The result is a novel that satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it. He is invited by a group of scholars to go on a lecture tour to oppose religious fundamentalism, but his first lecture, in a city in the southwest, he is interrupted by local toughs. He is a simple, decent, pious man who is loved by his congregation. According to such people: A proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called Fundamentalists., Christian beliefs about the proper observance of Sundays also comes under heavy satirical fire in this passage: [T]he Maker of a universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.. Elmers start at religious leadership is rocky. 4748; originally published in the Bookman, March 1927. 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. Go out slowly! eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. The impact of religion on Elmer Gantry symbolizes what it has done to the American spirit. On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. He has been educated by Roger Williams, Adoniram Judson, Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, George Washington, Lincoln, Robert Ingersoll, William James, and Frasers Golden Bough. REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities, Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, Humans and Nazis: Reevaluating the Conversation of. 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. He is influenced by the atheistic Dr. Zechlin who lends him theological works by liberals and skeptics. , Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, McGraw Hill, 1961, pp. Gary H. Mayer, "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge". 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. "Elmer Gantry In order to conquer her, he must use his extensive repertoire of biblical quips, quotes and bawdy antidotes. In "Elmer Gantry," Burt Lancaster gives one of the all-time great screen performances. In fact, the film could be seen as prescient, as both religious revivalism, and celebrity-scandal driven journalism (another of its subjects), have arguably become more prevalent since it was made. 3945; originally published in New York Herald Tribune Books, March 13, 1927. 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. SYNOPSIS Undoubtedly many of the excesses Lewis describes, especially those connected with revivalism, deserve the treatment they get. Four men and two women crawled about a pillar, barking like dogs, barking the devil out of the tree.. When Gantry is framed as a philanderer, both Falconer and Gantry endure the wrath of an angry public in Zenith, but are quickly restored to their pedestals upon a retraction. I'm not talking about what happens just before the end, but Early in his preaching career he jilts a country girl who loves him and whom he has seduced. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. In 1944, his son Lieutenant Wells Lewis was killed in action in France during World War II. You could even argue that Gantry is performing a kind of public service, meeting a need with maximum opportunism but without malice. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Well, he didn't disappoint here, either, with a fantastic performance as those of you who have seen this already know. 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. Their satisfaction comes from functioning healthily, from physical and mental exercise, whether it be playing tennis or tackling an astronomical problem. While this notion of religious rites on the tennis court is rather curious, Lewis seems nevertheless to acknowledge a religious impulse, even if he would eliminate God and organized churches. The acting and directing is superb to the point that it becomes difficult to remember that it is only a movie. His dissatisfaction with his life, as well as his drinking, lying, and philandering give the audience a portrait of an unsavory man. Is there really a conflict between science and religion, between reason and faith, or can the two live in harmony? When I was a youngster fascinated by the Batman TV show and Lost in Space, I saw Elmer Gantry for the first time. The sociological factor that works against Elmer is the entire small-town Protestant environment in which he was raised. After exposing the professors secret, Gantry receives an anonymous gift of thirty dimes, which he uses to buy photographs of strippers. I love the big onesmurder, lust, cruelty, ambition! She invites Elmer to visit the old Falconer place in Virginia, but when they arrive, she confesses that she is really just Katie Jonas, born in Utica, whose father worked in a brickyard. 73738. 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. Still, Falconer dies for her beliefs and is shown to fervently believe in God; she clearly wants to save people. His mind was shaped most of all by his souvenirs of his travel-adventures. 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. Under pressure from Elmer, Shallard resigns. Elmer loves to preach against immorality but feels no need to be moral himself. In creating the evangelist Sharon Falconer, the author presents himself with a bigger, although more complex, target. Liking the idea of having power over an audience, Elmer convinces himself he has been called to the ministry. 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. Duke mentioned that he would love to play Puck, []. Source: David J. Dooley, Aspiration and Enslavement, in The Art of Sinclair Lewis, University of Nebraska Press, 1967, pp. 12630. We are all bored by tired old men explaining the Bible through their noses! WebMoward Consultancy Inc. Why does Lewis include him in the book? Sharon is supposed to be a firebrand, based on evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, part Houdini, part Teddy Roosevelt, who preached a dramatic God. One famous evangelist was Gipsy Smith (18601947), an Englishman who made twenty-six trips to the United States. Did he come to bring peace or more war? John K. Roth. The target of his earthly desires is Beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) a sincere, but fallible woman out to build a ministry. After a brief interlude with Mrs. Evans Riddles New Thought movement, and teaching Prosperity classes on his own, Elmer joins the Methodist Church. It's a first rate film! It comes when Elmer regales Pengilly with a self-congratulatory story about the success of Elmers ministry in Zenith. You're all sinners. Edward J. Piacentino, "Babbittry Southern Style: T. S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral". McGarry accidentally reveals Shallards doubts to Gantry, so Gantry uses them to defame Shallard as part of a campaign to raise money for a new church building. 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. 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. 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 . [5], However, the book was a commercial success. He is also too bad to be true. Already a member? If there was a soul to be saved - Gantry would save it. Elmer Gantry is a fast talking, hard drinking traveling salesman who always has a risqu story and a hip flask to entertain cronies and customers alike. 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. He marries well and eventually obtains a large congregation in Lewis's fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. Within the sphere of a traveling troupe of bible beating, evangelicals on a religious crusade, the author's hero, one Elmer Gantry (supurbly played by Oscar wining Burt Lancaster) is as energetic as his tales. WebIn the 1920s, Elmer Gantry entertains a group of fellow salesmen in a speakeasy with his ribald jokes and easy charm. Barney Bains is a deacon at the Baptist church in Schoenheim and the father of Lulu. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.. In Zenith, Elmer meets Bishop Toomis, a prominent figure in the Methodist Church. Bill Morgan sees thru Elmer and tells Sharon that in 1917 he was expelled from the seminary for seducing the deacon's daughter. Your email address will not be published. The result would be the fascist state against which Babbitt, in anticipation of 1984, warns. Besides being an effective satire targeted against religious hypocrisy, Elmer Gantry provides insight into the clash of cultural forces in America in the 1920s. Novels for Students. He had been a solitary in college, generous but fastidious, jarred by his classmates belching and sudden laughter. Like Carol Kennicott, he suffers a betrayal by books, for his reasoning had been turned from an examination of men as mammals to the mystic theories of souls and their salvation. One device after another is employed to introduce him to new denominations and round out the picture. 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. 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. As a preacher, he shamelessly plays on peoples emotions and their fear of Hell. A brooding look at revivalist religion in which the over-the-top acting of Burt Lancaster steals the show . Wallace Umstead is a student Mizpah Theological Seminary who becomes the secretary of the Zenith Y.M.C.A. WebElmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a slick traveling salesman who is a boozer and a dog hound. As with any service, the revivals in Elmer Gantry would not be put on if the pastors and congregations of these areas did not have a demand for them. 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. 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. 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. On publication, Elmer Gantry had a sensational reception. OFFICIAL 2023 FORMULA 1 THREAD: Bahrain GP TOMORROW 3/5 There are glimmers of this in Sister Sharon Falconer, like when she admits that she knows Gantry is lying but allows him to continue preaching because she believes it is for the greater good. Nothing reveals Lewiss isolation from an overview of life more clearly than the way he dismisses religion. But occasionally Lewis tries to endow him with a soul, as in the incident of his conversion at Terwillinger College. While there are multiple factors for this, a significant part of this increase is due to the incarceration of formerly released individuals [], On the afternoon of Saturday, June 30, Minneapolis was one of 600 cities and towns across the country to come alive with thousands of people vigorously and collectively denouncing the U.S. governments federal immigration policies as part of the Families Belong Together nationwide march. He meets Elmer on a steamer home from Europe and invites him to lecture on behalf of Napap. McPherson preached in southern California from 1918 to the 1940s. He plans to quit the church and get a good job selling real estate. Elmer Gantry subtitles Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. Elmer Gantry He is immediately His widowed mother was owned by the church, we are told, and the fact that the boy was fatherless is less important than that the church could not provide Elmer with principles. Starring Shirley Jones Arthur Kennedy Burt Lancaster Patti Page Jean Simmons. Elmer Gantry 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. A Century of Burt Lancaster series: http://take-up.org/series/94, The Trylon Microcinema is located at 3258 Minnehaha Ave. S.Minneapolis, MN 55406424-5468, Trylon Discount cards$25 for 5 tickets, cards can be redeemed for 1 or 2 seats at a time (on the day of show). In fact, the film's theatricality can almost be seen as a strength, for it's constructed like a well-written play. He is a worldly man and gives Elmer some shrewd advice about how to build up the church. 10 Video Games That Need a Live Action Adaptation, 2023's Most Anticipated Sequels, Prequels, and Spin-offs. In this essay, Aubrey discusses how Lewiss characterization in Elmer Gantry serves his satiric purpose. I am above sin! On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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'. Gantrys beliefs are left ambiguous, as are his motives for evangelizing. Elmer Gantry" by Sinclair Lewis Good drama that had the potential to be one of the greats. It looks like we don't have any synopsis for this title yet. 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. ", Movie Lacks Something, But a Stunning Lead Performance Isn't It. Jones is too frothy, but when she appears halfway through, she adds bubbles to a long movie that was starting to go flat. In 1905, after two years study, he is ordained. Jim tries to persuade Elmer not to go along with it, but when Elmer attends the Annual Prayer Week he cannot resist the emotionalism of the service. A lady runs by Elmer in a blue jacket, and her jacket is on fire. 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. Originally a London soul band called Five Proud Walkers, they threw their lot in with Mark Schorer, in his biography of Lewis, records a remark that Lewis made to his friend Richards Brooks in 1946. 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 steady accumulation of damning portraits of those whose spiritual home is the Protestant church, and the lack of any serious counterweight to them, led Rebecca West, in a hostile review of Elmer Gantry that first appeared in 1927, to write that Lewis lacked the necessary requirement of the satirist, which was to fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others. Wests point was that Lewis effectively exposes the charlatans and the way they misuse their power, but fails to show how that religious power might better be used. Harry Sinclair Lewis, best known as Sinclair Lewis, was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Ed. 3D Printer - Discovering the Four-Laser SLM 500 HL 3D Printer 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. Those who believe in the doctrines of the church are presented as fools or morons, and are easy targets for malicious fun. One of the first scenes with Sister Sharon Falconer involves her asking for donations from these people. Binch stopped gulping his fried pork chops and held out a flabby, white, holy hand.. Religion, can't 'live' with it, can't live without it Good drama that had the potential to be one of the greats, Worth seeing even if time has lessened its controversial value. And if I could still only be sure about the virgin birth! For the evangelists, the irrational is valued more highly than the rational, but for the novelist, the reverse holds true. But it certainly was worth the wait. The college president declares that he is a born preacher, and everyone urges him to become a minister. Lit by fire, Lancaster (Elmer Gantry) preaches to a crowd. 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. The film isn't just about rural religion in the 1920s, or how media is exploited, or how sometimes clever hucksters can outwit themselves. 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. You're all doomed to perdition! Kraus used []. 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 one haunted by his checkered past and his immorality. However, these were exercises in popular, rather than literary, fiction. 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. Juanita Klauzel is Elmers girlfriend in Cato, Missouri, when he is a student at Terwillinger College. 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. . 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. Hes the all-American salesman: hed believe, really believe, in anything he thought youd buy. Elmer Gantry It's sophisticated script, complex characters, and wonderful acting opened a whole new world for me. But was booted out of seminary for seducing the preachers daughter, Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones). The result is as discouraging, as horrifying, as it would have been if Huck had been converted by Miss Watsons Bible stories. Elmer Gantry Elmer reads Browning, Tennyson, Dickens. When she overhears Gantry seducing their pianist, she fires them, but Gantry convinces her to reconsider. Bess Needham marries Frank Shallard and bears him three children. 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. Once Gantry accuses the city government of protecting the brothels and drug dealers, he becomes one of the most powerful men in Zenith. Dooley, D. J., The Art of Sinclair Lewis, University of Nebraska Press, 1967, pp. 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). 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 seems to have had a particular loathing of the conversion experience that is so central to Protestant spirituality. ), Elmers friend Jim Lefferts, a freethinker, has a somewhat wider list than Elmer: an encyclopedia, Pickwick, Swinburne, Ingersoll, and Paine. Elmer Gantry | novel by Lewis | Britannica He urges Elmer to become a minister. 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). 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. There Novels for Students. Lewis, C.S. eNotes.com, Inc. British guitarist and vocalist. Protestant fundamentalism was in part a reaction in the early twentieth century to the development of the higher criticism in Biblical scholarship. He was supposed to bring peace to mankind. 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. The journey of Judge Joan Lefkow Hartford Courant He advises Elmer not to denounce vice directly, by naming names and giving addresses of illegal drinking places, because the owners of such buildingswho of course have no knowledge of any illegal activitiesare often leading church contributors and attacking them would jeopardize their support for the church. Only the novels It Cant Happen Here (1935) and Kingsblood Royal (1947) have stood the test of time.