Elmer is subjected to a kind of collective emotional manipulation. After two more Gantrys pugnacious sermons quickly make him popular in Zenith, but the workload soon overwhelms him and alienates him from Cleo. Light, Martin, The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis, Purdue University Press, 1975, pp. This script is a transcript that was painstakingly transcribed using the screenplay and/or viewings of Elmer Gantry. Jones is too frothy, but when she appears halfway through, she adds bubbles to a long movie that was starting to go flat. But soon the church tightens its grip on him; and for Elmer, there is no possibility of lighting out for the territory. 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). The speech is a roaring success. Pengilly sees through him with the spiritual eye of an eagle, and asks, Mr. Your email address will not be published. You'll all burn in hell! Fired from the ministry after going drinking rather than contacting his new church, he works for two years as a traveling salesman. The impact of religion on Elmer Gantry symbolizes what it has done to the American spirit. WebJones had probably read in the library at Schofield Barracks or from Lowneys collection Sinclair Lewiss Elmer Gantry, a satirical novel about a hypocritical revival preacher. ." He marries Cleo but gets bored with her and resents her lack of sexual passion. you have to deal with a lot of these two-by-four hick preachers with churches about the size of woodsheds and getting maybe eleven hundred a year, and yet they think they have the right to make suggestions! 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. Be the first to contribute. He joins the staff of a metaphysical cult but is fired when he is caught stealing from the collection plate. 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. Infuriating and erratic, but brilliantly creative, the Canadian-born British artist and writer Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was an always, Elman, Ziggy (originally, Finkelman, Harry), Elman, Mischa (actually, Mikhail Saulovich), Elmira Business Institute: Narrative Description, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/elmer-gantry, Lewis, Sinclair (7 February 1885 - 10 January 1951). Elmers lawyer outwits Hetties lawyer, and she is forced to withdraw the charges she made against him and state that she was part of a plot by the liquor interests to ensnare him. 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. Schorer discusses Lewiss research for the novel, including the clergyman he met in Kansas City. In order to conquer her, he must use his extensive repertoire of biblical quips, quotes and bawdy antidotes. On the trip to his new church, he gets drunk and carouses with women; he is discovered and is dismissed from the seminary. He could hear her wailing, Dont be afraid! Elmers mind is shallow; he simply does not have the capacity for serious thought about such issues. This site built with Project Largo from INN and proudly powered by WordPress. 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). The new Wellspring Church has been built, and Elmer is awarded an honorary doctorate from Abernathy College. Philip McGarry is the minister of the Arbor Methodist Church in Zenith. Lynnell Mickelsen: Why all the conspiracy theories and pearl-clutching in this years school board race. "Elmer Gantry - Summary" Literary Essentials: Christian Fiction and Nonfiction 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.. 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. The two make a successful onstage pair, and their chemistry extends to romance. Interviewing key stakeholders in the company, gathering and organizing information, analyzing data and preparing reports that summarize finding. In many ways, of course, Elmer is the worst of them all. 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. The portrayal of revivals as a necessary service with a precarious balance between helping and hurting both the revivals leaders and attendants is masterful. 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. The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Elmer tries to seduce her, but once she has become devoted to him he gets bored with her and treats her cruelly. The Lancastic! SuperSummary | Literature Study Guides & Summaries But the only good ministers of the Gospel seem to be those who, like Dr. Bruno Zechlin, the Old Testament scholar at Mizpah, have given up their religious beliefs. When she overhears Gantry seducing their pianist, she fires them, but Gantry convinces her to reconsider. There they meet their host, Deacon Bains, and his daughter Lulu, an ingenue whom Gantry continually tries to seduce. 73738. 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. By so doing they give themselves an advantage over the general public. 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). Later on , newspapers publicize Preacher preys and he becomes into a discredited preacher . Elmer Gantry is not, however, a movie about making good choices. Johnny Zell auf LinkedIn: Happy Birthday # 75..Barbara Lynn Throughout the novel, clergymen and the church are presented in an extremely unflattering light. Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on Elmer Gantry, in Novels for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006. Elmer Gantry In the film, Gantry happens upon one of Falconers revivals being held in a country town. Floyd Naylor is a large and rather stupid farmer in Schoenheim who is in love with Lulu Bains, whom he eventually marries. 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 Gantry | novel by Lewis | Britannica (Courtesy of Degebo, Berlin, Germany.) 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! Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them the Reverend Leon Milton Birkhead, a Unitarian and an agnostic. Encyclopedia.com. Elmer loathes him but Frank Shallard regards him as a friend. Now famous, Elmers ambitions know no bounds, especially when he starts to work with the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press. After exposing the professors secret, Gantry receives an anonymous gift of thirty dimes, which he uses to buy photographs of strippers. While working for the Daily Courier in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1908, he wrote an editorial about fraudulent evangelists, which suggests that the seeds of Elmer Gantry were already being sown. Word Count: 916. Yet at the fire, it is Sharon who is heroic. Sinclair Lewiss Elmer Gantry (New York, 1927) is a ferocious satire against Protestant fundamentalist religion in the American Midwest. Gantry introduces savvy business practices to Sharons ministry and manipulative psychology to the services themselves, and Sharon becomes wealthy as a result. "You're all sinners! The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. The result is a novel that satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it. She is a monstrous creation who seems to grow in size with each revelation of her craziness. 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. Laws, the number of times youve explained! For that matter, one year after Elmer Gantry, Burt Lancaster appeared in the same movie as William Shatner, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He wont harm you! He became known in the 1920s for his books that satirized the spartan materialism and intolerance that This tended to undermine the uniqueness of Christianity and the literal interpretation of the Bible. 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. The relentless, unrelieved exposure of religious hypocrisy, while amusingly presented in parts, tends to become wearying. WebElmer Gantry. To increase his vocabulary he begins a word list: incinerate, Merovingian, Golgotha, Leigh Hunt, defeasance, chansonromantic-sounding words. 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. Movie Forums . Lewiss description of the service at which Elmer succumbs is compelling in its evocation of the rampant emotion of the occasion. But it all comes to an end one night in Clontar, on the New Jersey coast, where Sharon has purchased a pier. WebElmer Gantry, novel by Sinclair Lewis, a satiric indictment of fundamentalist religion that caused an uproar upon its publication in 1927. After two years as a traveling salesman, Gantry attends a revival meeting and is immediately bewitched by the evangelist Sharon Falconer. Mark Schorer, then of the University of California, Berkeley, notes: "The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality." What of Jesuss teachings? Af I think she does a brilliant job but I wished that she had more speaking moments. Elmer Gantry Should creationism be taught in public schools? WebIf he is not completely redeemed at the film's end, he indicates that his love for the ill-fated Sharon Falconer is real and not mere lust.The character of Sister Falconer, as played by Sign In 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. 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. Cleo Benham is the high-minded daughter of Nathaniel Benham. Harry Zenz is a student at the Mizpah Theological Seminary. (February 23, 2023). The fledgling work even had legs, if short ones. 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. He begins a course of home study, in a brief episode which must play ironically against Benjamin Franklins self-education. 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. Gantry is portrayed as a smooth talking but frustrated salesman, struggling to make a living. He is not a deep thinker and does not really care whether the Baptist doctrines he preaches are true or false. Every decision Elmer makes thereafter is one of compromise. Once Gantry accuses the city government of protecting the brothels and drug dealers, he becomes one of the most powerful men in Zenith. He enters the ministry because he cannot think of anything else to do in life. . WebMoward Consultancy Inc. Excellent recounting based on the controversial Sinclair Lewis novel that got three Academy Awards . And when his hero joins the Methodist Church, Lewis takes full advantage of the opportunity to satirize another sect. Lewiss personal life was troubled, and he and his second wife were divorced in 1942. He is no Harry Zenz or Bruno Zechlin, who have both thought deeply about theology and have emerged as atheists. He takes care to point out that people return again and again to get converted, which would seem to negate the idea that they are saved in a once in a lifetime experience. Later he was to learn that references to Dickens, Victor Hugo, James Whitcomb Riley, Josh Billings, and Michelangelo give a sermon a very toney Chicago air. Though he does not have quixotic benignity, helpfulness, or idealism, he does have visions of how the ministry can be useful to him; he sees thousands listening to himinvited to banquets and everything , and he dreams of hundreds of beautiful women [who weep] with conviction and rush down to clasp his hand., In addition to his hypocrisy and his ignorance, Elmer is a liar, a sinner, and a coward. The novel is absorbing, and I should like to say a few words about it. They hypnotize themselves, says Jim Lefferts to Elmer, trying to persuade him not to go along with it. Elmer Gantry: What's it About However, Lewis does not seem to have had such an intention at first; once again, half the novel is concerned with one theme and half with a related but different one. Thus equipped, Elmer advances to conquer the world. TRIVIA: Six degrees of Star TrekThe six degrees of Star Trek holds that any movie connects to Star Trek within 6 steps. 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. The last date is today's Undoubtedly many of the excesses Lewis describes, especially those connected with revivalism, deserve the treatment they get. 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. McPherson was involved in a scandal in 1926. retrospective of Burt Lancaster films continues at the Trylon Microcinema through November, the month marking the 100th anniversary of Lancaster birth (Nov. 2, 1913), withElmer Gantryon November 11 and 12. Gantrys beliefs are left ambiguous, as are his motives for evangelizing. WebElmer turns to Rigg for help, who hires a detective to dig up incriminating evidence against Hettie and her husband. He is a well-educated Englishman in his early thirties with a colorful past. Elmer works diligently and is rewarded at the Methodists Annual Conference by being sent to a bigger church, at Rudd Center. Every one knew of some case in which each of the others had stolen, or was said to have tried to steal, some parishioner, to have corrupted his faith and appropriated his contributions. He does not really hate sin, because it is useful to him: the more vice he can discover and denounce, the more his reputation as a man of God grows. Elmers next position is at a church in Monarch. The preacher tries to warn him off. Box sets galore: New collections from David Bowie, Wilco, Joni Co-stars Jean Simmons and Shirley Jones. D. J. Dooley remarks that to Lewis Christianity is not only untrue, but inconceivable. Dooley feels that Elmer Gantry is flawed 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. True, unless, taking our cue from Sharon Falconer and the multitude of fraudulent evangelistic minor characters in the book, we begin to see Elmer Gantry as Lewiss triumphant depiction of a land of demons and grotesques of all sizes and shapes, created from the extremes of human impulse and incapable of self-awareness because they are already beyond it, Elmer included. Sharon soon fires her assistant, Cecil Alyston, and appoints Elmer as his replacement. Anative of the midwestern United States, Sinclair Lewis (18851951) chronicled through novels, THE LITERARY WORK Kayfabe, or, Why a Scholar of Religion Might Be Interested in Pro Wrestling. It is the hour! Eddie is an enthusiastic Christian who becomes a student at Mizpah Theological Seminary and later a minister in western Kansas. The story of a womanizing con man and an evangelist selling religion all across America was an Did he come to bring peace or more war? Good drama that had the potential to be one of the greats. Fascinating - 1960's "Elmer Gantry," based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, could be made today with nothing changed and be as powerful - maybe more powerful - than it was in 1960. 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. "Elmer Gantry" can be considered the quintessential exploration into the omnipresent duality existing between a person's religious faith and simultaneous character defects. Frank suffers from self-consciousness about his occupation; it is the same sense of doubt which Lewis has expressed about the writing career: Frank still resented it that, as a parson, he was considered not quite virile; that even clever people felt they must treat him with a special manner; that he was barred from knowing the real thoughts and sharing the real desires of normal humanity.. The college president declares that he is a born preacher, and everyone urges him to become a minister. WebDownload scientific diagram | 7 Vibro compaction employing wooden gantry, 1939. C The Imitation Game told the story of this Englishman who but I have my doubts ", Wow! 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, Mrs. Evans Riddle is the proprietor of the Victory Thought Power Headquarters in New York. ", Jesus was a simple virtuous teacher, . At the church, Elmer tries to seduce Lulu Bains, the daughter of one of the deacons, while Shallard warns him against even the appearance of evil. Lewis died of heart disease in Rome, Italy, in 1951. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. But he did not achieve the heights of success he had enjoyed during the 1920s. FAQ All those who profess to be religious in the novel are shown as hypocrites or morons; the best we can expect, apparently, is a nominal profession of belief for the sake of convenience: the good shepherd is the one who sees that his lambs are fed with material food, not stale spiritual claptrap. He is a born salesman well versed with the bible. It may be that the essential lesson which Lewiss experience of America taught him was that the barriers to education, self-discovery, and fulfillment were formidably guarded by exploiters and cranks: thus his anger; thus his satire. And fortunately for us, it gives BURT LANCASTER the kind of role that would rightly win him an Academy Award as Best Actor in 1960. The second is the date of WebWhat is meant by gantry girders? Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. North, who is in charge of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press, known as Napap. After Sharon dismisses him in favor of Elmer, Cecil tries to conduct a rescue mission in Buffalo. I give this movie a 10 only because there is nothing above that. 2007 eNotes.com A typical picaresque narrative chronicles the exploits of a rogue, an immoral but not criminal character who lives by his wits. But was booted out of seminary for seducing the preachers daughter, Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones). 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 Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. Elmers start at religious leadership is rocky. date the date you are citing the material. He is a simple, decent, pious man who is loved by his congregation. Gantry, why dont you believe in God?. It seemed that perhaps the world had taken a step away from irrational belief. 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. Billy Sunday (18621935) was a professional baseball player who quit baseball a few years after he had a religious conversion. A novel set from 1920 to 1922 in Zenith, an imaginary midwestern American city; published in 1922. WebElmer Gantry. 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. 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. The wife is full of complaints about the life she has had to lead, married to a preacher, criticized by the church women if they thought her clothes werent suitable, sick of having to pretend to be so good when we were just common folks all the time! Her tirade at her husband, who only wants to be allowed to go to sleep, includes the following passage: Oh, dear. A modernist movement, led by such preachers as Harry Emerson Fosdick and reinforced by the essays that appeared in The Christian Century, was concerned with making the church more of a live option for the intellectual and the sophisticated city dweller. Elmer pulls the burning jacket off her, and beats out the flames. Elmer Gantry - Wikipedia These blossoming words, these organ-like phrases, these profound notions, had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use. "Religion and Sports: Three Muscular Christians in American Literature". Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Elmer Gantry: Sin. J. E. North is the executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (Napap). Even the physical description of Binch is calculated to evoke disgust: Dr. Of course, turmoil closes in on them as their inherent instincts of love overpower their adherence to the Christian principles they attempt to profess. WebFull IPTV List channels worldwide With 20000 channels + 40000 Movie and series. Awards As in the violent, unpredictable climax, Elmer Gantry lives and dies on a kind of roiling energy, a reaction that seems to be happening A serious obstacle to her goal is Gantry, but more so is the cautionary and caustic pen of Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who questions the personal and financial motives of her entourage. She engages in worthy activities at the church in Banjo Crossing, and falls in love with Elmer.
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