It is a pity that Lewis did not choose to develop more fully the few exceptions to the prevailing mendacity, including the lightly sketched figure of Reverend Andrew Pengilly. Dont be afraid! Elmer starts to detest her when he finds out that she is cold, sexually. 3D Printer - Discovering the Four-Laser SLM 500 HL 3D Printer 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. WebLove is the voice of music. As in the violent, unpredictable climax, Elmer Gantry lives and dies on a kind of roiling energy, a reaction that seems to be happening Tries to give the kid a break. Lulu Bains is the daughter of Barney Bains. At the church, Elmer tries to seduce Lulu Bains, the daughter of one of the deacons, while Shallard warns him against even the appearance of evil. Elmer Gantry is a film that exposes hypocrisy and greed among religious leaders who seek to exploit gullible citizens looking for something in which to believe. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Lewis finished the book while mending a broken leg on Jackfish Island in Rainy Lake, Minnesota. Sin, Sin. 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. Gantry is bored by school, but Shallard is drawn to a professor who eventually confesses his atheism to Shallard. If I could only believe it! Ashley Daugherty is a senior majoring in Anthropology and Spanish. How long would a drunkard listen to the counsel of one who had never been inside a saloon? Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger in 1914, and they had one son, Wells, in 1917. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago who espouses a very liberal theology. Nellie Benton is Jim Lefferts girlfriend when he is a student. It may be that the essential lesson which Lewiss experience of America taught him was that the barriers to education, self-discovery, and fulfillment were formidably guarded by exploiters and cranks: thus his anger; thus his satire. The Baptist influences to which Elmer is subjected in his youth, particularly at Terwillinger College and Mizpah Theological Seminary, are handled very roughly. The preacher meets someone in the town, too: a waitress ( Lolita Davidovich) with a crippled young son. Gantrys beliefs are left ambiguous, as are his motives for evangelizing. But it all comes to an end one night in Clontar, on the New Jersey coast, where Sharon has purchased a pier. You have every right to an explanation. Word Count: 916. 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. There was a timebetween the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11when Elmer Gantry might have felt outdated. At times he is almost satanic, a compendium of all the vices; they are too many and too flagrant for him to be real. Id sell anything.. Paperback June 3, 2014. He preaches at the service that gets Elmer converted. He became a Presbyterian preacher, and was famous for his energetic, fiery sermons in which he denounced liberalism, the theory of evolution, and the evils of drinking. T. J. Rigg is a famous criminal lawyer and a trustee of Wellspring Methodist Church in Zenith. Novels for Students. In the Shadow of No Future: Justice Claims and the Israel-Palestine Conflict? Special Effects winner, with presenters Polly Bergen and Richard Widmark. 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. Once Gantry accuses the city government of protecting the brothels and drug dealers, he becomes one of the most powerful men in Zenith. Dr. Bruno Zechlin is Professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Old Testament Exegesis at Mizpah Theological Seminary. Like everything else in the Lone Star State, our dreams were big from the start. Elmer is soon preaching to crowds larger than almost all the churches in Zenith. This abridged version of Sinclair Lewiss novel of the same name focuses on Elmer Gantry, a con man expelled from seminary school, and Sister Sharon Falconer, a character loosely based on evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. 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. The acting and directing is superb to the point that it becomes difficult to remember that it is only a movie. Ferguson, Charles W., Review of Elmer Gantry, in Critical Essays on Sinclair Lewis, edited by Martin Bucco, G. K. Hall, 1986, pp. 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. 3945; originally published in New York Herald Tribune Books, March 13, 1927. I had boycotted it for years, thinking it was too anti-Christian to support with my money, either renting or buying it. Elmer Gantry - Wikipedia Every decision Elmer makes thereafter is one of compromise. The English novelist and playwright Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), known as Monk Lewis, a popular wri, Lewis, Wyndham Ill lead you safely through the flames! When Elmer tries to make her escape, she pushes him away. As a preacher, he shamelessly plays on peoples emotions and their fear of Hell. 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. In "Elmer Gantry," Burt Lancaster gives one of the all-time great screen performances. 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). But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.. He raises money to build a new church. Lancaster's vitality as a sinful preacher lights up the screen "Love is the morning and the evening star! He is tested by temptation and almost capitulates, but is then wrongly accused by the jilted temptress. 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. They were intended to feed the American dream, but instead fashioned the nightmareout of books! Elmer Gantry the novel came out in 1925 and it took 35 years to get it to the screen. With Jim (who is more skeptical and quick-witted than Gantry) home sick in bed, Gantry attends the meeting with his mother and is converted. 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. Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry, lit in stark noirish style by cinematographer John Alton. date the date you are citing the material. One attendant of the revivals even describes himself as only being a good Christian when a revival is in town, and then going back to his old ways once it is gone. In A Letter on Religion published in 1932, Lewis declared: It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living. He said that he had known several young people who had been reared entirely without thought of churches or of formal theology, and they seemed happy. He fell in love with Sharon when he first met her, and is devoted to her. Reverend Dr. Willoughby Quarles is president of Terwillinger College. Concerning about some preachers exact wealth and power from their congregration . For Sheldon Norman Grebstein, writing in 1962, the novel has snap, flavor, a strong narrative line, a good deal of authenticity But it is distorted, even too much for satire; it lacks conflict and contrast. In a generally favorable assessment, James Lundquist, in Sinclair Lewis, brings attention to Lewiss mastery of irony, but he also comments on a weakness in the plot, arguing that the final crisis Elmer faces is unconvincing in its details. 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. 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. He is immediately Richard Brooks spent years trying to bring ELMER GANTRY to the screen. 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! Elmer Gantry (1960) - Plot Summary - IMDb 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. 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. She is forced by her father to marry Lloyd Naylor. Elmer Gantry Elmer Gantry and his roommate, Jim Lefferts, have traveled from their college in Kansas to Cato, Missouri, to see their girlfriends. At his Lively Sunday Evenings, Elmer gets up to many publicity-generating stunts. Your email address will not be published. Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. But he did not achieve the heights of success he had enjoyed during the 1920s. When he at last finds the courage, now that he is out of the church, to speak his mind, he is viciously attacked and blinded by fundamentalist fanatics. Sinclair Lewiss Elmer Gantry (New York, 1927) is a ferocious satire against Protestant fundamentalist religion in the American Midwest. Starring Shirley Jones Arthur Kennedy Burt Lancaster Patti Page Jean Simmons. 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. Meanwhile, Babe Ruth was closing in on the home run record. She is also an insane perversion of the sanctity of the elect, for she declares to Elmer, I cant sin! The second is the date of A more elaborate kind of fantasy arises out of Lewiss belief that formal religion is based on the self-interest of its leaders. 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. 2023 . Pengilly is an old Methodist pastor who is something of a saintly figure. But throughout his career he wonders whether there is any value in his work. Finally, the Elmer Gantry script is here for all you quotes spouting fans of the Burt Lancaster movie. Like Sharon, she drew huge crowds and practiced faith healing. Elmer Gantry (film In order to conquer her, he must use his extensive repertoire of biblical quips, quotes and bawdy antidotes. WebElmer Gantry; Keith Phares, Sharon Falconer; Jennifer Rivera. Before Falconer and Gantry set up their revival in Zenith, a large city which is described as a place where Falconer and Gantry can become famous, Falconers revivals were held in the country and in small towns. He becomes so successful that he becomes indispensable to Sister Sharon's roadshow. Over the next few years, he is appointed to larger and larger parishes, eventually to a church in Zenith. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Watching it today, it is hard to be surprised by any such suggestion since my cynical generation is much more accepting that nothing is what it seems and everyone has an agenda. Kraus used []. "Elmer Gantry" can be considered the quintessential exploration into the omnipresent duality existing between a person's religious faith and simultaneous character defects. They also decried the growth within the church of the higher criticism, that sought to understand the Bible based on modern methods of scholarship. He starts to teach Prosperity classes on his own but cannot make a living from them. 1961 During the service one man begins speaking in tongues. At their next revival, the tent catches fire and kills a hundred people, including Sharon, but Gantry climbs over trapped women and escapes. 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. The result is as discouraging, as horrifying, as it would have been if Huck had been converted by Miss Watsons Bible stories. Later, Lewis will show Elmer no mercy, but at this stage his target is not so much the soon-to-be preacher but the social and psychological context in which he is formed. In 1905, after two years study, he is ordained. She ignores the warning and they become a great success in the big city. She brings a Native feminist lens to the contemporary dance world with her body of work, the latest of which is Weave, a collaborative dance project. 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. PG. 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." 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. Playing the title character, Lancaster won his first and only Oscar, for Best Actor. Johnny Zell auf LinkedIn: Happy Birthday # 75..Barbara Lynn 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. The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Elmer Gantry shows the necessity and sincerity involved in these functions, as well as the dangers of falling into the trap of hypocrisy and greed, through its highly humanized leads, Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon Falconer. Gantry is bored by school, but Shallard is drawn to a professor who eventually confesses his atheism to Shallard. WebThere is a bit of a rough edit in the middle, because the scene is actually over 8 minutes long, and I needed to get it down to under 5 minutes. The purpose of Napap is to make life conform to the ideals agreed upon by the principal Christian Protestant denominations. This would be accomplished by combining into one association all the moral organizations in Americathe Anti-Saloon League, the Lords Day Alliance, the Watch and Ward Society, and the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Moralsand then lobbying for legislated morality. 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. 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. Elmer attends Mizpah Theological Seminary, a Baptist institution in Babylon, in the Midwest. And if I could still only be sure about the virgin birth! He is a gigantic, larger-than-life character. Frank Shallard has doubts while he is still at the Seminary. Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon Falconer, the two main religious leaders of the film, are portrayed as morally dubious though Gantry has a small redemption and Falconer clearly truly believes in her cause. Cleo Benham is the high-minded daughter of Nathaniel Benham. She is volatile, self-dramatizing, self-deceiving, self-promoting, cunning, playful, cynical, ambitious, and ruthlessa Cleopatra of the revivalist circuit. WebHow does the novel Elmer Gantry end? In this essay, Aubrey discusses how Lewiss characterization in Elmer Gantry serves his satiric purpose. 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. 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. Philip McGarry is the minister of the Arbor Methodist Church in Zenith. Gantry is portrayed as a smooth talking but frustrated salesman, struggling to make a living. AFI|Catalog - American Film Institute Jim observes his defeat from his bed, laid ill with a bug no doubt divinely-sent. 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). He meets Elmer on a steamer home from Europe and invites him to lecture on behalf of Napap. After a brief interlude with Mrs. Evans Riddles New Thought movement, and teaching Prosperity classes on his own, Elmer joins the Methodist Church. WebWhen hedonistic but charming con man Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) meets the beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), a roadside revivalist, he feigns piousness to join If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original Where she is quiet and gentle with her manner of preaching, he is all fire and brimstone, literally throwing himself about the audience and inflaming them into repentance. That night she seduces him. 2007 eNotes.com Gary H. Mayer, "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge". (540) 7.7 2 h 26 min 1960 13+. The character of Sharon Falconer was loosely based on events in the career of the Canadian-born American radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who founded the Pentecostal Christian denomination known as the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1927. FILM REVIEW: Burt Lancasters Oscar-Winning Elmer ( Elmer Gantry stirs soul, provokes thought was the headline in that mornings Tennessean.) Lewiss famed businessman character, George Babbitt, and pastors in the community discuss the merits of holding a revival in Zenith. We are going to find the golden Scriptures written in our own hearts, we are going to sing together, laugh together, rejoice together like a gathering of April brooks, rejoice that in us is living the veritable spirit of the Everlasting and Redeeming Christ Jesus!, Declining from this spirituality, she gives her gospel-crew a pep talk: lets hit people hard for money-pledges. Jean Simmons appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Drumhead (1991) as Rear Admiral Norah Satie. In the following essay excerpt, Light examines quixotic elements in Elmer Gantry. He thereby makes a defiant gesture, nonetheless, somewhat apart from his customary preoccupation with quixotic heroes whom he could admire for their protests, rebellion, and search for freedom. Many of the people attending the revivals would then be working-class individuals. 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. He is a simple, decent, pious man who is loved by his congregation. In Newark, New Jersey, Alvin Shipwreck Kelly sat atop a flagpole for twelve days, and in Chicago, the gangster Al Capone was tightening his grip on bootlegging. Lewis researched the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. 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. Binch is also a snob who has contempt for other preachers. Sharon Falconer is an equally striking example of his satiric power. It was on the steamer home that he met and became intimate with J. E. North, the renowned vice-slayer, executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Pressaffectionately known through all the evangelical world as the Napap. Mr. North was not a clergyman (though he was a warm Presbyterian layman), but no clergyman in the country had more furiously pursued wickedness, more craftily forced congressmen, through threats in their home districts, to see legislation in the same reasonable manner as himself. He successfully schemes to become pastor of the prestigious Yorkville Methodist Church in New York and the new executive secretary of Napap. WebElmer Gantry. 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'. 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. WebMake Your Picks. As the film progresses, we learned of Elmer Gantry's past especially his own previous desire to be a minister/preacher. Sharon Falconer is a charismatic evangelist who travels around the country holding spectacular revival meetings. Life opened before him, clean, joyous, full of the superb chances of a Christian knighthood. After several failed efforts to hear God calling him to the ministry, Gantry shares a bottle of whiskey with Jim and emerges with the feeling of having received the call. He also analyzes the characterization and structure of the novel and Lewiss occasional failure to integrate his story-telling with the social facts he presents. Elmers start at religious leadership is rocky. Sharons real name is Katie Jonas; she picked out the name Sharon Falconer when she was working as a stenographer. Lewis died of heart disease in Rome, Italy, in 1951. McPherson preached in southern California from 1918 to the 1940s. [2][3] He also thinks that Baptist leaders are word-splitting, text-twisting, applause-hungry, job-hunting, medieval-minded second-raters . Horace Carp hates the Baptists and wants to switch to the more upscale Episcopalians as soon as possible because this will give him a better social position in which he will be able to marry a nice rich girl. Brother Karkis only wants his divinity degree so he can get a better paying job. We see Gantry the narcissistic conman, Gantry the philanthropist, Gantry the flamboyant showman. 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. 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. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. 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. It seemed that perhaps the world had taken a step away from irrational belief. Elmer Gantry Analysis - eNotes.com Photographer Nancy Musinguzis recent photos captured the over 7,000 people []. 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. 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. Four men and two women crawled about a pillar, barking like dogs, barking the devil out of the tree.. For that matter, one year after Elmer Gantry, Burt Lancaster appeared in the same movie as William Shatner, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). (205) 348-6010 Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. Nashville Opera production directed by John Hoomes, conducted by William Boggs. SuperSummary | Literature Study Guides & Summaries Her voice was warm, a little husky, desperately alive. For such a high-spirited boy as Elmer, this was such a limited, stifling environment to grow up in that it effectively steered him away from the kind of occupation that would have suited him much better: It was lamentable to see this broad young man, who would have been so happy in the prize-ring, the fish-market, or the stock exchange, poking through the cobwebbed corridors of Terwillinger.. Indeed, why doesnt he? (Courtesy of Degebo, Berlin, Germany.) If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." -- Albert Schweitzer You're all doomed to perdition! WebVoila! James Benedict Moore, "The Sources of Elmer Gantry". 'Until the nineteenth century, actors were classed as Rogues & Vagrants. He has an affair with his secretary, who then tries to blackmail him, and only escapes ruin because he has a clever lawyer.
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