Kraus used []. If all of them are there, he says. But unlike Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantrys rise is depicted negatively. Elmer is forced to agree, but promises himself he will find a way out of the engagement. After a brief interlude with Mrs. Evans Riddles New Thought movement, and teaching Prosperity classes on his own, Elmer joins the Methodist Church. (205) 348-6010 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." On May 25, 2016, St. Paul School Resource Officer Bill Kraus forcibly arrested then 19-year-old Darion Bell outside of St. Paul Central High School. As in Babbitt and Arrowsmith, we are made aware that there are sinister forces combining to strike at the very foundations of American liberties. There is no character development, and so Elmer, after his character is first established, does not change during the course of the novel. He is immediately taken with Sister Sharon Falconer, a lay preacher whose hellfire-and-damnation revivalism has attracted quite a following. Four men and two women crawled about a pillar, barking like dogs, barking the devil out of the tree.. He ends up as minister of a large church in a West Virginia mining town. New collections from David Bowie, Wilco, Joni Mitchell, Joe Strummer and more Elmer despises him. The congregation slowly begins to join back in and Gantry begins to solo with the 'Until the nineteenth century, actors were classed as Rogues & Vagrants. James Benedict Moore, "The Sources of Elmer Gantry". 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. 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. In another scene, Falconer exhibits pride and materialism when she admits that she always wanted her own church with a giant glowing cross. Elmer Gantry is as lost as those who followed in the tent revivals that swept the country during hard times. His specialty is in denouncing vice, and in Zenith he even leads a police raid on the local dens of iniquity. The last date is today's 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. He first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger, pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. He also raised large amounts of money at his meetings, and like Elmer Gantry, he was one of he first evangelists to spread his message through the new technology of radio. 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. Anative of the midwestern United States, Sinclair Lewis (18851951) chronicled through novels, THE LITERARY WORK Shallard attempts to stand against Gantrys attempts to destroy him, but eventually he resigns from his pulpit. Over seventy-five years after it first appeared, Elmer Gantry still has power to shock as well as amuse. 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. Burt Lancaster acted in a number of excellent films during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Edward J. Piacentino, "Babbittry Southern Style: T. S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral". One famous evangelist was Gipsy Smith (18601947), an Englishman who made twenty-six trips to the United States. Elmer Gantry and his roommate, Jim Lefferts, have traveled from their college in Kansas to Cato, Missouri, to see their girlfriends. These blossoming words, these organ-like phrases, these profound notions, had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use. This tended to undermine the uniqueness of Christianity and the literal interpretation of the Bible. Think about how Jim would view Elmer, and how he might react to what Elmer says. 2007 eNotes.com Elmer is, obviously enough, an example of the latter. Equity is one part of a broader vision for the Hiawatha network of schools. One such character is the dean of Terwillinger College, who makes a brief appearance in chapter 4, section 3, in which he wonders, in conversation with his wife, whether he has sacrificed too much by going into the ministry. The Lancastic! Gantry becomes her lover, but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many evangelists, like Elmer and Sharon Falconer in the novel, who traveled around the country conducting revival campaigns for large audiences. They were outside of respectable societylike Kingsand I am not sure but that this was better for their art and their happiness than to be classed as lecturers, tax-payers, tennis-players, suburban householders, and lovers of dogs.' Elmer Gantry was drunk, the novel opens, and Lancaster is terrific as the boozing, womanizing traveling salesman.Gantry is a believer, of a sort. In a very Elmer Gantry moment, starting at 2:54, after singing the Lord gave us two good hands, brothers and sisters, one for the givin and one for the takin, Diamond stretches out his hand toward a young woman who places in Gantry is portrayed as a smooth talking but frustrated salesman, struggling to make a living. 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. Fired from the ministry after going drinking rather than contacting his new church, he works for two years as a traveling salesman. [2][3] I am really and truly sanctified! Then read chapter 30, section 5, where Jim reappears. He hates piety and prefers drunkenness, profanity, and seducing women. 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. He is no Harry Zenz or Bruno Zechlin, who have both thought deeply about theology and have emerged as atheists. Gantry's entire repertoire is performed with encyclopedic thoroughness and accuracy. To his understanding of Lewiss art, Jones seems to add firsthand knowledge about wartime religious revivals. For several sessions of congress he had backed a bill for a federal censorship of all fiction, plays, and moving pictures, with a penitentiary sentence for any author mentioning adultery even by implication, ridiculing prohibition, or making light of any Christian sect or minister. He says both. Most distressing of all, says Frank, the sermons of the preachers are agonizingly dull. So Frank leaves the church temporarily to enter the army where he learns to be common with common men; he schools himself further with Ethan Frome, Pre Goriot, Tono-Bungay, and Renans Jesus. 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. J. E. North is the executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (Napap). As the film progresses, we learned of Elmer Gantry's past especially his own previous desire to be a minister/preacher. "Elmer Gantry One attendant of the revivals even describes himself as only being a good Christian when a revival is in town, and then going back to his old ways once it is gone. 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 . Like ordinary mortals, she is often weary. Elmer Gantry is a role and a character as big as he is, and Lancaster puts his whole back into it. 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. [4] One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. He is coerced into becoming a minister because his family, his town, and his college are so tightly structured around the church. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. However, Roberts doubts the truth of the doctrines he preaches so convincingly. Which man seems to have the more vitality? He charms the congregation and quickly becomes part of the community. When I was a youngster fascinated by the Batman TV show and Lost in Space, I saw Elmer Gantry for the first time. 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. He spends a year there, and three years in Vulcan, where Cleo gives birth to two children. but I have my doubts ", Wow! Kayfabe, or, Why a Scholar of Religion Might Be Interested in Pro Wrestling. Novels for Students. Lewis indicates the shaping of minds and values in such a village as Elmers: The church and Sunday School at Elmers village, Paris, Kansas, a settlement of nine hundred evangelical Germans and Vermonters had been the center of all his emotions, aside from hell-raising, hunger, sleepiness, and love. After this catastrophe, he briefly acts as a "New Thought" evangelist, and eventually becomes a Methodist minister. Lewiss first real success came with Main Street (1920), the book that made him famous. Continuity mistake: At the end, there is a scene in a burning church. The result would be the fascist state against which Babbitt, in anticipation of 1984, warns. Lewiss famed businessman character, George Babbitt, and pastors in the community discuss the merits of holding a revival in Zenith. While managing to cover up certain sexual indiscretions, he is thrown out of the seminary before completing his BD because he is too drunk to turn up at a church where he is supposed to preach. It tells the story of a hypocritical, corrupt, but very successful preacher named Elmer Gantry. He hires a new secretary, Hettie Dowler, who replaces Lulu as his mistress. The film's slant may be predictable, and it also suffers from some common flaws of its era (an ugly, intrusive Andre Previn score, and occasionally wooden acting); but it's hugely entertaining nonetheless. He was saturated with itthe sermons, hymns, Bible stories, funerals, weddings, Sunday schools. 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. 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. In many ways, of course, Elmer is the worst of them all. Harry Sinclair Lewis, best known as Sinclair Lewis, was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. We see Gantry the narcissistic conman, Gantry the philanthropist, Gantry the flamboyant showman. 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. It is not so much that he does not believe in God. publication in traditional print. Ferguson, Charles W., Review of Elmer Gantry, in Critical Essays on Sinclair Lewis, edited by Martin Bucco, G. K. Hall, 1986, pp. In 1926, Lewis refused the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith, because he believed it would compromise his artistic independence. Lloyd Naylor, who is in love with Lulu, complains to Lulus father about Elmers amorous conduct towards her. Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City, Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide. Mrs. Evans Riddle is the proprietor of the Victory Thought Power Headquarters in New York. He becomes one of the first clergymen in the country to have his services broadcast by radio, and in 1924, he travels to Europe with Cleo. WebElmer Gantry has a great plot. But it's Elmer's past, which catches up with him in Zenith, that may be his, and by association Sister Sharon's, downfall. He goes to Mizpah Seminary, where he entertains his classmates with tales of his sexual escapades. What has educated Elmer (a few books, oratory, sermons, tracts, hymns, and a smattering of a college education) must be ridiculed in order to purge it from the land. He behaves cruelly to Lulu, and when Floyd comforts her with a kiss, Elmer, who has planned the whole incident, bursts in on them with Lulus father. He really shines as a tarnished, immoral salesman who spends Christmas at a bar and leaves with one of the ladies during the Great Depression in the heartland. Binch is also a snob who has contempt for other preachers. Pursuing a career as a freelance writer, Lewis began to produce fiction with ease and ingenuity, and he published five novels from 1912 to 1919. 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. Bains initially forces Elmer to agree to marry Lulu, but later, after Elmer shows him Lulu kissing Floyd Naylor, he orders Lulu to marry Floyd. Hettie Dowler becomes Elmers secretary at Zenith when Elmer is already famous. Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. Every decision Elmer makes thereafter is one of compromise. Web1. Come! A typical picaresque narrative chronicles the exploits of a rogue, an immoral but not criminal character who lives by his wits. He just didn't do subtle very well, as his acting tends to magnify the focus on himself--which, once again can be either good or bad. Elmers mind is shallow; he simply does not have the capacity for serious thought about such issues. The result is as discouraging, as horrifying, as it would have been if Huck had been converted by Miss Watsons Bible stories. Excerpt from Babbitt He wears fine clothes, yet he rides the railways like a vagabond. With Jim (who is more skeptical and quick-witted than Gantry) home sick in bed, Gantry attends the meeting with his mother and is converted. Gantrys beliefs are left ambiguous, as are his motives for evangelizing. Lewiss ingenuity was not exhausted on Elmer. | In fact, the film's theatricality can almost be seen as a strength, for it's constructed like a well-written play. Elmer tries but fails to continue as an independent evangelist. In the following essay excerpt, Light examines quixotic elements in Elmer Gantry. Bishop Toomis possesses a complete Dickens, a complete Walter Scott, Tennyson, Macaulay, Ruskin, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth of the German Garden, and books on travel and nature study: How to Study the Birds, My Summer in the Rockies, and Pansies for Thoughts. 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. Sharon is a woman of many selves: she is imperious and efficient, but also vulnerable. The boy sees the preacher as a man who can possibly heal his crippled leg. 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 wont harm you! 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. The film is a triumph for Lancaster and Kennedy and for all those who wish to visit a confusing period of Americanna, when the word of God was infected by preachers, pushers and spiritual leeches. He joins the staff of a metaphysical cult but is fired when he is caught stealing from the collection plate. 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! Lulu becomes devoted to Elmer but he gets bored with her. 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. 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). He is treasurer of the Congregational church, but Elmer succeeds in getting him to support the Methodists instead. . "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. He feels little desire to practice what he preaches. 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. There is a great deal of fantasy in the novel, but it is weird and crude and goes badly with the realism. Where she is quiet and gentle with her manner of preaching, he is all fire and brimstone, literally throwing himself about the audience and inflaming them into repentance. Starring Shirley Jones Arthur Kennedy Burt Lancaster Patti Page Jean Simmons. No! 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. 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). As Elmer turns an attractive and charming preacher with a large audience . After college, he attends a Baptist seminary and is ordained as a Baptist minister. Light examines what he sees as quixotic elements in the novel, especially in the characters Sharon Falconer and Frank Shallard. If there are two dates, the date of publication and appearance Nevertheless, Lewis supplies sufficient background to account for Elmers going into the ministry. The footballer wins by flattering Elmer, insulting Elmers courage, and challenging Elmer to a fight over The Lord. He ends up as a minister in the Episcopal church. The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. Drama. He says both. Gantry befriends a famous criminal attorney, T. J. Rigg, who becomes his adviser and confidant. Based on the evidence in the novel, there is some truth in this comment. Philip McGarry is the minister of the Arbor Methodist Church in Zenith. Still, Falconer dies for her beliefs and is shown to fervently believe in God; she clearly wants to save people. WebBy John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with During the US Army invasion of Morocco and Algeria in 1943, enroute to the invasion of Italy, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), as the CIA was called then, came up with the donkey turd bomb for destroying the enemy.Since 2014, the CIA has come up with the modern equivalent its called the Ukrainian bomb.