Some characters from Lewis even read Sinclair Lewis himself; the Reverend Philip McGarry asks his friend Frank Shallard to forget that you have to make a new world, bettern the Creators, right away tonightyou and Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis (Lord, how that book of Lewis, Main Street, did bore me ).. Those who believe in the doctrines of the church are presented as fools or morons, and are easy targets for malicious fun. Over the next few years, he is appointed to larger and larger parishes, eventually to a church in Zenith. Chester Brown is a prominent Methodist preacher in Zenith and one of Elmers rivals. Elmer Gantry and A Little About Race - Studying Religion in Culture 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. . To his understanding of Lewiss art, Jones seems to add firsthand knowledge about wartime religious revivals. Elmer Gantry" by Sinclair Lewis Elmer Gantry His specialty is in denouncing vice, and in Zenith he even leads a police raid on the local dens of iniquity. For the most part, he does not create complex human portraits but caricatures. 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. Fire is mentioned throughout the film, and cinematographer John Alton sets the mood by casting dark red and brown shadows. Nelson Manfred Blake, "How to Learn History from Sinclair Lewis and Other Uncommon Sources". Lewiss personal life was troubled, and he and his second wife were divorced in 1942. 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). It might seem that the last thing in the world Lewis wanted was sympathy for Elmer Gantry, whom he regarded, he told Allen Austin years later, as a hypocrite through and through. Yet he wrote in the Nation in 1928, Actually, I like the Babbitts, the Dr. Pickerbaughs, the Will Kennicotts, and even the Elmer Gantrys rather better than anyone else on earth. Furthermore, he told Betty Stevens that the Babbitts were my children and I wanted to reform them. Elmer escapes by knocking other people out of the way, but Sharon is burned to death. After exposing the professors secret, 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. I had boycotted it for years, thinking it was too anti-Christian to support with my money, either renting or buying it. Sharon believes she is above sin and that she can do anything she wants to because she is Gods messenger. Named himself in honour of the character in the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry. He preaches at the service that gets Elmer converted. He is a complete hypocrite and a complete opportunist. A typical picaresque narrative chronicles the exploits of a rogue, an immoral but not criminal character who lives by his wits. Jean Simmons is lovely and convincing as as Sister Sharon Falconer, the charismatic female evangelist who wins Gantry's heart (and lust)as they team up to jump-start America's dwindling religious beliefs. Gantry is portrayed as a smooth talking but frustrated salesman, struggling to make a living. Gantrys mother is a strict fundamentalist, so Gantry spent much of his childhood in church, where he learned the dour lifestyle of a Christian. WebFull IPTV List channels worldwide With 20000 channels + 40000 Movie and series. Originally a London soul band called Five Proud Walkers, they threw their lot in with Thats Elmer Gantry. Another famous name was Aimee Semple McPherson (18901944), a female evangelist who clearly resembled the fictional Sharon Falconer. In many ways, of course, Elmer is the worst of them all. The boy sees the preacher as a man who can possibly heal his crippled leg. 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. Like Matthew Arnold, whose thinking Lewis often paralleled, Lewis maintained that Hebraism has too much prevailed over Hellenism and that what is needed is more sweetness and light (Elmer, with his black hair and black eyes, is, of course, the enemy of light). 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. What Made Buster Keatons Comedy So Modern? | The New Yorker Elmer forces him to resign by questioning his religious beliefs, after which Shallard gets a job with the Charity Organization Society. Im not! WebElmer Gantry has a great plot. , Sinclair Lewis and the Method of Half-Truths, in Society and Self in the Novel, Columbia University Press, 1956, pp. 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. Billy Sunday (18621935) was a professional baseball player who quit baseball a few years after he had a religious conversion. 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. Jean Simmons appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Drumhead (1991) as Rear Admiral Norah Satie. So scandalous was Lewiss portrayal of religion that the novel was banned in several cities and denounced from pulpits across the nation. ." Binch is a dreadful character who leers at Sharon and has an excessive interest in church fundraising. Elmer Gantry has been called the purest Lewis by Schorer. During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a sincere minister, Frank Shallard, who is plagued by doubt. But in the house of Elmers mistress, Lulu Bains, they sing and read Seeing Nelly Home, Old Black Joe, Beulah Land, Farm and Fireside, and Modern Priscilla. 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). One such incident (chapter 2, section 3) is when the pious but not very bright Eddie Fislinger is outwitted by Jim Leffertss atheist father for the amusement of Jim and Elmer. 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. Evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort". Afterward, he must resign himself to helplessness for the rest of his life. Russia is a European country. But it all comes to an end one night in Clontar, on the New Jersey coast, where Sharon has purchased a pier. Though it makes its position on for-profit religious functions clear from the very beginning of the film, it attempts its critique in a fair manner. 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! As the music dies, Gantry picks up where they left off and continues the hymn. (film) Elmer Gantry is a 1960 film about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small town America. 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 meets Elmer on a steamer home from Europe and invites him to lecture on behalf of Napap. There they meet their host, Deacon Bains, and his daughter Lulu, an ingenue whom Gantry continually tries to seduce. Elmer would probably not be able to answer this question. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize the working of quixotic elements throughout the novel, especially in the fancifully conceived Sharon Falconer and in the character who is a foil for Elmer, Frank Shallard. Published in 1922 Lewiss description of the service at which Elmer succumbs is compelling in its evocation of the rampant emotion of the occasion. Movie Forums . It's the prohibition era. The inspiration for Falconer, Aimee Semple McPherson, on the other hand, was thought of as a celebrity, and many felt her intentions were dubious. In 1944, his son Lieutenant Wells Lewis was killed in action in France during World War II. Bill Morgan sees thru Elmer and tells Sharon that in 1917 he was expelled from the seminary for seducing the deacon's daughter. It tells the story of a hypocritical, corrupt, but very successful preacher named Elmer Gantry. Elmer Gantry Encyclopedia.com. Literally, in one case, when the tabernacle catches fire at the end of the movie. He also forms a Committee on Public Morals, persuades the police to make him a temporary lieutenant, and personally leads raids on the red-light districts. 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, It tells of people in troubled times trying to sort out life's essential challenges. Since religions are often sold with a spin to attract the most people or a certain group of people, it is important that potential followers examine the reasoning and intentions of religious leaders. Is there really a conflict between science and religion, between reason and faith, or can the two live in harmony? He manipulates his way into Sister Sharon Falconer (played brilliantly by the late Jean Simmons who should have won an Oscar for her performance in this role). 99107. 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. In order to conquer her, he must use his extensive repertoire of biblical quips, quotes and bawdy antidotes. As in the violent, unpredictable climax, Elmer Gantry lives and dies on a kind of roiling energy, a reaction that seems to be happening However as the pressure builds to tear him down, can Gantry prevent his past from returning to haunt him? 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.. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
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