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. Webbest neighborhoods in san diego for young professionals. Co-stars Jean Simmons and Shirley Jones. As he gains experience, Elmer attempts to broaden his mind. 3945; originally published in New York Herald Tribune Books, March 13, 1927. Elmer Gantry Summary - eNotes.com Schorer also says that, while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that: "He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." You're all sinners. It tells of people in troubled times trying to sort out life's essential challenges. Discuss the issue of creationism and evolution. The couple abandons their campaign against Elmer and leave Lewis said, flatly enough, that religion in the United States has become stifling; that, like the pioneer economy and the pioneer mentality of which it is a manifestation, it has become a threat instead of a benefit. Elmer wants to marry her but she says she is too old for marriage (she is thirty-two, three or four years older than Elmer) and she must also remain free to devote herself to her missionary work. A Best Actor Oscar went to Burt Lancaster for his outstanding performance as a con-man-turned-preacher in this provocative indictment of religious corruption. Elmer despises him. He became known in the 1920s for his books that satirized the spartan materialism and intolerance that It is not so much that he does not believe in God. For the most part, he does not create complex human portraits but caricatures. She is looking to work in Applied Business Anthropology. In Elmer Gantry Lewis suggested that what is wrong with the small town, what is wrong with business practices, and even what is wrong with the intellectual attitudes that make it difficult for the scientist to go about his research honestly are all due to the hold Protestantism has on American consciousness. At Mizpah Theological Seminary, Elmer and his fellow students all smoke in their dormitory, even though smoking is practically forbidden. She tells Elmer that she has visions; God talks to her. Tries to give the kid a break. In Zenith, when a group of local clergymen meet as the Committee on Public Morals, they reveal a distinct lack of brotherly love amongst themselves: They all detested one another. Remembering Jean Simmons Photos - CBS News 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 . In another service a couple comes forward to ask that Falconer cure the husbands deafness. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Sharon Falconer is an equally striking example of his satiric power. Dooley argues that the novel fails because it is not a realistic portrayal of religion, and it lacks sufficient wit and humor to compensate for its unfairness. 23 Feb. 2023 . 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. Bill Morgan sees thru Elmer and tells Sharon that in 1917 he was expelled from the seminary for seducing the deacon's daughter. 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. 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. Dinner at the Governors Ball with Eddie Fisher. Sit down and take in everything this film is offering, you won't be disappointed. 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. The consulting analyst's duties generally include planning studies and analyses of the business problems or issues, the consultants have been asked to help resolve. The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. ", Movie Lacks Something, But a Stunning Lead Performance Isn't It. Although most entertaining when Gantry is actually preaching (mainly in the opening half of the film), the intelligent script moves on from it's basic premise (that Gantry is a charlatan) to explore wider questions of the nature of humanity and society. Reverend Dr. Willoughby Quarles is president of Terwillinger College. This is tantamount to an admission that the church is happy to receive money that is tainted by the very practices it denounces so vehemently. These help her to put on a dramatic show that wins many converts. A more elaborate kind of fantasy arises out of Lewiss belief that formal religion is based on the self-interest of its leaders. Bess Needham marries Frank Shallard and bears him three children. Elmer Gantry He retains his theological navet, however, and it is clear that his modernism is not sufficient. He is a complete hypocrite and a complete opportunist. 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. It would end Sunday entertainment, curtail freedom of speech, and put restrictions on the rights of Catholics. 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.. In 1944, his son Lieutenant Wells Lewis was killed in action in France during World War II. 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. When a Salvation Army worker enters, Gantry shocks and moves the crowd with an impromptu, impassioned sermon equating God with love. One famous evangelist was Gipsy Smith (18601947), an Englishman who made twenty-six trips to the United States. Im grateful to them for proving the book. Very few observers, however, thought that he had been as fair and dispassionate as he pretended; one comparatively balanced review of the novel was entitled Red Lewis in a Red Rage, and his former professor William Lyon Phelps declared in an interview that the book must have been written when Lewis was literally foaming at the mouth . Edwin Muir was one of the few critics who found some complexity in Lewiss attitude toward his central character; he thought this complexity was due to the division of intentions which was evident in other Lewis novelsLewis wanted to write both a satire and a novel, to indict his hero and to sympathize with him at the same time. He meets Elmer on a steamer home from Europe and invites him to lecture on behalf of Napap. Elmer Gantry Script 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! In the following essay excerpt, Light examines quixotic elements in Elmer Gantry. During the service one man begins speaking in tongues. His mind was shaped most of all by his souvenirs of his travel-adventures. Movies Podcasts Reviews Podcasts Reviews Elmer tries but fails to continue as an independent evangelist. Chester Brown is a prominent Methodist preacher in Zenith and one of Elmers rivals. His father was a physician. McPherson was involved in a scandal in 1926. WebElmer Gantry; Keith Phares, Sharon Falconer; Jennifer Rivera. I'm not talking about what happens just before the end, but WebWhen 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. Have faith! He is one haunted by his checkered past and his immorality. Sharon is supposed to be a firebrand, based on evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, part Houdini, part Teddy Roosevelt, who preached a dramatic God. Elmer cheats, he boasts, he lies, he deceives. 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. Even the physical description of Binch is calculated to evoke disgust: Dr. I can't say I've ever seen anything quite like it. They have better chemistry between them than Simmons and Lancaster did, but Elmer Gantry is the grandaddy of them all. 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? WebElmer Gantry has a great plot. 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). Dr. Otto Hickenlooper is a prominent Methodist minister in Zenith, and one of Elmers rivals. The relentless, unrelieved exposure of religious hypocrisy, while amusingly presented in parts, tends to become wearying. Edward Shillito, "Elmer Gantry and the Church in America", This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 16:54. 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. Shallard is then attacked by religious fanatics and blinded. Gary H. Mayer, "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge". 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. They also decried the growth within the church of the higher criticism, that sought to understand the Bible based on modern methods of scholarship. For all his wisdom, he speaks in platitudes, although Lewis does give him one searing moment of insight. Edward A. Martin, "The Mimic as Artist: Sinclair Lewis". I'm sure back in 1960, this film must have been pretty controversial, shocking and challenging in its portrayal of evangelistic religion as cynical, money-grabbing and being as much about show business as God. Elmer forces him to resign by questioning his religious beliefs, after which Shallard gets a job with the Charity Organization Society. Required fields are marked *. 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. She wore expensive clothes and jewelry and put on a spectacular show. Both time and cost are saved by the high efficiency. There was a timebetween the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11when Elmer Gantry might have felt outdated. McPherson preached in southern California from 1918 to the 1940s. Salesman Elmer Gantry, salesman teams up with evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer to sell religion to 1920s America. A novel set from 1920 to 1922 in Zenith, an imaginary midwestern American city; published in 1922. (205) 348-6010 He ends up as minister of a large church in a West Virginia mining town. After he had become a celebrity, Lewis usually managed to avoid controversy over his books by being out of the United States when they appeared. The attendants give her their money, she leaves after a short period of time, and then the attendants are no better off and short on money. Lulu Bains is the daughter of Barney Bains. When he teams up with evangelist Sister Falconer, he sells religion from a tent to 1920's America, helping Falconer with her aim of getting out of the tent into her own temple and building a proper congregation. Gantry maintains friendships with most pastors in Zenith but loathes Philip McGarry, a pastor in a poor neighborhood who has been a friend and mentor to Shallard. 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.
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