He speaks in many big cities and acquires a new secretary, Hettie Bowler, with whom he has an affair. While Gantry seeks and eventually gets forgiveness from Sharon, tragedy strikes when she finally manages to get out of her revivalist tent and opens a permanent church. Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth century literature. Elmer's presence is against the wishes of Sister Sharon's manager, William Morgan, who sees through Elmer's smooth-talking veneer, although he can't argue with the bottom line that Elmer brings to the meetings. One Sunday, he is surprised to see Lulu in church, and the next day he begins an affair with her. You're all sinners! For that matter, one year after Elmer Gantry, Burt Lancaster appeared in the same movie as William Shatner, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). After exposing the professors secret, The bill had always been defeated, but it was gaining more votes in every session [407408]. Connected to this it must be said that I did think the plot was a little thin at times and the strength of film does lie in the general portrayal of the world rather than the nitty-gritty of any one character or thread (although even the thin bits are pretty good). Light, Martin, The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis, Purdue University Press, 1975, pp. After Elmer dumps her for Hettie, Lulu loses interest in life. What has educated Elmer (a few books, oratory, sermons, tracts, hymns, and a smattering of a college education) must be ridiculed in order to purge it from the land. More information about the Trylons Lancastic! But Frank rages on at the inconsistencies in doctrine, the contradictions in the Bible, the evil men who are ministers, and the fools and dullards who work about him in Zenith: Gantry, Bishop Toomis, Chester Brown, Hickenlooper, and PottsPotts especially, who gets his idea of human motives out of George Eliot and Margaret Deland, and his ideas of economics out of editorials in the Advocate, and his idea as to what he really is accomplishing out of the flattery of his Ladies Aid! Frank adds that he doesnt find Jesus an especially admirable characterJesus was more vain and furious than a leader should be. Elmer forces him to resign by questioning his religious beliefs, after which Shallard gets a job with the Charity Organization Society. Since religions are often sold with a spin to attract the most people or a certain group of people, it is important that potential followers examine the reasoning and intentions of religious leaders. Laws, the number of times youve explained! Fifty years since I married a preacher! He first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger, pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. He will begin as a preacher in a small town, will enliven it and lift it. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. Initially, he is an enemy of Elmer and tries to prevent him from becoming president of the student body for the second time. Lewiss reputation as a satirist of American life continued to develop in the 1920s with the novels Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), and Dodsworth (1929). Still, Falconer dies for her beliefs and is shown to fervently believe in God; she clearly wants to save people. 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. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Lewis seems determined to avoid religious discrimination: all sects appear in equally bad light. We see Gantry the narcissistic conman, Gantry the philanthropist, Gantry the flamboyant showman. McPherson was involved in a scandal in 1926. Elmer Gantry has been called the purest Lewis by Schorer. Burt Lancaster in all his "scene chewing" glory. He was saturated with itthe sermons, hymns, Bible stories, funerals, weddings, Sunday schools. She and Elmer have an affair, which later turns out to be a trick on the part of Hettie and her husband Oscar to blackmail Elmer. 12631. Equity is one part of a broader vision for the Hiawatha network of schools. Elmer moves in ever-higher social circles and goes on a three-month speaking tour aimed at the youth of America. He fell in love with Sharon when he first met her, and is devoted to her. WebI Am Legend Ending Explained: The Ending We Got (And The One We Didn't) 27 November 2022 Slash Film The Magnificent Seven Wasn't Working Until It Added That Unforgettable Score 19 November 2022 Slash Film IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window). So scandalous was Lewiss portrayal of religion that the novel was banned in several cities and denounced from pulpits across the nation. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. 2023 . because Joness Lulu is a silly, air-spun girl. DIED: 1963, Oxford, England In a southwestern city, he falls into the hands of violent fanatics who beat him so badly he is blinded. 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. Thus equipped, Elmer advances to conquer the world. In it he established ties with Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. The two make a successful onstage pair, and their chemistry extends to romance. 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. He is soon invited to preach at one of her meetings. In Nebraska, he attends a meeting of the evangelist Sharon Falconer. He hires a new secretary, Hettie Dowler, who replaces Lulu as his mistress. publication in traditional print. He befriends Shallard and tries to answer Shallards doubts about the truth of the Christian faith. Lewis divorced his wife in 1928, and married Dorothy Thompson. For all that, you also fear for a world in which the influence of modern-day Gantries shows no sign of diminishing. No! Frank Shallard has doubts while he is still at the Seminary. "Religion and Sports: Three Muscular Christians in American Literature". He is immediately taken Lewiss famed businessman character, George Babbitt, and pastors in the community discuss the merits of holding a revival in Zenith. TAKE NOTE: The films opening title sequence includes this advice: Due to the highly controversial nature of this film, we strongly urge you to prevent impressionable children from seeing it!, You can read the full Sinclair Lewis novel Elmer Gantry online at Project Gutenberg Australia, here:http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300851h.html, You might want to watch some Patti Pagemaybe Whatever Lola Wants, here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSsH_i6xpf8. From the exceptionally talented pen of noted author Sinclair Lewis comes this entertaining story of a fast-talking, yarn-spinning vacuum salesman with the natural gift of persuasion. Traditionalists, therefore, rejected the new approach of liberal theology. Elmer Gantry the novel came out in 1925 and it took 35 years to get it to the screen. 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. It took a long time before I watched this movie on VHS. , Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, McGraw Hill, 1961, pp. Burt Lancaster acted in a number of excellent films during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The main purpose of the picaresque novel (a modern example of which is Saul Bellows The Adventures of Augie March), is satire. These help her to put on a dramatic show that wins many converts. The boy sees the preacher as a man who can possibly heal his crippled leg. Fired from the ministry after going drinking rather than contacting his new church, he works for two years as a traveling salesman. Jim tries to persuade Elmer not to go along with it, but when Elmer attends the Annual Prayer Week he cannot resist the emotionalism of the service. Box sets galore! His mind was shaped most of all by his souvenirs of his travel-adventures. Russia is a European country. Discuss the issue of creationism and evolution. 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. The target of his earthly desires is Beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) a sincere, but fallible woman out to build a ministry. William Donninger Styles is a rich businessman in Zenith. Lulu becomes devoted to Elmer but he gets bored with her. She is volatile, self-dramatizing, self-deceiving, self-promoting, cunning, playful, cynical, ambitious, and ruthlessa Cleopatra of the revivalist circuit. WebOn publication, Elmer Gantry had a sensational reception. Were in the temple of the Lord! Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. 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. Here, they are the sinister forces of righteousness. Web1. West, Rebecca, Review of Elmer Gantry, in Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mark Schorer, Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp. He is encouraged to stay in the church by the Reverend Andrew Pengilly, and he ends up as a minister of a Congregational church in Zenith. ****. Go out slowly! Did he come to bring peace or more war? It seemed that perhaps the world had taken a step away from irrational belief. Elmer is beset on all sides; his mother, the YMCA, the president of the college, even a visiting evangelistall single him out in their prayers and exhortations. 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. It was both a popular and critical success, selling 295,000 copies in the first year. He begins a course of home study, in a brief episode which must play ironically against Benjamin Franklins self-education. 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. The impact of religion on Elmer Gantry symbolizes what it has done to the American spirit. Anative of the midwestern United States, Sinclair Lewis (18851951) chronicled through novels, THE LITERARY WORK Satire ridicules its subject, with the intention of arousing contempt or scorn in the reader. The famous evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis Satans cohort.. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? Gantry turns out to be the perfect publicity compliment to Sister Sharon, who, unlike him, is a true believer. 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. Those who believe in the doctrines of the church are presented as fools or morons, and are easy targets for malicious fun. Religion was a force in politics, yes, but a force capable of bringing down buildings? 98107. But though this satire is perhaps the best part of the book, revivalism is not the only target. The result is as discouraging, as horrifying, as it would have been if Huck had been converted by Miss Watsons Bible stories. He goes to live with his niece and dies within two years. Driven by ambition to become a bishop, he is hugely successful, and is given bigger and bigger churches. But Elmer does have a program in Napap, which he hopes will make him something of a moral dictator. Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City, Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide. 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. ( Elmer Gantry stirs soul, provokes thought was the headline in that mornings Tennessean.) There are several other minor characters who are introduced with no apparent purpose other than to serve as victims of the authors anti-religious inclination. 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. He survived for a while by interpreting some of the Biblical stories as symbols that revealed the glory of God and the leadership of Christ. The preacher tries to warn him off. The movie is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Minnesotas own Nobel Prizewinning author, Sinclair Lewis. How would you describe his demeanor? She cries out, Oh, dont! Not now! Elmer Gantry Book Details Author Bio for Lewis, Sinclair Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was a noted American writer. As the good Sister employs him as a Bible-spouting person to expand the God Will and along the way he gets considerable success . When hedonistic but charming con man Elmer Gantry meets the beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer, a roadside revivalist, he feigns piousness to join her act as a passionate preacher. Like ordinary mortals, she is often weary. . As Lewis so devastatingly wrote, Elmer got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason. The implication is that those three qualities were not present in the Baptist church of Paris, Kansas. The dean sends Gantry and classmate Frank Shallard to pastor a nearby church. 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. The result would be the fascist state against which Babbitt, in anticipation of 1984, warns. Billy Sunday (18621935) was a professional baseball player who quit baseball a few years after he had a religious conversion. He graduated from Yale in 1908 and worked in various jobs in the publishing industry, including editor, reporter, manuscript reader, and reviewer. Only the novels It Cant Happen Here (1935) and Kingsblood Royal (1947) have stood the test of time. "Elmer Gantry" can be considered the quintessential exploration into the omnipresent duality existing between a person's religious faith and simultaneous character defects. 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. Over seventy-five years after it first appeared, Elmer Gantry still has power to shock as well as amuse. At Sparta, Elmer gains statewide fame for his sensational sermons denouncing drinking and other sins. A more elaborate kind of fantasy arises out of Lewiss belief that formal religion is based on the self-interest of its leaders. Dont be afraid! 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. 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. Lewis seems to have had a particular loathing of the conversion experience that is so central to Protestant spirituality. His ambition knows no bounds. 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. 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. He goes to Mizpah Seminary, where he entertains his classmates with tales of his sexual escapades. That night she seduces him. 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. User Ratings Movie Forums . In "Elmer Gantry," Burt Lancaster gives one of the all-time great screen performances. ", Movie Lacks Something, But a Stunning Lead Performance Isn't It. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/elmer-gantry, "Elmer Gantry Elmer works diligently and is rewarded at the Methodists Annual Conference by being sent to a bigger church, at Rudd Center. WebLove is the voice of music. He is one haunted by his checkered past and his immorality. Given, too, that the film's production was 1960, we can say that "Elmer Gantry" does not reflect the current, 21st century, state of religious fundamentalism in America. When Gantry is framed as a philanderer, both Falconer and Gantry endure the wrath of an angry public in Zenith, but are quickly restored to their pedestals upon a retraction. The two make a successful onstage pair, and their chemistry extends to romance. Pretending to be outraged, Elmer resigns his position. But occasionally Lewis tries to endow him with a soul, as in the incident of his conversion at Terwillinger College. He becomes the symbiotic antithesis to Sister Sharon: while he tells of heading toward the depths of hell for his many sins, she tells of being saved from that fate if repentance is forthcoming. The select mini requires bed leveling and will eventually need you to do a gantry support modification as it is only supported on one side. Elmer is, obviously enough, an example of the latter. She is of the occult; she is a witch. She is flirtatious, and able to get men to do her bidding. To increase his vocabulary he begins a word list: incinerate, Merovingian, Golgotha, Leigh Hunt, defeasance, chansonromantic-sounding words. There they meet their host, Deacon Bains, and his daughter Lulu, an ingenue whom Gantry continually tries to seduce. Lewis made the point that Protestantism has nurtured America in the same way it has nurtured Elmer. The couple abandons their campaign against Elmer and leave But he did not achieve the heights of success he had enjoyed during the 1920s. He is a simple, decent, pious man who is loved by his congregation. After two more Elmers start at religious leadership is rocky. 3360. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." -- Albert Schweitzer Jim Lefferts is Elmers roommate and his only friend at Terwillinger College. The movie provided Burt Lancaster, Shirley Jones, and Richard Brooks all with Oscars and it has become a classic. So scandalous was Lewiss portrayal of religion that the novel was banned in several cities and denounced from 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. When the pious Eddie leaves the room, all they want to talk about is sex. It might seem that the last thing in the world Lewis wanted was sympathy for Elmer Gantry, whom he regarded, he told Allen Austin years later, as a hypocrite through and through. Yet he wrote in the Nation in 1928, Actually, I like the Babbitts, the Dr. Pickerbaughs, the Will Kennicotts, and even the Elmer Gantrys rather better than anyone else on earth. Furthermore, he told Betty Stevens that the Babbitts were my children and I wanted to reform them. Elmer despises him. 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. 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. When Elmer is converted, Jim moves out of his room in disgust. As a boy, the Baptist church was all he knew. When she overhears Gantry seducing their pianist, she fires them, but Gantry convinces her to reconsider. He is influenced by the atheistic Dr. Zechlin who lends him theological works by liberals and skeptics. Binch stopped gulping his fried pork chops and held out a flabby, white, holy hand.. Dr. Bruno Zechlin is Professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Old Testament Exegesis at Mizpah Theological Seminary. The speech is a roaring success. 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. 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. 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. The angriest of Lewiss novels, Elmer Gantry seems to arise from impulses that invert the quixotic. Still, her character of a betrayed woman who continues to care for Elmer illuminates the paradox of his power: he doesnt mean to hurt anyone, but he does. McPherson preached in southern California from 1918 to the 1940s. 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. 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. He preaches at the service that gets Elmer converted. Shirley Jones won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the preachers daughter turned prostitute. Of the other characters, Frank Shallard and Dr. Philip McGarry are examples of the liberal tendency in the church. An example is the bizarre marriage ceremony which takes place between Elmer and evangelist Sharon Falconer before her grotesque shrine. 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. 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. Everyone congratulates him on his conversion. He is a complete hypocrite and a complete opportunist. Why does Lewis include him in the book? You're all doomed to perdition. 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. Webbest neighborhoods in san diego for young professionals. Elmer joins the Methodists and is sent to the small town of Banjo Crossing, where he falls in love with Cleo Benham, the daughter of a church trustee. Hes the all-American salesman: hed believe, really believe, in anything he thought youd buy. But the arts and the sentiments and the sentimentalitiesthey were for Elmer perpetually associated only with the church. In Lincoln, he persuades her to let him speak at the meeting about how he, a businessman, was converted. The wife is full of complaints about the life she has had to lead, married to a preacher, criticized by the church women if they thought her clothes werent suitable, sick of having to pretend to be so good when we were just common folks all the time! Her tirade at her husband, who only wants to be allowed to go to sleep, includes the following passage: Oh, dear. Some found it repugnant and accused Lewis of grossly distorting his subject matter. Lulu Bains is the daughter of Barney Bains. But what perhaps made Elmer Gantry seem like such an act of outrage to so many readers is that Lewis did not simply treat religion in relation to other aspects of American life; he saw it instead as the molder of basic attitudes, most of which were, in his opinion, bad. 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. Contact UA. Elmer is forced to agree, but promises himself he will find a way out of the engagement. I have long felt that Burt Lancaster often made movies great because his acting was much bigger-than-life, and he also helped degrade a few movies for this very same reason. It must have been for acting against type, coming off wholesome musical Oklahoma! ), Elmers friend Jim Lefferts, a freethinker, has a somewhat wider list than Elmer: an encyclopedia, Pickwick, Swinburne, Ingersoll, and Paine.