Elmer Gantry
Elmer Gantry is a
1927 novel by
Sinclair Lewis. It tells the story of a young, obnoxious, womanizing college athlete who, upon realizing the power and prestige that being a preacher can bring, pursues his "religious" ambitions with relish, contributing to the downfall, even death, of key people around him as the years pass. Although he continues to womanize, is often exposed as a fraud, and frequently faces a complete downfall, Gantry is never fully discredited and always manages to emerge triumphant and to reach ever greater heights of social status. The novel ends as the Rev. Gantry prays for the USA to be a "moral nation" and simultaneously admires the legs of a new choir singer.
Elmer Gantry is also a
1960 film which tells the story of a con man who teams up with a female evangelist to sell religion to small-town America. The film stars a young
Burt Lancaster as Gantry,
Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon,
Arthur Kennedy,
Dean Jagger,
Shirley Jones as Lulu Baines,
Patti Page,
Edward Andrews,
John McIntire, and
Chief Tahachee. Adapted by
Richard Brooks, who also directed, the movie presents less than 100 pages of the novel, deleting many characters and fundamentally changing the character and actions of female evangelist Sharon Falconer. The film won
Academy Awards for
Best Actor (Burt Lancaster),
Best Supporting Actress (Shirley Jones) and
Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. It was also nominated for
Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and
Best Picture.
Also, Elmer Gantry is listed as the vocal artist for the song "May Be A Price To Pay" on The Alan Parson Project Album
The Turn Of A Friendly Card (1980)
eNotes says in its
summary of the novel that "Elmer Gantry provides well-researched, layered insight into the clash of cultural forces in America in the
1920s, when traditional religious believers were deeply disturbed by the encroachments made on faith by science and
secularism. They also decried the growth within the church of the 'higher criticism,' that sought to understand the
Bible based on modern methods of scholarship.
In the novel, Gantry continues to womanize, is often exposed as a fraud, and frequently faces a complete downfall, yet he is never fully discredited and always manages to emerge triumphant and reaching ever greater heights of social standing.
Mark Schorer, then of the
University of California, Berkeley, notes that "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."
Lewis did research for the novel by observing the work of preacher William Stidger, pastor in the Linwood Boulevard
Methodist Episcopal Church in
Kansas City, Missouri. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them the Reverend L.M. Birkhead, a
Unitarian and an
agnostic. Schorer says that both of these associations, as well as others, influenced characters in the novel. There's no record of the character of Elmer Gantry or any other characters as being fictionalizations of the careers of
Billy Sunday or
Aimee Semple McPherson. Schorer also says that, while researching the book, that Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that "he took advantage of every possible tangetial experience in the religious community." The result is a novel that represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the
1920s toward it.
The novel is dedicated by Lewis "to
H. L. Mencken, with profound admiration."
On publication in
1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. The book was banned in
Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the USA. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. The famous evangelist
Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort." Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry,
H. G. Wells published a widely-syndicated newspaper article called "the New American People," in which he based his observations of American culture entirely on the novels of Sinclair Lewis, including Elmer Gantry.
* Nelson Manfred Blake. "How to Learn History from Sinclair Lewis and Other Uncommon Sources."
American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-Century Perspectives. Ed. John A. Hague. Westport: Greenwood, 1979. 111-23.
* Wheeler Dixon. "Cinematic Adaptations of the Works of Sinclair Lewis."
Sinclair Lewis at 100: Papers Presented at a Centennial Conference. Ed. Michael Connaughton. St. Cloud: St. Cloud State University, 1985. 191-200.
* Robert J. Higgs. "Religion and Sports: Three Muscular Christians in American Literature."
American Sport Culture: The Humanistic Dimensions. Ed. Wiley Lee Umphlett. Lewisburg: Buknell UP, 1985. 226-34.
* James M. Hutchisson.
The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920-1930. University Park: Pennsylvania State U P, 1996.
* George Killough. "Elmer Gantry, Chaucer's Pardoner, and the Limits of Serious Words."
Sinclair Lewis: New Essays in Criticism. Ed. James M. Hutchisson. Troy, New York: Whitston, 1997. 162-74.
* Edward A. Martin. "The Mimic as Artist: Sinclair Lewis."
H.L. Mencken and the Debunkers. Athens: U of Georgia P., 1984. 115-38.
* Gary H. Mayer. "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge."
American Bypaths: Essays in Honor of E. Hudson Long. Ed. Robert G. Collmer and Jack W. Herring. Waco: Baylor UP, 1980. 145-66.
* James Benedict Moore. "The Sources of Elmer Gantry."
New Republic 143 (8 Aug. 1960): 17-18.
* Edward J. Piacentino. "Babbittry Southern Style: T.S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral."
Markham Review 10 (1981): 36-39.
* Elizabeth S. Prioleau. "The Minister and the Seductress in American Fiction: The Adamic Myth Reduz."
Journal of American Culture 16.4 (1993): 1-6.
*
Mark Schorer.
Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, 1961.
*
Mark Schorer. "Afterword."
Elmer Gantry, 1970.
* Edward Shillito. "Elmer Gantry and the Church in America."
Nineteenth Century and After 101 (1927): 739-48.
