Retrieved February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/elmer-gantry. Everything conspires to overwhelm him and break down his defenses; he does not really have a chance. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. As a character, Dr. Gantry lacks verisimilitude, and he lacks it more the longer he lives.. Write a brief character sketch of Frank Shallard and describe his role in the novel. because Joness Lulu is a silly, air-spun girl. During this period, traditional religious believers were deeply disturbed by the encroachments made on faith by science and secularism. Schorer discusses Lewiss research for the novel, including the clergyman he met in Kansas City. Lewiss description of the service at which Elmer succumbs is compelling in its evocation of the rampant emotion of the occasion. In a sense it is more centrally concerned because the pull between the old American and the new American was so apparent in the religious controversies of the time. They make enough money to build a temple, and Sister Sharon falls for Elmer. It would end Sunday entertainment, curtail freedom of speech, and put restrictions on the rights of Catholics. 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. 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. Harry Sinclair Lewis, best known as Sinclair Lewis, was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Fired from the Seminary, he is hired as a traveling salesman of farm implements. He is immediately attracted to her and also sees her revival meetings as a way to make money. Im afraid! He replies, Thats damned nonsense! Later he says, Come on now, Clee, show some spunk! Making fun of her, he thinks, Fellow ought to be brutal, for her own sake. Brute, fake, or philanderer, Elmer Gantry seems nevertheless destined for a successful career. 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. 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. We didn't want to make just any bourbon--we wanted to make the best bourbon. He has an affair with female evangelist Sharon Falconer, which ends with her death in a flaming tabernacle. But he had never encountered vice . Elmer Gantry subtitles. Her main supporter is worldly William Morgan (Dean Jagger) who believes in Falconer, and sees Gantry and Lefferts for the opportunistic impediments they are. Burt Lancaster is bold and provocative as the title character who is preaching to you one moment and drunk and surly the other. There was a timebetween the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11when Elmer Gantry might have felt outdated. It's strange, the way this movie opens and builds so strongly, and then has such an unsatisfying ending. A popular singer with a voice like French silk pie, Page is most famous for her hit song Tennessee Waltz. When she first appears onscreen, shes got such presence you might think she was the main heroine. Many of my neighbors and friends see the furious posts on Facebook, with all the hysterical warnings about the imminent destruction of public education as we know it, and are honestly confused. A brooding look at revivalist religion in which the over-the-top acting of Burt Lancaster steals the show . Tough pla takes the ease of use of regular pla and steps it up. 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. She appears to Elmer as a saint, arms outstretched, stately, slender and tall, passionate. Lancaster is absolutely mesmerizing as "Elmer Gantry." Yet at the fire, it is Sharon who is heroic. Source: James Lundquist, Moralities for a New Time, in Sinclair Lewis, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1973, pp. Elmer Gantry Book Details Author Bio for Lewis, Sinclair Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was a noted American writer. She is volatile, self-dramatizing, self-deceiving, self-promoting, cunning, playful, cynical, ambitious, and ruthlessa Cleopatra of the revivalist circuit. WebToday universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. Although Elmer is clearly a self-centered individual from the beginning, Lewis presents him, up to and including his conversion, as being swept along by sociological and psychological forces over which he has no control. Institutionalized religion has attracted its fair share of satirical assaults in its time, but Elmer Gantry must surely rank as the most savage in American literature. The famous evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis Satans cohort.. The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. In his preparation for the ministry, it is ironic that Elmer plagiarizes his first (and most frequently useful) sermon from the social reformer Robert G. Ingersoll: Love is the only bow on lifes dark cloud. Equity is one part of a broader vision for the Hiawatha network of schools. . 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.. 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. Despite his doubts, and following Zechlins advice, Shallard decides to remain in the church. There is a good priest whose career runs counter to that of the bad priest Gantry, but he ceases to be a priest. Did he come to bring peace or more war? Come! In creating the evangelist Sharon Falconer, the author presents himself with a bigger, although more complex, target. "Elmer Gantry - Summary" Literary Essentials: Christian Fiction and Nonfiction He is not a deep thinker and does not really care whether the Baptist doctrines he preaches are true or false. 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. Higher criticism was a method of Biblical criticism that originated in Germany. Buy, Sell, and Trade your Firearms and Gear. Eddie spreads the word that Elmer, who has never shown any zeal for religion, has been converted. Light, Martin, The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis, Purdue University Press, 1975, pp. He became known in the 1920s for his books that satirized the spartan materialism and intolerance that Have faith! It was both a popular and critical success, selling 295,000 copies in the first year. He is rewarded by being appointed minister of the Wellspring Methodist Church in the large city of Zenith, where the worldly trustee, T. J. Rigg, advises him to bring in the crowds with a rousing sermon denouncing vice. 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). She sinks into Elmers arms. I am above sin! 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. Real name: David Terry. Introduction of Gantry Girder. Ferguson, Charles W., Review of Elmer Gantry, in Critical Essays on Sinclair Lewis, edited by Martin Bucco, G. K. Hall, 1986, pp. Though it makes its position on for-profit religious functions clear from the very beginning of the film, it attempts its critique in a fair manner. He is a well-educated Englishman in his early thirties with a colorful past. Named himself in honour of the character in the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry. Early in his preaching career he jilts a country girl who loves him and whom he has seduced. 98107. Hettie Dowler becomes Elmers secretary at Zenith when Elmer is already famous. She was reported missing after swimming off Venice Beach, California, turning up five weeks later in Mexico, claiming she had been kidnapped. 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. These help her to put on a dramatic show that wins many converts. His father was a physician. For the most part they are hypocrites, not even believing the doctrines they preach to their congregations every week. Initially, he is an enemy of Elmer and tries to prevent him from becoming president of the student body for the second time. He marries well and eventually obtains a large congregation in Lewis's fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. For two years, he helps her lead revival meetings in large cities, mastering the art of press advertising and fundraising. He will begin as a preacher in a small town, will enliven it and lift it. Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth century literature. As in the violent, unpredictable climax, Elmer Gantry lives and dies on a kind of roiling energy, a reaction that seems to be happening The publication day of Elmer Gantry found him wandering through Europe with Ramon Guthrie; from Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, he commented in the most innocent tones on the stir he had caused: The violent Kansas City blokes have been asinine. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry. Harry Zenz is a student at the Mizpah Theological Seminary. This site built with Project Largo from INN and proudly powered by WordPress. Chester Brown is a prominent Methodist preacher in Zenith and one of Elmers rivals. 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. He is coerced into becoming a minister because his family, his town, and his college are so tightly structured around the church. Lulu later meets Elmer again many years later in Zenith, where they resume their clandestine affair. 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 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. The clash between fundamentalists and liberals comes to a dramatic and violent climax in the final incident involving Shallard. Now famous, Elmers ambitions know no bounds, especially when he starts to work with the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press. In Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis uses the character of Elmer Gantry to represent, without nuance or ambiguity, what he viewed as the prototypical evangelical minister of his day: ambitious and charismatic; driven by his lust for women, money, and power; and completely unrepentant in his scorn for those who believe in the faith he deceptively proclaims. Hes the all-American salesman: hed believe, really believe, in anything he thought youd buy. I kept asking him about steelwhat its made of, what its used foruntil one day he said in exasperation, I dont care about steel. Starring Shirley Jones Arthur Kennedy Burt Lancaster Patti Page Jean Simmons. In "Elmer Gantry," Burt Lancaster gives one of the all-time great screen performances. In Elmer Gantry, the object of Lewiss satire is not only Elmer himselfwho after the tabernacle fire rescued at least thirty people who had already rescued themselves .but the entire clerical profession and the fundamentalist Protestant dogmas they represent. In it he established ties with Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. Elmer Gantry is a nuanced look at the world of evangelists and revivals. In 1905, after two years study, he is ordained. Its hero makes his way, with the help of native cunning and oratorical ability, through almost the whole domain of religion in the United States. It is Elmers Napoleonic ambition to combine all such organizations to the greater glory of himself: He would combine in one association all the moral organizations in Americaperhaps, later, in the entire world. 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. Ad Locust is a traveling salesman for the Pequot Farm Implement Company who befriends Elmer on the train to Monarch. It is not merely a case of the good priest versus the bad priest.

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