For all his wisdom, he speaks in platitudes, although Lewis does give him one searing moment of insight. 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! 23 Feb. 2023 . Falconer gives of herself throughout the film to help her congregants, often going outside her comfort zone to preach to angry crowds and secure the donations she sees as a necessary evil for the continuance of her sermons. Both time and cost are saved by the high efficiency. He calls out to God for help. The film leaves the realities of these mystical happenings up to interpretation, and so gives the congregants active, if small, roles in the narrative. He also thinks that Baptist leaders are word-splitting, text-twisting, applause-hungry, job-hunting, medieval-minded second-raters . Horace Carp hates the Baptists and wants to switch to the more upscale Episcopalians as soon as possible because this will give him a better social position in which he will be able to marry a nice rich girl. Brother Karkis only wants his divinity degree so he can get a better paying job. He is out for money and pleasure and powerand the ministry is the career which gives him all three. Within the Protestant church, a battle rages between the traditionalists, or fundamentalists, who believe in the literal truth of the Bible, and the liberals, who believe that some parts of the Bible may be understood in a symbolic sense. REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities, Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, Humans and Nazis: Reevaluating the Conversation of. WebFull IPTV List channels worldwide With 20000 channels + 40000 Movie and series. Bains promises Elmer that he will make Lulu marry Floyd. There are several other minor characters who are introduced with no apparent purpose other than to serve as victims of the authors anti-religious inclination. Grebstein, Sheldon Norman, Sinclair Lewis, Twayne United States Authors Series, No. MAJOR WORKS: He plans to quit the church and get a good job selling real estate. Except in some of its sexuality (there are a couple cringe-making lines), however, the film doesnt feel outdated today. Judson Roberts is an evangelist who is the state secretary of the Y.M.C.A. She was reported missing after swimming off Venice Beach, California, turning up five weeks later in Mexico, claiming she had been kidnapped. It was the best-selling work of fiction in America for the year 1927, according to Publishers Weekly.[6]. Elmer Gantry is a nuanced look at the world of evangelists and revivals. As a character, Dr. Gantry lacks verisimilitude, and he lacks it more the longer he lives.. He first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger, pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. 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. It also underscores what Lewis saw as one of the greatest dangers in American societythe tendency toward excess not only in religion but also in production, consumption, patriotism, and the proliferation of institutions . The merit of this argument is undermined because it is given by Babbitt, not out of caring for the citizens of Zenith, but rather because he stands to gain the most financially from the revival. Hettie Dowler becomes Elmers secretary at Zenith when Elmer is already famous. The trouble is, he needed a good reason for his broad and over-the-top acting. 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. Tries to give the kid a break. WebElmer Gantry. J. E. North is the executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (Napap). He goes to live with his niece and dies within two years. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. They have better chemistry between them than Simmons and Lancaster did, but Elmer Gantry is the grandaddy of them all. Schorer analyzes the novels lack of conflict and dramatic counterpoint; there are no obstacles to Elmers success, since the good characters are weak and play only peripheral roles and there are no competing orders of value, since everything is corrupt. Gantry maintains friendships with most pastors in Zenith but loathes Philip McGarry, a pastor in a poor neighborhood who has been a friend and mentor to Shallard. Lewiss personal life was troubled, and he and his second wife were divorced in 1942. This was not the last of McPhersons affairs; one of her lovers described the homemade altar in her apartment, in front of which they would make lovewhich is strikingly similar to the scene in Chapter 12 of Elmer Gantry, in which Elmer and Sharon also make love before an altar in her house in Virginia. He is coerced into becoming a minister because his family, his town, and his college are so tightly structured around the church. Elmers next position is at a church in Monarch. In a notable passage Lewis tells us sympathetically of the problems of the rebel, of the preacher or the writer who suffers from sensitivity and innocence: He was supposed to cure an affliction called vice. 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. WebLove is the voice of music. WebMake Your Picks. It is Elmers Napoleonic ambition to combine all such organizations to the greater glory of himself: He would combine in one association all the moral organizations in Americaperhaps, later, in the entire world. Dinner at the Governors Ball with Eddie Fisher. Over seventy-five years after it first appeared, Elmer Gantry still has power to shock as well as amuse. He soon discovers he has a gift for preaching, and he loves the feeling of power he gets when his sermons move his congregation. His quest for God is a secular quest. Interviewing key stakeholders in the company, gathering and organizing information, analyzing data and preparing reports that summarize finding. The famous evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis Satans cohort.. Protestant fundamentalism was in part a reaction in the early twentieth century to the development of the higher criticism in Biblical scholarship. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2022 The University of Alabama As Granty flashes with his silver smile but he has a dark past . In another scene, Falconer exhibits pride and materialism when she admits that she always wanted her own church with a giant glowing cross. Elmer escapes by knocking other people out of the way, but Sharon is burned to death. The title character of Elmer Gantry starts He urges Elmer to become a minister. In A Letter on Religion published in 1932, Lewis declared: It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living. He said that he had known several young people who had been reared entirely without thought of churches or of formal theology, and they seemed happy. What of Jesuss teachings? Gantry is bored by school, but Shallard is drawn to a professor who eventually confesses his atheism to Shallard. When I was a youngster fascinated by the Batman TV show and Lost in Space, I saw Elmer Gantry for the first time. He wears fine clothes, yet he rides the railways like a vagabond. publication online or last modification online. Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. WebElmer 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. There is a definite give and take between Gantry and Falconer and the congregants in Elmer Gantry. 41930. Based on the evidence in the novel, there is some truth in this comment. Another famous name was Aimee Semple McPherson (18901944), a female evangelist who clearly resembled the fictional Sharon Falconer. 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. Undoubtedly many of the excesses Lewis describes, especially those connected with revivalism, deserve the treatment they get. "Elmer Gantry", directed by Richard Brooks, is one of his best. Elmer Gantry is as lost as those who followed in the tent revivals that swept the country during hard times. The attack on the hypocrisy of Protestant ministers continues throughout the novel. Novels for Students. Her maiden milk is proof of Gods goodness act supposedly converts tents full of adults, but one wonders if even Midwestern farmers without television (this is the 1920s) would find her compelling. Of the other characters, Frank Shallard and Dr. Philip McGarry are examples of the liberal tendency in the church. But it all comes to an end one night in Clontar, on the New Jersey coast, where Sharon has purchased a pier. 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. WebElmer Gantry has a great plot. 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. Elmer, after all, is not an idealist; though he ventures forth, he does not do so in the name of chivalry; and, finally, he does not practice the transmuting powers of fancy. 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. Nevertheless, it is soon apparent that he has gone too far; to him, Christianity is not only untrue, but inconceivable. Only the novels It Cant Happen Here (1935) and Kingsblood Royal (1947) have stood the test of time. 4748; originally published in the Bookman, March 1927. Burt Lancaster in all his "scene chewing" glory. The sociological factor that works against Elmer is the entire small-town Protestant environment in which he was raised. 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. In this essay, Aubrey discusses how Lewiss characterization in Elmer Gantry serves his satiric purpose. On publication, Elmer Gantry had a sensational reception. Dont be afraid! In his ever lustful sights is a voluptuous female preacher. It was both a popular and critical success, selling 295,000 copies in the first year. Af For that matter, one year after Elmer Gantry, Burt Lancaster appeared in the same movie as William Shatner, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Elmer is forced to agree, but promises himself he will find a way out of the engagement. Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely syndicated newspaper article called "The New American People", in which he largely based his observations of American culture on Lewis' novels. He uses the church to further his own ambitions for power and fame. 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. Salesman Elmer Gantry, salesman teams up with evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer to sell religion to 1920s America. Some found it repugnant and accused Lewis of grossly distorting his subject matter.
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