Everyone congratulates him on his conversion. It would end Sunday entertainment, curtail freedom of speech, and put restrictions on the rights of Catholics. Is he successful? They are encouraged by Dr. Zechlin, who tells him that no reasonable person can be a believing Christian; nevertheless, he ought to stay in the church to liberalize it from withinin effect, to destroy it. Lewiss first real success came with Main Street (1920), the book that made him famous. McPherson was involved in a scandal in 1926. Fire is mentioned throughout the film, and cinematographer John Alton sets the mood by casting dark red and brown shadows. Some characters from Lewis even read Sinclair Lewis himself; the Reverend Philip McGarry asks his friend Frank Shallard to forget that you have to make a new world, bettern the Creators, right away tonightyou and Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis (Lord, how that book of Lewis, Main Street, did bore me ).. He ends up as a minister in the Episcopal church. He fell in love with Sharon when he first met her, and is devoted to her. AKA: Elmer Gantry, le charlatan. But the only good ministers of the Gospel seem to be those who, like Dr. Bruno Zechlin, the Old Testament scholar at Mizpah, have given up their religious beliefs. The result is as discouraging, as horrifying, as it would have been if Huck had been converted by Miss Watsons Bible stories. 5 Mar. 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 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. George Killough, "Elmer Gantry, Chaucer's Pardoner, and the Limits of Serious Words". Elmer Gantry is a nuanced look at the world of evangelists and revivals. He marries a woman he does not love. It took a long time before I watched this movie on VHS. Shallard is then attacked by religious fanatics and blinded. He joins up with Mrs. Evans Riddle, who teaches New Thought, a Westernized version of Indian religion. Elmers mind is shallow; he simply does not have the capacity for serious thought about such issues. He denounces other churches for their laxity in condemning sin. Blessed Virgin, Mother Hera, Mother Frigga, Mother Ishtar, Mother Isis, dread Mother Astarte of the weaving arms, it is thy priestess . They read from the Song of Solomon. He joins the staff of a metaphysical cult but is fired when he is caught stealing from the collection plate. ." Besides the rise of world fundamentalism and revelations of sexual abuse by big-name evangelists and Catholic priests, Elmer Gantry calls up popular figures such as Sarah Palin. He badgers her until she allows him to preach. Lewis made the point that Protestantism has nurtured America in the same way it has nurtured Elmer. Modern, yet extreme examples of this include ISIS, a violent terrorist organization that is somehow able to recruit privileged teens from Western countries, and the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, which used liberal ideology to attract minorities and young people. 4748; originally published in the Bookman, March 1927. But what did he know of the forces which cause wars, personal or class or national; what of drugs, passion, criminal desire; of capitalism, banking, labor, wages, taxes; international struggles for trade, munition trusts, ambitious soldiers? Bishop Wesley R. Toomis is a bishop in the Methodist Church who has a great reputation as an orator and thinker. NATIONALITY: British But unlike Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantrys rise is depicted negatively. The church filled him with awe, frightened him, became the center of all his emotions. He returns to it in the context of Sharons revival meetings. Phrozen Sonic Mini 3D Printer: Buy or Lease at Top3DShop 4.3 out of 5 stars 53. Judson Roberts is an evangelist who is the state secretary of the Y.M.C.A. In 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, As a character, Dr. Gantry lacks verisimilitude, and he lacks it more the longer he lives.. Webbest neighborhoods in san diego for young professionals. When the pious Eddie leaves the room, all they want to talk about is sex. 41930. The preacher meets someone in the town, too: a waitress ( Lolita Davidovich) with a crippled young son. He goes to live with his niece and dies within two years. However, Roberts doubts the truth of the doctrines he preaches so convincingly. External Reviews One such character is the dean of Terwillinger College, who makes a brief appearance in chapter 4, section 3, in which he wonders, in conversation with his wife, whether he has sacrificed too much by going into the ministry. Later, in the middle of a church service, Gantry realizes that he misses Hettie but quickly spots a new choir member whom he hopes to get to know better. Can there ever have lived a clergyman with Elmers astonishing range of vices: his chronic insincerity, his hypocrisy, his lust, his overweening ambition, his cynicism, his appalling behavior to his family? 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! There, Gantry befriends the Methodist bishop and is appointed pastor of a church in Banjo Crossing. They have better chemistry between them than Simmons and Lancaster did, but Elmer Gantry is the grandaddy of them all. Falconer gives of herself throughout the film to help her congregants, often going outside her comfort zone to preach to angry crowds and secure the donations she sees as a necessary evil for the continuance of her sermons. After exposing the professors secret, Shirley Jones small part made the movie. Yes, sir-ree, it might feel simplistic but at least it's fair and square. Shortly Frank meets more of real life than he is prepared for. 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. 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. But though this satire is perhaps the best part of the book, revivalism is not the only target. 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. You have every right to an explanation. The novel's protagonist, the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, is initially attracted by booze and easy money (though he eventually renounces tobacco and alcohol) and chasing women. 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. 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. Traveling in the Southwest, he is beaten and blinded. WebIn the 1920s, Elmer Gantry entertains a group of fellow salesmen in a speakeasy with his ribald jokes and easy charm. Thus equipped, Elmer advances to conquer the world. In Lincoln, he persuades her to let him speak at the meeting about how he, a businessman, was converted. Lancaster's performance is so rich, so real, that the viewer knows this man, knows what Gantry smells like (sweat and eau de cologne) and what he eats (big slabs of beef). Early in his preaching career he jilts a country girl who loves him and whom he has seduced. In another scene, Falconer exhibits pride and materialism when she admits that she always wanted her own church with a giant glowing cross. He was supposed to bring peace to mankind. Shallard attempts to stand against Gantrys attempts to destroy him, but eventually he resigns from his pulpit. Elmer pulls the burning jacket off her, and beats out the flames. She is looking to work in Applied Business Anthropology. 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. One device after another is employed to introduce him to new denominations and round out the picture. (205) 348-6010 Having ridiculed the unfortunate Dr. Binch, Lewis removes him from the scene and never mentions him again. Except in some of its sexuality (there are a couple cringe-making lines), however, the film doesnt feel outdated today. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. On a rainy, cool day Ha Tien is a warm and welcoming site. In a southwestern city, he falls into the hands of violent fanatics who beat him so badly he is blinded. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? T. J. Rigg is a famous criminal lawyer and a trustee of Wellspring Methodist Church in Zenith. Webthe return nicholas sparks ending explained; Nach Altersklassen. Id sell anything.. Driven by ambition to become a bishop, he is hugely successful, and is given bigger and bigger churches. After various forays into evangelism, he becomes a successful Methodist minister despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.[1]. It's the prohibition era. It seems unlikely that Lancasters character would risk immolation for her. He is out for money and pleasure and powerand the ministry is the career which gives him all three. As in the violent, unpredictable climax, Elmer Gantry lives and dies on a kind of roiling energy, a reaction that seems to be happening 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 two make a successful onstage pair, and their chemistry extends to romance. Ferguson, Charles W., Review of Elmer Gantry, in Critical Essays on Sinclair Lewis, edited by Martin Bucco, G. K. Hall, 1986, pp. Elmer works diligently and is rewarded at the Methodists Annual Conference by being sent to a bigger church, at Rudd Center. Lewiss personal life was troubled, and he and his second wife were divorced in 1942. After dinner, the drunken Elmer picks a fight with a man who is heckling Eddie Fislinger, a fellow Terwillinger College student, as he preaches to an outdoor crowd. He became known in the 1920s for his books that satirized the spartan materialism and intolerance that He hires a new secretary, Hettie Dowler, who replaces Lulu as his mistress. Despite his doubts, and following Zechlins advice, Shallard decides to remain in the church. Two years before adapting Elmer Gantry to the sceen, writer and director Richard Brooks, also adapted and directed The Brothers Karamazov (1958), which featured William Shatner (the original Captain Kirk) in his first movie role, as the saintly brother Alexei. 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. I guess it's hard to imagine that your beloved one has faded into nothingness, so religion brings you a certain psychological comfort in knowing that there's such a thing as a soul and that, depending on a man's life, it gets the treatment it deserves. He preaches at the service that gets Elmer converted. He first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger, pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. She had bought the plantation just two years before. Others praised its accurate reporting and its denunciation of hypocrisy, comparing Lewis to great satirists such as Voltaire and Swift. . Gary H. Mayer, "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge". I believe! 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. 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. Of course, turmoil closes in on them as their inherent instincts of love overpower their adherence to the Christian principles they attempt to profess. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. I give this movie a 10 only because there is nothing above that. In the novel, people in Nebraska say that Sharon Falconer compares with the great evangelists of the past, naming Gipsy Smith as one of them. In his ever lustful sights is a voluptuous female preacher. Mark Schorer, then of the University of California, Berkeley, notes: "The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality." In the novel, when Elmer takes up his first appointment in a small-town Methodist church, one of the first questions the fundamentalist trustees asks him is, Do any monkeying with this higher criticism? Against the tide of modernist thought that included science and secularism, fundamentalists insisted on the truth of their core doctrines, including the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, the atonement, the infallibility of the Scriptures, and the second coming of Christ. A more elaborate kind of fantasy arises out of Lewiss belief that formal religion is based on the self-interest of its leaders. Like Sharon, she drew huge crowds and practiced faith healing. 73738. Elizabeth S. Prioleau, "The Minister and the Seductress in American Fiction: The Adamic Myth Reduz". This site -- maintained by the faculty but also involving our students, our alumni, and the graduate teaching assistants who help us in our classes -- discusses the relevance of the study of religion, in particular, and the liberal arts, in general, for understanding both the past and present, by seeing religion as but one element of wider cultural practices. Elmer Gantry is as lost as those who followed in the tent revivals that swept the country during hard times. 4953. 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. 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. You're all doomed to perdition. The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. After Sharon dismisses him in favor of Elmer, Cecil tries to conduct a rescue mission in Buffalo. Ad Locust is a traveling salesman for the Pequot Farm Implement Company who befriends Elmer on the train to Monarch. The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Gantry threatens to avenge him but takes no action. After college, he attends a Baptist seminary and is ordained as a Baptist minister. Reverend Jacob Trosper is the dean and chief executive of Mizpah Theological Seminary. Reviewers were divided on the merits of the novel. But while Elmers career ascends, that of the honest Frank Shallard, who goes to the seminary with Elmer, descends to the point where Frank is beaten up by members of the Ku Klux Klan for preaching what he believes to be the truth. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. 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. But he is caught stealing from the collection and is fired. At their next revival, the tent catches fire and kills a hundred people, including Sharon, but Gantry climbs over trapped women and escapes. 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. In a notable passage Lewis tells us sympathetically of the problems of the rebel, of the preacher or the writer who suffers from sensitivity and innocence: He was supposed to cure an affliction called vice. I kept asking him about steelwhat its made of, what its used foruntil one day he said in exasperation, I dont care about steel. What of Jesuss teachings? "Elmer Gantry" United Artists Simon received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance as a runaway housewife in "The Happy Ending" (1969), Good drama that had the potential to be one of the greats. He meets Elmer on a steamer home from Europe and invites him to lecture on behalf of Napap. In 1944, his son Lieutenant Wells Lewis was killed in action in France during World War II. At times he is almost satanic, a compendium of all the vices; they are too many and too flagrant for him to be real. At his Lively Sunday Evenings, Elmer gets up to many publicity-generating stunts. Starring Shirley Jones Arthur Kennedy Burt Lancaster Patti Page Jean Simmons. When he finally got the green light, it was United Artists that agreed to distribute the film. The gantry girders are girders which supports the loads that are transmitted through the travelling wheels of the crane. 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. Elmer Gantry has been called the purest Lewis by Schorer. 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. Dr. Otto Hickenlooper is a prominent Methodist minister in Zenith, and one of Elmers rivals.