British guitarist and vocalist. Gaining and keeping followers is the key to the success of any religion, and religious leaders must recognize this and figuratively, though sometimes literally, sell the religion. The debate between fundamentalists and liberals is conducted amongst the students at Mizpah. WebDownload scientific diagram | 7 Vibro compaction employing wooden gantry, 1939. In the novel, when Elmer takes up his first appointment in a small-town Methodist church, one of the first questions the fundamentalist trustees asks him is, Do any monkeying with this higher criticism? Against the tide of modernist thought that included science and secularism, fundamentalists insisted on the truth of their core doctrines, including the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, the atonement, the infallibility of the Scriptures, and the second coming of Christ. The public has the power to end the careers of Falconer and Gantry; however, Gantry and Falconer sell the revivals, and eventually Falconers church, in a way that pleases the public. The film is beautifully visual and as Elmer Gantry's past comes haunting again to tarnish the tent revival and watch Gantry and Sister Sharon fall again. When Deacon Bains discovers Gantrys affair with Lulu and forces him to propose, Gantry tricks another man into an entanglement with Lulu and is released from the engagement. Using his sales techniques, especially on one of Sister Sharon's underlings, the nave Sister Rachel, Elmer is able infiltrate her entourage. We are back in the land of wizards and ogres once more. How would you describe his demeanor? He will begin as a preacher in a small town, will enliven it and lift it. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. I'm not talking about what happens just before the end, but Elmer Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. 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. 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. Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger in 1914, and they had one son, Wells, in 1917. Opposition to the movement was vicious; Fosdick was ousted from his New York pulpit, and in the Bible Belt and the deep south, fundamentalism cranked itself up into a powerful machine that found expression through anti-evolution measures volumes of blue laws, and the Ku Klux Klan. ( Elmer Gantry stirs soul, provokes thought was the headline in that mornings Tennessean.) Happiness is the key to success. It is the hour! The target of his earthly desires is Beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) a sincere, but fallible woman out to build a ministry. You're all sinners. Not now! In Bible stories, in the words of the great hymns, in the anecdotes which the various preachers, quoted, he had his only knowledge of literature. Lewis exercises his bitterness against the failures of the church by making the church itself accountable for Elmers being no better educated. But the honest man who dares to live according to his convictions, and to speak about them in public, has no place in a superstitious society; when he gives an antifundamentalist lecture, Frank is beaten and blinded. WebElmer Gantry was a labor of love for Brooks, who had dreamed of filming Lewis's novel for more than a decade and spent two years writing the script, which won the Oscar for Best Pengilly sees through him with the spiritual eye of an eagle, and asks, Mr. He is taken with Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) who runs revival meetings. During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a sincere minister, Frank Shallard, who is plagued by doubt. Named himself in honour of the character in the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry. I can kiss you like this Quickly she touches his cheek, Yes, or passionately, terribly passionately, and it would only symbolize my complete union with Jesus! In Nebraska, he attends a meeting of the evangelist Sharon Falconer. When a charismatic preacher comes to town for a revival meeting, he seeks out Gantry and tricks him into attending. 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. A more elaborate kind of fantasy arises out of Lewiss belief that formal religion is based on the self-interest of its leaders. Nevertheless, Lewis supplies sufficient background to account for Elmers going into the ministry. Gantry was in the middle of trying to settle down and marry Sharon when she saw that shooting star at the end, and from that moment, she seemed to feel truly touched by God. With the characterization and strong personalities of these two characters, it is easy to assume a one-sided relationship between Gantry and Falconer and their congregants, but this is not the case. He marries Cleo but gets bored with her and resents her lack of sexual passion. He cribs some passages from a book and then gives a rousing sermon. Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. The inspiration for Falconer, Aimee Semple McPherson, on the other hand, was thought of as a celebrity, and many felt her intentions were dubious. 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. Everyone congratulates him on his conversion. And yet Lewiss attitude to his character is a little more complex than this long list of his faults might suggest. Edward A. Martin, "The Mimic as Artist: Sinclair Lewis". It is not so much that he does not believe in God. In fact, the film's theatricality can almost be seen as a strength, for it's constructed like a well-written play. But in the house of Elmers mistress, Lulu Bains, they sing and read Seeing Nelly Home, Old Black Joe, Beulah Land, Farm and Fireside, and Modern Priscilla. Novels for Students. During his Yale career Lewis also traveled widely, including a trip to England working on a cattle boat, and he also lived in the Utopian colony at Englewood, New Jersey, which was founded by the novelist Upton Sinclair. 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. The one completely positive character in the book, Frank Shallard, wants to make Christianity an active force for social good; as it is, it is a negative force, a threat to freedom. Lynnell Mickelsen: Why all the conspiracy theories and pearl-clutching in this years school board race. He had learned to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. Franks mentor has been Father Pengilly, a fanciful figure whom we have already discussed. Religion was a force in politics, yes, but a force capable of bringing down buildings? 98107. ", Movie Lacks Something, But a Stunning Lead Performance Isn't It. 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. The film leaves the realities of these mystical happenings up to interpretation, and so gives the congregants active, if small, roles in the narrative. Although it's difficult to know if Gantry's spiritual motivation is genuine or merely a ploy, throughout the film, one is kept guessing. After Elmer dumps her for Hettie, Lulu loses interest in life. Shirley Jones won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the preachers daughter turned prostitute. This film is not only good; it misses being great by a narrow margin. Reverend Andrew Pengilly is the old pastor of the Catawba Methodist Church. I think she does a brilliant job but I wished that she had more speaking moments. The movie is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Minnesotas own Nobel Prizewinning author, Sinclair Lewis. Was a member of the of the bogus Fleetwood Mac band, that the then manager Clifford Davis send on a US tour in 1974 when the real Fleetwood Mac rejected the tour. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. Excellent recounting based on the controversial Sinclair Lewis novel that got three Academy Awards . They are encouraged by Dr. Zechlin, who tells him that no reasonable person can be a believing Christian; nevertheless, he ought to stay in the church to liberalize it from withinin effect, to destroy it. 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. 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. Thus, Schorer concludes, there is no pressure upon Elmer to be forced into a position of new self-awareness. Good drama that had the potential to be one of the greats. Lewiss version of what passed for religion in the United States of the 1920s brought him threats against his life and gave his name the same rhetorical function in Protestant fundamentalist sermons as that of Clarence Darrow, Darwin, and the devil himself. Sharon Falconer is an equally striking example of his satiric power. Elmer Gantry sets out to do just that in the world of evangelical revivalists, and an examination of the complicated relationship between the congregations and the religious leaders of the film may help illuminate the popularity of many religious movements, even those that appear to be a farce from the outside. The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. But Elmer does have a program in Napap, which he hopes will make him something of a moral dictator. 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 cheats, he boasts, he lies, he deceives. Webbest neighborhoods in san diego for young professionals. . But he did not achieve the heights of success he had enjoyed during the 1920s. When Lefferts asks Reverend Quarles, the college president, an awkward question about some passages in the Bible, Quarles tells him not to question the ways of the Lord. Harry Zenz does not believe a word of what he is taught at the seminary. Elmer loathes him but Frank Shallard regards him as a friend. Elmer Gantry, then, is notable as the book in which Lewis moved religion to the center of his critique of American values and declared it to have failed. 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. On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. Singer Patti Page in her first film role, with Burt Lancaster, in "Elmer Gantry", Opening title of "Elmer Gantry" (1960), directed by Richard Brooks, Richard Brooks directs Burt Lancaster and Shirley Jones in "Elmer Gantry", Jean Simmons & Lancaster: Italian movie poster for "Elmer Gantry", Shirely Jones (2nd from left) & Lancaster (far right), with Oscars, 1961, Lancaster as Elmer Gantry: "When I was a child, I understood as a child", Rosy Simas of Rosy Simas Danse is Haudenosaunee, Seneca, Heron Clan. 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. 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. 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