elmer gantry ending explained

Elmer Gantry is not, however, a movie about making good choices. Traveling with the show is Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jim Lefferts, who looks at the show and Elmer with a critical eye, although Sister Sharon, William, and Elmer welcome him. 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! REL 360: Popular Culture/Public Humanities, Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, Humans and Nazis: Reevaluating the Conversation of. Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a slick traveling salesman who is a boozer and a dog hound. Be the first to contribute. "Elmer Gantry" United Artists Simon received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance as a runaway housewife in "The Happy Ending" (1969), "Elmer Gantry" can be considered the quintessential exploration into the omnipresent duality existing between a person's religious faith and simultaneous character defects. Web1. 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. Elmer is, obviously enough, an example of the latter. Leap Of Faith In the film, Gantry happens upon one of Falconers revivals being held in a country town. And yet Im not a liar! Shirley Jones won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the preachers daughter turned prostitute. gantry The bill had always been defeated, but it was gaining more votes in every session [407408]. Elmer Gantry and his roommate, Jim Lefferts, have traveled from their college in Kansas to Cato, Missouri, to see their girlfriends. I'm not talking about what happens just before the end, but Reviewers were divided on the merits of the novel. It's strange, the way this movie opens and builds so strongly, and then has such an unsatisfying ending. 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. McPherson was involved in a scandal in 1926. Pretending to be outraged, Elmer resigns his position. Before long, he marries Cleo Benham, the choir director, but finds her an unenthusiastic lover. He also notes that the more bizarre and irrational the experience, the more the evangelists value it, but he leaves the reader in no doubt about the contempt with which he views such phenomena: once occurred what connoisseurs regard as the highest example of religious inspiration. 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. 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. Given, too, that the film's production was 1960, we can say that "Elmer Gantry" does not reflect the current, 21st century, state of religious fundamentalism in America. 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. 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. So scandalous was Lewiss portrayal of religion that the novel was banned in several cities and denounced from pulpits across the nation. Ashley Daugherty is a senior majoring in Anthropology and Spanish. We're confident we succeeded and have no doubt you'll agree. He is immediately taken with Sister Sharon Falconer, a lay preacher whose hellfire-and-damnation revivalism has attracted quite a following. However, the date of retrieval is often important. 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. As a preacher, he shamelessly plays on peoples emotions and their fear of Hell. Elmer Gantry (film 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. Everyone congratulates him on his conversion. Elmer tries to seduce her, but once she has become devoted to him he gets bored with her and treats her cruelly. He graduated from Yale in 1908 and worked in various jobs in the publishing industry, including editor, reporter, manuscript reader, and reviewer. Reverend Jacob Trosper is the dean and chief executive of Mizpah Theological Seminary. In creating the evangelist Sharon Falconer, the author presents himself with a bigger, although more complex, target. Think about how Jim would view Elmer, and how he might react to what Elmer says. He relents and the dark fabric of the preachers suit is draped over a body that is full of blind, yet healthy and normal impulses. Gantry uses his own quick wit and Bible knowledge to become an indispensable part of Sister Sharon's roadshow, but his past soon catches up with him in the form of Lulu Bains, now a prostitute. WebSpecialties: Welcome to Garrison Brothers, home of the first and oldest legal whiskey distillery in Texas. 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 ).. These help her to put on a dramatic show that wins many converts. She's a true believer. Published in 1922 The portrayal of revivals as a necessary service with a precarious balance between helping and hurting both the revivals leaders and attendants is masterful. WebElmer Gantry has a great plot. Elmer pulls the burning jacket off her, and beats out the flames. Lewis researched the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. After the fire and Sharons death, Elmer is conscience-stricken. The result is a novel that satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it. The film isn't just about rural religion in the 1920s, or how media is exploited, or how sometimes clever hucksters can outwit themselves. Web"Success is not the key to happiness. 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. 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. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. On his return, Elmer meets J. The one completely positive character in the book, Frank Shallard, wants to make Christianity an active force for social good; as it is, it is a negative force, a threat to freedom. Firearm Discussion and Resources from AR-15, AK-47, Handguns and more! You're all goin' to the painful, stinkin', scaldin', everlastin' tortures of a fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless, unless, unless you repent. Lewis seems determined to avoid religious discrimination: all sects appear in equally bad light. Having ridiculed the unfortunate Dr. Binch, Lewis removes him from the scene and never mentions him again. When a Salvation Army worker enters, Gantry shocks and moves the crowd with an impromptu, impassioned sermon equating God with love. Whatever I may choose to do, though it might be sin in one unsanctified, with me God will turn it to his glory. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. Burt Lancaster plays the eponymous anti-hero as rogue of such charm that you almost want him to succeed; while the ambiguous character of his partner Sister Falconer (Jean Simmons), who doesn't seem to know herself whether is she a fellow-fraud or a genuine messenger of God, makes a perfect dramatic foil. After collecting money from the patrons, Gantry takes a drunken barfly back to his hotel room. The movie was not just a group of scenes depicting sex and violence. Her main supporter is worldly William Morgan (Dean Jagger) who believes in Falconer, and sees Gantry and Lefferts for the opportunistic impediments they are. Ed. (205) 348-6010 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. 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. There was a timebetween the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11when Elmer Gantry might have felt outdated. Elmer Gantry Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? In a southwestern city, he falls into the hands of violent fanatics who beat him so badly he is blinded. Also, Neil Diamonds 1976 live performance of his song Brother Loves Travelling Salvation Show, here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brt4r_y1y4Q#t=68In 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 it the key to what must be her hotel room. Dont be afraid! 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. He had learned to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. Franks mentor has been Father Pengilly, a fanciful figure whom we have already discussed. If there was a soul to be saved - Gantry would save it. Elmer 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. With a long line of charismatic cinematic rogues to his credit, Burt Lancaster pulls off a barnstorming performance as Elmer Gantry, the salesman turned opportunistic evangelist whose fast-talking pitch scarcely slackens, off-stage or on. North, who is in charge of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press, known as Napap. . He seeks out Shallard, who has largely given up his faith but has been persuaded by a Methodist pastor to continue in the ministry and is now at a church in Zenith. He is a complete hypocrite and a complete opportunist. 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. Hes the all-American salesman: hed believe, really believe, in anything he thought youd buy. ", Movie Lacks Something, But a Stunning Lead Performance Isn't It. He is soon invited to preach at one of her meetings. ****. He dealt with the connection between small-town provinciality and the religious proclivities of the time, the relationship between the gospel of Christianity and the gospel of business; and, because the novel was written out of the atmosphere surrounding the Scopes Monkey Trial, he dealt with the conflict between science and religion. 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. Nevertheless, it is soon apparent that he has gone too far; to him, Christianity is not only untrue, but inconceivable. In his ever lustful sights is a voluptuous female preacher. Jones is too frothy, but when she appears halfway through, she adds bubbles to a long movie that was starting to go flat. More mundane examples include the star power of Scientology and Christian rock concerts. There is a definite give and take between Gantry and Falconer and the congregants in Elmer Gantry. She is a widow who owns a millinery and dressmaking shop. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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. Juanita Klauzel is Elmers girlfriend in Cato, Missouri, when he is a student at Terwillinger College. The tents are filled with people clamoring to see Sister Sharon Falconer. Can there ever have lived a clergyman with Elmers astonishing range of vices: his chronic insincerity, his hypocrisy, his lust, his overweening ambition, his cynicism, his appalling behavior to his family? And Tom Cruise, and the whole celebrity-studded cult of Scientology; Cruise jumping on Oprahs couch or in his fantastic role as the preacher of male supremacy in Magnolia. Later, he is kidnapped and beaten nearly to death, an episode that leaves him blinded. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. 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. What Made Buster Keatons Comedy So Modern? | The New Yorker But was booted out of seminary for seducing the preachers daughter, Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones). 3D Printer - Discovering the Four-Laser SLM 500 HL 3D Printer His flamboyant preaching style makes a big impression on the small town. So scandalous was Lewiss portrayal of religion that the novel was banned in several cities and denounced from Elmer Gantry is a role and a character as big as he is, and Lancaster puts his whole back into it. The impact of religion on Elmer Gantry symbolizes what it has done to the American spirit. A hundred and eleven people died that night, including all the gospel-crew save Elmer.. She was reported missing after swimming off Venice Beach, California, turning up five weeks later in Mexico, claiming she had been kidnapped. He also analyzes the characterization and structure of the novel and Lewiss occasional failure to integrate his story-telling with the social facts he presents. He retains his theological navet, however, and it is clear that his modernism is not sufficient. She appears to Elmer as a saint, arms outstretched, stately, slender and tall, passionate. One famous evangelist was Gipsy Smith (18601947), an Englishman who made twenty-six trips to the United States. Elmer starts his career as a Baptist and then joins up with a charismatic but equally unprincipled female revivalist preacher. However, these were exercises in popular, rather than literary, fiction. The bell-boy is scarcely out of the room when Elmer grabs Cleo. 10 Video Games That Need a Live Action Adaptation, 2023's Most Anticipated Sequels, Prequels, and Spin-offs. And even these emotions were represented in the House of the Lord, in the way of tacks in pew-cushions, Missionary Suppers with chicken pie and angels-food cake, soporific sermons, and the proximity of flexible little girls in thin muslin. The trouble is, he needed a good reason for his broad and over-the-top acting. He hires a new secretary, Hettie Dowler, who replaces Lulu as his mistress. Rewrite it from Jims point of view. 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. It's the prohibition era. Then she performed a miracle cure and He denounces other churches for their laxity in condemning sin. 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. The novel is absorbing, and I should like to say a few words about it. It is clear that the revivals rely on the approval and demand of the public and that the revivals certainly could not survive without the support of a large number of congregants; however, there are several points in the film in which it appears the congregants are being taken advantage of by town and religious leaders. Elmer Gantry and A Little About Race - Studying Religion in Culture Gantry's noisy methods seem to work, even if they draw derision from the religious establishment and attacks from the cynical press. After several years as a travelling salesman of farm equipment, he becomes manager for Sharon Falconer, an itinerant evangelist.

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