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? He is tested by temptation and almost capitulates, but is then wrongly accused by the jilted temptress. And Tom Cruise, and the whole celebrity-studded cult of Scientology; Cruise jumping on Oprahs couch or in his fantastic role as the preacher of male supremacy in Magnolia. 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. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb As Elmers career begins its ascent, we learn something more of the images which fill his mind: For all his slang, his cursing, his mauled plurals and singulars, Elmer had been compelled in college to read certain books, to hear certain lectures, all filled with flushed, florid polysyllables, with juicy sentiments about God, sunsets, the moral improvement inherent in a daily view of mountain scenery, angels, fishing for souls, fishing for fish, ideals, patriotism, democracy . Binch stopped gulping his fried pork chops and held out a flabby, white, holy hand.. A typical picaresque narrative chronicles the exploits of a rogue, an immoral but not criminal character who lives by his wits. Novels for Students. Indeed, why doesnt he? J. E. North is the executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (Napap). gantry Meanwhile, Hettie turns out to be a married woman who, with her husband, tries to blackmail Elmer. WebElmer Gantry is a fast-talking, hard-drinking traveling salesman who always has a risqu story and a hip flask to entertain cronies and customers alike. Light, Martin, The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis, Purdue University Press, 1975, pp. But Page plays the small role of choir leader Sister Rachel. Ed. Nothing reveals Lewiss isolation from an overview of life more clearly than the way he dismisses religion. 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. The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. 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. William's business plan has been for the show to set up in small towns, so it's against his wishes that Sister Sharon, falling for Elmer, agrees to Elmer's plan to set up in the larger city of Zenith, where William feels the that the scrutiny of the cynical urban populace will hurt their brand. Burt Lancaster's Oscar Winning performance in the title role was well-worth the accolades. He hires a new secretary, Hettie Dowler, who replaces Lulu as his mistress. 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. Rewrite it from Jims point of view. His genius took its chance in mockery, parody, grotesquerie, and excessive performance. Elmer at first returns her affection, and they get married. "Elmer Gantry - Summary" Literary Essentials: Christian Fiction and Nonfiction If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original Garrison ****. Elmer Gantry may have a rather unsavoury past but the one thing he can do better than anyone is sell himself, pots, pans, anything. Movies Podcasts Reviews Podcasts Reviews 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. Source: David J. Dooley, Aspiration and Enslavement, in The Art of Sinclair Lewis, University of Nebraska Press, 1967, pp. 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. It was both a popular and critical success, selling 295,000 copies in the first year. Retrieved February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/elmer-gantry. It has provided much of his and Americas taste in architecture, clothing, music, literature, philosophy; it has provided everything but any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.. The clash between fundamentalists and liberals comes to a dramatic and violent climax in the final incident involving Shallard. Thus, Schorer concludes, there is no pressure upon Elmer to be forced into a position of new self-awareness. Another famous name was Aimee Semple McPherson (18901944), a female evangelist who clearly resembled the fictional Sharon Falconer. Who was elmer gantry? Explained by Sharing Culture Elmer Gantry is as lost as those who followed in the tent revivals that swept the country during hard times. Lewis seems determined to avoid religious discrimination: all sects appear in equally bad light. The trouble is, he needed a good reason for his broad and over-the-top acting. He is not a deep thinker and does not really care whether the Baptist doctrines he preaches are true or false. The movie was not just a group of scenes depicting sex and violence. In another service a couple comes forward to ask that Falconer cure the husbands deafness. As a character, Dr. Gantry lacks verisimilitude, and he lacks it more the longer he lives.. Throughout the novel, clergymen and the church are presented in an extremely unflattering light. He would be the executive of that combination; he would be the super-president of the United States, and some day the dictator of the world [409]. To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. He will begin as a preacher in a small town, will enliven it and lift it. He dealt with the connection between small-town provinciality and the religious proclivities of the time, the relationship between the gospel of Christianity and the gospel of business; and, because the novel was written out of the atmosphere surrounding the Scopes Monkey Trial, he dealt with the conflict between science and religion. Lewis finished the book while mending a broken leg on Jackfish Island in Rainy Lake, Minnesota. He is also too bad to be true. He wonders whether he might have become a great chemist, which would surely have been better (and more profitable) than year after year again of standing in the pulpit and knowing your congregation dont remember what youve said seven minutes after youve said it. From discontented dean, who never appears again, the narrative moves immediately to the aged parents of the deans wife. Lewiss famed businessman character, George Babbitt, and pastors in the community discuss the merits of holding a revival in Zenith. 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. Every decision Elmer makes thereafter is one of compromise. Web1. End document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2022 The University of Alabama 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. On May 25, 2016, St. Paul School Resource Officer Bill Kraus forcibly arrested then 19-year-old Darion Bell outside of St. Paul Central High School. For all that, you also fear for a world in which the influence of modern-day Gantries shows no sign of diminishing. WebJones had probably read in the library at Schofield Barracks or from Lowneys collection Sinclair Lewiss Elmer Gantry, a satirical novel about a hypocritical revival preacher. He starts to teach Prosperity classes on his own but cannot make a living from them. On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. ", Movie Lacks Something, But a Stunning Lead Performance Isn't It. Then read chapter 30, section 5, where Jim reappears. He uses the church to further his own ambitions for power and fame. 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. Elmer Gantry the novel came out in 1925 and it took 35 years to get it to the screen. 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. Elmer Gantry subtitles I can't say I've ever seen anything quite like it. I have told you a mystery. She is the supreme fantasist. She had bought the plantation just two years before. To increase his vocabulary he begins a word list: incinerate, Merovingian, Golgotha, Leigh Hunt, defeasance, chansonromantic-sounding words. When the pious Eddie leaves the room, all they want to talk about is sex. "Elmer Gantry" can be considered the quintessential exploration into the omnipresent duality existing between a person's religious faith and simultaneous character defects. 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. In "Elmer Gantry," Burt Lancaster gives one of the all-time great screen performances. 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.. He is a social climber and a publicity seeker. Pretending to be outraged, Elmer resigns his position. West, Rebecca, Review of Elmer Gantry, in Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mark Schorer, Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp. gantry Finally, in the summer of 2005 I took a look after seeing several Burt Lancaster films and being reminded how good an actor he was. Elmer would probably not be able to answer this question. Part of a tipper lorry became wedged underneath a gantry in a crash on the M5 on Thursday, 2 March. He is a gigantic, larger-than-life character. "Elmer Gantry" is an amazing film that does not seem dated at all, having lost none of its bite or appeal with the passing of time. After her death, he joins the Methodist Church. Elmer Gantry | novel by Lewis | Britannica Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. At the start of the novel Elmer is a college football player so little given to piety that he is known as Hell-cat. At the end of the book he is Dr. Gantry, minister of the large Wellspring Methodist Church in Zenith, with hopes of becoming the head of a national moral-rearmament organization, the National Association for the Purification of the Arts and the Press (Napap). B. Elmer Gantry (DVD, 2001, Vintage Classics Many reviewers have already remarked on this terrific movie far better than I can, so this message is really for younger people interested in serious film. The Baptist influences to which Elmer is subjected in his youth, particularly at Terwillinger College and Mizpah Theological Seminary, are handled very roughly. Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City, Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide. 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. 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. Frank suffers from self-consciousness about his occupation; it is the same sense of doubt which Lewis has expressed about the writing career: Frank still resented it that, as a parson, he was considered not quite virile; that even clever people felt they must treat him with a special manner; that he was barred from knowing the real thoughts and sharing the real desires of normal humanity.. Religion was a force in politics, yes, but a force capable of bringing down buildings? He goes to live with his niece and dies within two years. Gary H. Mayer, "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge". Elmer Gantry (1960) - Plot Summary - IMDb Sharon is supposed to be a firebrand, based on evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, part Houdini, part Teddy Roosevelt, who preached a dramatic God. The sociological factor that works against Elmer is the entire small-town Protestant environment in which he was raised. As a boy, the Baptist church was all he knew. A satire can be aimed at an individual or a group. Sacrilege is a word that was used often in the violent arguments that accompanied the publication in 1927 of Elmer Gantry. But he is caught stealing from the collection and is fired. Besides being an effective satire targeted against religious hypocrisy, Elmer Gantry provides insight into the clash of cultural forces in America in the 1920s. The public has the power to end the careers of Falconer He also notes that the more bizarre and irrational the experience, the more the evangelists value it, but he leaves the reader in no doubt about the contempt with which he views such phenomena: once occurred what connoisseurs regard as the highest example of religious inspiration. Simmons is too wispy, and her plummy accent slips through and jars this very American story. He is immediately taken with Sister Sharon Falconer, a lay preacher whose hellfire-and-damnation revivalism has attracted quite a following. We're confident we succeeded and have no doubt you'll agree. You're all doomed to perdition. Elmer Gantry you have to deal with a lot of these two-by-four hick preachers with churches about the size of woodsheds and getting maybe eleven hundred a year, and yet they think they have the right to make suggestions! The attack on the hypocrisy of Protestant ministers continues throughout the novel. Though the bulldog of the football team in college, Elmer shows his cowardice during the fire in Sharon Falconers tabernacle (which is built out over the water): In howling panic, Elmer sprang among them, knocked them aside, struck down a girl who stood in his way, yanked open the door, and got through it the last, the only one, to get through it. He then ran out a little into the surf and dragged in a woman who had already safely touched bottom, and then at least thirty more who had already rescued themselves. His flamboyant preaching style makes a big impression on the small town. Hes the all-American salesman: hed believe, really believe, in anything he thought youd buy. Elmer escapes by knocking other people out of the way, but Sharon is burned to death. Lewis divorced his wife in 1928, and married Dorothy Thompson. pat hingle elevator accident In the following essay excerpt, Lundquist suggests that Lewis portrays religion as stifling, as a manifestation of the pioneer mentality that characterized the old American and has become a threat to the new American. Known as the enfant terrible of the Methodist church, he is ruthlessly critical of others. Anative of the midwestern United States, Sinclair Lewis (18851951) chronicled through novels, THE LITERARY WORK 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. But it certainly was worth the wait. Only the novels It Cant Happen Here (1935) and Kingsblood Royal (1947) have stood the test of time. Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. His mind was shaped most of all by his souvenirs of his travel-adventures. 2023 . All those who profess to be religious in the novel are shown as hypocrites or morons; the best we can expect, apparently, is a nominal profession of belief for the sake of convenience: the good shepherd is the one who sees that his lambs are fed with material food, not stale spiritual claptrap. "Elmer Gantry Barney Bains is a deacon at the Baptist church in Schoenheim and the father of Lulu. GENRE: Fiction, nonfiction If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." -- Albert Schweitzer At the novels beginning, Gantry is captain of the football team at the rowdy campus at Terwillinger College, a Baptist school. Taken from the classic Sinclair Lewis novel of the same name, director Richard Brooks garnered an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his adaptation, and Burt Lancaster won his sole Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Elmer Gantry. But both the show and their relationship are threatened when one of Gantry's ex-lovers decides that she must settle a score with the charismatic performer. His dissatisfaction with his life, as well as his drinking, lying, and philandering give the audience a portrait of an unsavory man. He does not really hate sin, because it is useful to him: the more vice he can discover and denounce, the more his reputation as a man of God grows. But was booted out of seminary for seducing the preachers daughter, Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones). She even tells Elmer (who falls for her the instant he sees her) that she is the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, although she later admits that she does not really believe this. The gantry girders are girders which supports the loads that are transmitted through the travelling wheels of the crane. The relentless, unrelieved exposure of religious hypocrisy, while amusingly presented in parts, tends to become wearying. Elmer is, obviously enough, an example of the latter. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. The psychological factor that works against Elmer is the mechanics of the conversion experience. However, Roberts doubts the truth of the doctrines he preaches so convincingly. It's sophisticated script, complex characters, and wonderful acting opened a whole new world for me. 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). Burt Lancaster is bold and provocative as the title character who is preaching to you one moment and drunk and surly the other. comment. The fledgling work even had legs, if short ones. Excellent recounting based on the controversial Sinclair Lewis novel that got three Academy Awards . 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. Burt Lancaster in all his "scene chewing" glory. The pious but stupid Eddie complains that [E]verything we Baptists stand for is threatened by those darn so-called liberals . He is referring to the practice of open communion, which is favored by liberals, as opposed to the closed communion of the fundamentalists, according to which only Baptists are allowed to participate in the rite. Lulu becomes devoted to Elmer but he gets bored with her. Kayfabe, or, Why a Scholar of Religion Might Be Interested in Pro Wrestling. 12631. Nevertheless, Lewis supplies sufficient background to account for Elmers going into the ministry. Continuity mistake: At the end, there is a scene in a burning church. As Granty flashes with his silver smile but he has a dark past . Elmer Gantry: What's it About 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. WebVoila! When I was a youngster fascinated by the Batman TV show and Lost in Space, I saw Elmer Gantry for the first time. 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. It is the call! He follows her to her bedroom where he sees a couch high on carven ivory posts, covered with a mandarin coat; unlighted brass lamps in the likeness of mosques and pagodas; gilt papier-mch armor on the walls; a wide dressing-table with a score of cosmetics in odd Parisian bottles; tall candlesticks, the twisted and flowered candles lighted; and over everything a hint of incense. She gives him a robe for the service of the altar. WebWhat is meant by gantry girders? He is friendly but self-important; everyone thinks he is popular, but in fact he has almost no friends. Elmer Gantry the Opera, Final Scene, Tabernacle Fire - YouTube Dr. Otto Hickenlooper is a prominent Methodist minister in Zenith, and one of Elmers rivals. Schorer, Mark, Introduction, in Sinclair Lewis: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mark Schorer, Prentice-Hall, 1962, p. 4. He feels little desire to practice what he preaches. 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. WebOn publication, Elmer Gantry had a sensational reception. END Sharons real name is Katie Jonas; she picked out the name Sharon Falconer when she was working as a stenographer. It is the hour! Elmer Gantry was first published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927, dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken. Co-stars Jean Simmons and Shirley Jones. Floyd Naylor is a large and rather stupid farmer in Schoenheim who is in love with Lulu Bains, whom he eventually marries. Screen: A Living, Action-Packed 'Elmer Gantry':Sinclair Lewis Story James Benedict Moore, "The Sources of Elmer Gantry". Elmer Gantry 3945; originally published in New York Herald Tribune Books, March 13, 1927. Ive made herby prayer and by having a right to be her!. Elmer forces him to resign by questioning his religious beliefs, after which Shallard gets a job with the Charity Organization Society. 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 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. Bill Morgan sees thru Elmer and tells Sharon that in 1917 he was expelled from the seminary for seducing the deacon's daughter. 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. However as the pressure builds to tear him down, can Gantry prevent his past from returning to haunt him? She tells Elmer that she has visions; God talks to her. Harry Zenz does not believe a word of what he is taught at the seminary. At times I wondered if he wasn't overacting, but his character called for a very animated salesman-type person. The impact of religion on Elmer Gantry symbolizes what it has done to the American spirit. We are all bored by tired old men explaining the Bible through their noses! Your email address will not be published. 41930. Elmer is subjected to a kind of collective emotional manipulation. He could hear her wailing, Dont be afraid! He charms the congregation and quickly becomes part of the community. He joins the staff of a metaphysical cult but is fired when he is caught stealing from the collection plate. But a grand jury investigation found that McPherson had spent a pleasant month in Mexico with a married man from her church. Kraus used []. Published in 1922 In the mid-1920s, Elmer Gantry is a hard-living, smooth-talking traveling salesman who often uses Christian references in his sales pitches to his largely Christian clients. Charles W. Ferguson, in the Bookman, described Elmer Gantry as a glorious lampoon, although he also commented that the novel was a social commentary and not a work of fictional art. Lulu later meets Elmer again many years later in Zenith, where they resume their clandestine affair. 10 Video Games That Need a Live Action Adaptation, 2023's Most Anticipated Sequels, Prequels, and Spin-offs. No! Elmer cheats, he boasts, he lies, he deceives. Metacritic Reviews. 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. In 1926, Lewis refused the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith, because he believed it would compromise his artistic independence. Awards Elmer, like other Lewis protagonists, fears marriage. 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. Come! 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. A hundred and eleven people died that night, including all the gospel-crew save Elmer.. 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. A charming conman pretends to be a preacher and romances a roadside revivalist. "Religion and Sports: Three Muscular Christians in American Literature". 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. Mahlon Potts is the influential minister of the First Methodist Church in Zenith. Shortly Frank meets more of real life than he is prepared for. Close Alert. WebLove is the voice of music. Lewis seems to have had a particular loathing of the conversion experience that is so central to Protestant spirituality. This is indeed what happened to Dr. Bruno Zechlin, one of the faculty at Mizpah, who lost his fundamentalist faith even before he received his theological doctorate. John K. Roth. British guitarist and vocalist. T. J. Rigg is a famous criminal lawyer and a trustee of Wellspring Methodist Church in Zenith. 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. After a brief interlude with Mrs. Evans Riddles New Thought movement, and teaching Prosperity classes on his own, Elmer joins the Methodist Church.