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. "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. Elmer Gantry - Wikipedia 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. His mind was shaped most of all by his souvenirs of his travel-adventures. In 1905, after two years study, he is ordained. In the following essay excerpt, Light examines quixotic elements in Elmer Gantry. Paperback June 3, 2014. 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. 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." But while Elmers career ascends, that of the honest Frank Shallard, who goes to the seminary with Elmer, descends to the point where Frank is beaten up by members of the Ku Klux Klan for preaching what he believes to be the truth. He wont harm you! Equity is one part of a broader vision for the Hiawatha network of schools. He goes to live with his niece and dies within two years. WebElmer Gantry. It's strange, the way this movie opens and builds so strongly, and then has such an unsatisfying ending. Binch stopped gulping his fried pork chops and held out a flabby, white, holy hand.. 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. 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 sociological factor that works against Elmer is the entire small-town Protestant environment in which he was raised. 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. Kraus used []. It applied the methods of historical and literary analysis in order to determine the authorship, date and place of composition of the books of the Bible. 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. Shallard is forced to resign. They have better chemistry between them than Simmons and Lancaster did, but Elmer Gantry is the grandaddy of them all. 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. Elmer Gantry 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. He later becomes a lawyer. 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. What are his leading characteristics? Elmer Gantry | novel by Lewis | Britannica On his return, Elmer meets J. George Killough, "Elmer Gantry, Chaucer's Pardoner, and the Limits of Serious Words". During the 1930s and 1940s, Lewis published a further nine novels, as well as plays and short stories. Lulu Bains is the daughter of Barney Bains. One should imagine instead, I think, that she might have the same great-grandaddy as President Lyndon Baines Johnson: Baptist preacher George Baines. In Nebraska, he attends a meeting of the evangelist Sharon Falconer. Elmer of course towers above everyone else in the novel. ", Jesus was a simple virtuous teacher, . 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. WebSpecialties: Welcome to Garrison Brothers, home of the first and oldest legal whiskey distillery in Texas. Starring Shirley Jones Arthur Kennedy Burt Lancaster Patti Page Jean Simmons. Elmer Gantry may have a rather unsavoury past but the one thing he can do better than anyone is sell himself, pots, pans, anything. 73738. You could even argue that Gantry is performing a kind of public service, meeting a need with maximum opportunism but without malice. 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. He is a born salesman well versed with the bible. After exposing the professors secret, Gantry receives an anonymous gift of thirty dimes, which he uses to buy photographs of strippers. Miss West points to Frank Shallards accusation against Jesus: Did He ever suggest sanitation, which would have saved millions from plagues? She comments, As for the suggestion that Christ should have halted on the way to the Cross to recommend the American bathroom, it ought to go into the Americana section of the American Mercury. She concludes her essay as follows: If [Lewis] would sit still so that life could make any deep impression on him, if he would attach himself to the human tradition by occasionally reading a book which would set him a standard of profundity, he could give his genius a chance. Miss West expresses a prevailing attitude toward Lewis, but she does not, I think, understand what his best books accomplished. 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. There they meet their host, Deacon Bains, and his daughter Lulu, an ingenue whom Gantry continually tries to seduce. Gantry befriends a famous criminal attorney, T. J. Rigg, who becomes his adviser and confidant. 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. The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. AKA: Elmer Gantry, le charlatan. 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. In this essay, Aubrey discusses how Lewiss characterization in Elmer Gantry serves his satiric purpose. Here she kneels. Throughout the novel, clergymen and the church are presented in an extremely unflattering light. When a Salvation Army worker enters, Gantry shocks and moves the crowd with an impromptu, impassioned sermon equating God with love. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." -- Albert Schweitzer It tells of people in troubled times trying to sort out life's essential challenges. Her main supporter is worldly William Morgan (Dean Jagger) who believes in Falconer, and sees Gantry and Lefferts for the opportunistic impediments they are. In a scene where Gantry and Falconer are hoping to get funding to set up their revival in the city of Zenith, lack of attendance is straightforwardly given as the reason for seeking out the revival. And she does look sexy in a slip. 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 confesses his love for her and they begin an affair, peppering their lovemaking with religious imagery. Oh, my dear people, my dear people, I am not going to preach tonightwe are all so weary of nagging sermons about being nice and good! Edward J. Piacentino, "Babbittry Southern Style: T. S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral". Lewis, C.S. This site built with Project Largo from INN and proudly powered by WordPress. A novel set from 1920 to 1922 in Zenith, an imaginary midwestern American city; published in 1922. After she admits to Elmer that she loves to dance, she says, Oh, of course I roast dancing in my sermons, but I meanwhen its with people like us, that understand, its not like with worldly people, where it would lead to evil. It is not hard to see how she and Elmer are a perfect match. I'm not talking about what happens just before the end, but 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. The target of his earthly desires is Beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) a sincere, but fallible woman out to build a ministry. The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. Lewiss famed businessman character, George Babbitt, and pastors in the community discuss the merits of holding a revival in Zenith. Sharon Falconer is an equally striking example of his satiric power. Sign In Blessed Virgin, Mother Hera, Mother Frigga, Mother Ishtar, Mother Isis, dread Mother Astarte of the weaving arms, it is thy priestess . They read from the Song of Solomon. The psychological factor that works against Elmer is the mechanics of the conversion experience. During his final year he is restless and bored, but he is given a Sunday appointment at a country church in Schoenheim, eleven miles away, with Frank Shallard as his assistant. WebMake Your Picks. For two years, he helps her lead revival meetings in large cities, mastering the art of press advertising and fundraising. Undoubtedly many of the excesses Lewis describes, especially those connected with revivalism, deserve the treatment they get. He calls out to God for help. He is drawn back to preaching when he falls in love with Sharon Falconer, and he hones his publicity and fundraising skills with her for several years until her death. Elmer Gantry Ed. Elmer Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. On his first visit in 1889, he held campaigns in cities from Boston to San Francisco. [2][3] Initially, he is an enemy of Elmer and tries to prevent him from becoming president of the student body for the second time. He was supposed to bring peace to mankind. 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. Harry Zenz is a student at the Mizpah Theological Seminary. Bains and Naylor confront Elmer at the Seminary and tell him he must marry Lulu. WebElmer Gantry. Russia is a European country. As Elmer (Burt Lancaster) is a saleman with a powerfully persusive tongue who joins up Sister Sharon Falconer (glamorous Jean Simmons) along with her colleagues , Sister Rachel (Patti Page) , William L. Morgan (Dean Jagger) touring grass-roots evengelist circus during the depressed twenties . Reverend Jacob Trosper is the dean and chief executive of Mizpah Theological Seminary. But the arts and the sentiments and the sentimentalitiesthey were for Elmer perpetually associated only with the church. Gantry becomes her lover, but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle. 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. Some while later Shallard goes on a lecture tour to speak against fundamentalism. Even Gantry wouldnt have been such a bad fellow if hed been, say, a salesman. Only a very curious moral outlook could have permitted the creator of such a monster as Elmer Gantry to say that his characters lack of a sense of decency would not have been objectionable if he had changed his profession . 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. 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? 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. There is a definite give and take between Gantry and Falconer and the congregants in Elmer Gantry. Juanita Klauzel is Elmers girlfriend in Cato, Missouri, when he is a student at Terwillinger College. Gantry is an over-the-top opportunistic traveling salesman who teams up with evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) to promote religion in 1920's America. Gary H. Mayer, "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge". He meets Elmer on a steamer home from Europe and invites him to lecture on behalf of Napap. Anative of the midwestern United States, Sinclair Lewis (18851951) chronicled through novels, THE LITERARY WORK 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. He marries Cleo but gets bored with her and resents her lack of sexual passion. It comes when Elmer regales Pengilly with a self-congratulatory story about the success of Elmers ministry in Zenith. McGarry is accused by the fundamentalists of heresy, and he does not seem to accept the traditional dogmas of the Methodist Church: [T]he only dogma he was known to give out positively was the leadership of Jesusas to whose divinity he was indefinite.. Jim doubts the literal truth of the Bible and has contempt for the church. Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. The dean sends Gantry and classmate Frank Shallard to pastor a nearby church.
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