Discuss the issue of creationism and evolution. gantry WebElmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a slick traveling salesman who is a boozer and a dog hound. As a boy, the Baptist church was all he knew. He hates piety and prefers drunkenness, profanity, and seducing women. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Gantrys mother is a strict fundamentalist, so Gantry spent much of his childhood in church, where he learned the dour lifestyle of a Christian. He ends up as minister of a large church in a West Virginia mining town. Richard Brooks spent years trying to bring ELMER GANTRY to the screen. He denounces other churches for their laxity in condemning sin. Edward J. Piacentino, "Babbittry Southern Style: T. S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral". Religion is an aspect of culture that permeates all societies, and much of history is defined by religions in power at the time. Meanwhile, Hettie turns out to be a married woman who, with her husband, tries to blackmail Elmer. In 1905, after two years study, he is ordained. The incident is not strictly necessary for the plot, and Leffertss father never appears in the novel again. Now in college, Gantry and his roommate, Jim Lefferts, spend much of their time drinking and chasing women, but their primary amusement comes from ridiculing their classmates incessant religious proselytizing. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. IPTV CHANNELS LIST | Best Buy IPTV provides - buyiptvfast.com A charming conman pretends to be a preacher and romances a roadside revivalist. North, who is in charge of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press, known as Napap. 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. Encyclopedia.com. The bell-boy is scarcely out of the room when Elmer grabs Cleo. At the end of the novel, Elmer is on bended knee, praying, We shall yet make these United States moral nation! The irony in Elmers last statement underscores the immorality of the kind of enforced morality Elmer has in mind. Harry Sinclair Lewis, best known as Sinclair Lewis, was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Whatever I may choose to do, though it might be sin in one unsanctified, with me God will turn it to his glory. Like Sharon, she drew huge crowds and practiced faith healing. For that matter, one year after Elmer Gantry, Burt Lancaster appeared in the same movie as William Shatner, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Elmer Gantry is a nuanced look at the world of evangelists and revivals. 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. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. The sociological factor that works against Elmer is the entire small-town Protestant environment in which he was raised. 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. Bell, a Black youth who had recently transferred out of Central to the High School for Recording Arts, was on Centrals campus to visit one of his former teachers. Elmer PG. The angriest of Lewiss novels, Elmer Gantry seems to arise from impulses that invert the quixotic. 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. It must have been for acting against type, coming off wholesome musical Oklahoma! He searches for his better nature: he will start again, never lie or cheat or boast. Elmer Gantry was drunk, the novel opens, and Lancaster is terrific as the boozing, womanizing traveling salesman.Gantry is a believer, of a sort. 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. 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. 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. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. Thus equipped, Elmer advances to conquer the world. 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. But shifting moods again, she can acknowledge that she is just an ignorant young woman with a lot of misdirected energyand even an evil one: Oh, I hate the little vicessmoking, swearing, scandal, drinking just enough to be silly. 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! Encyclopedia.com. 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. Jim doubts the literal truth of the Bible and has contempt for the church. 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. Elmer would probably not be able to answer this question. Schorer discusses Lewiss research for the novel, including the clergyman he met in Kansas City. 5 Mar. Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. Over the next few years, he is appointed to larger and larger parishes, eventually to a church in Zenith. The subject was tastefully handled and written for adults. He begins a course of home study, in a brief episode which must play ironically against Benjamin Franklins self-education. Using his sales techniques, especially on one of Sister Sharon's underlings, the nave Sister Rachel, Elmer is able infiltrate her entourage. Elmer moves in ever-higher social circles and goes on a three-month speaking tour aimed at the youth of America. I am Sharon Falconer now! Connected to this it must be said that I did think the plot was a little thin at times and the strength of film does lie in the general portrayal of the world rather than the nitty-gritty of any one character or thread (although even the thin bits are pretty good). Elizabeth Taylor, Best Actress winner for Butterfield 8. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church-a saver of souls who lives a life ", Jesus was a simple virtuous teacher, . The Trylon features 50 deluxe rocker seats, a 20-foot screen, and a pair of Century Model SA 35mm projectors. But both the show and their relationship are threatened when one of Gantry's ex-lovers decides that she must settle a score with the charismatic performer. The debate between fundamentalists and liberals is conducted amongst the students at Mizpah. But unlike Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantrys rise is depicted negatively. 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. During the opening service, with a crowd of more than four thousand, fire breaks out. 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." Taken from the classic Sinclair Lewis novel of the same name, director Richard Brooks garnered an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his adaptation, and Burt Lancaster won his sole Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Elmer Gantry. The tents are filled with people clamoring to see Sister Sharon Falconer. Elmer Gantry fails 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. It has provided much of his and Americas taste in architecture, clothing, music, literature, philosophy; it has provided everything but any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.. He thereby makes a defiant gesture, nonetheless, somewhat apart from his customary preoccupation with quixotic heroes whom he could admire for their protests, rebellion, and search for freedom. gantry But Sharon stands by Elmer and truth prevails, until both are seduced by fame and blind faith over common sense, and fate deals them a crushing blow. Thus Rebecca West could write incisively about the religious and historical perspectives of Elmer Gantry: The passages in the book which present to one what Mr. Lewis regards as the proper attitude to religion are disconcertingly jejune. Miss West goes on to say that like Mark Twain, who in Connecticut Yankee looked at medieval Europe and said, My, werent they dumb? Lewis has no sense of the struggle of the human mind to evolve from chaos to the achievements of his age. He goes to Mizpah Seminary, where he entertains his classmates with tales of his sexual escapades. His decision to enter the ministry is dishonest and contrary to his own nature, and it costs him the respect and friendship of his agnostic college roommate, Jim Lefferts. 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. Then she performed a miracle cure and One thing he is aware of is that professing belief serves his purposes very well, and for all he knows, every word of Baptist or Methodist dogma might be true. Lewis seems determined to avoid religious discrimination: all sects appear in equally bad light. She wore expensive clothes and jewelry and put on a spectacular show. , Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, McGraw Hill, 1961, pp. Besides the rise of world fundamentalism and revelations of sexual abuse by big-name evangelists and Catholic priests, Elmer Gantry calls up popular figures such as Sarah Palin. 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. WebC The Imitation Game told the story of this Englishman who designed an early from ENGL 1101 at Georgia State University 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. After his wedding to Cleo, he gasps to himself, Oh, good God, Ive gone and tied myself up, and I never can have any fun again! His treatment of her on the wedding night is reminiscent of Eddie Schwirtzs treatment of Una Golden. Another minor character who serves as one small brick in the vast anti-clerical edifice that is Elmer Gantry is Dr. Howard Bancock Binch, a renowned defender of the literal truth of the Bible. In The Master, Joaquin Phoenix plays an alcoholic failure who falls in thrall to cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Mrs. Gantry is Elmers mother. 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'. 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. The movie provided Burt Lancaster, Shirley Jones, and Richard Brooks all with Oscars and it has become a classic. Her voice was warm, a little husky, desperately alive. Jim is the college freethinker and the only person who has any influence on Elmer. On his first visit in 1889, he held campaigns in cities from Boston to San Francisco. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. The preacher tries to warn him off. Edward A. Martin, "The Mimic as Artist: Sinclair Lewis". After Elmer dumps her for Hettie, Lulu loses interest in life. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Sharons real name is Katie Jonas; she picked out the name Sharon Falconer when she was working as a stenographer. 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.