Themes: Members of the Clergy, Cons and Scams, Religious Zealotry
Main Cast: Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Dean Jagger, Arthur Kennedy, Shirley Jones
Release Year: 1960
Country: US
Run Time: 146 minutes
Plot
Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster), a drunken, dishonest street preacher allegedly patterned on Billy Sunday, wrangles a job with the travelling tent ministry conducted by Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons). Thanks to Gantry's enthusiastic hellfire-and-brimstone sermons, Sister Sharon's operation rises to fame and fortune, enough so that Sharon realizes her dream of building her own enormous tabernacle. These ambitions are put in jeopardy when a prostitute (Oscar-winning Shirley Jones), a former minister's daughter who'd been deflowered by Gantry years earlier, lures Gantry into a compromising situation and has photographs taken. It took several years for any Hollywood studio to take a chance with Sinclair Lewis' novel, and when it finally did arrive on the screen, producer/director Richard Brooks was compelled to downplay some of the more "sacrilegious" passages in the original. Also appearing in Elmer Gantry are Arthur Kennedy as an H.L. Mencken-style atheistic journalist, and Edward Andrews as George Babbitt, a character borrowed from another Sinclair Lewis novel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
This once scandalous adaptation of the trenchant Sinclair Lewis novel may now seem a little dated, but it still has much to recommend it. It pulls few punches in its story of the hypocrisy, materialism, and opportunism at the heart of the evangelical world of Bible-thumping barnstorming revival troupes, an industry that professes to be about spiritual salvation. In the title role, Burt Lancaster moves like a powerful steam engine through the rustic countryside: there's no stopping this man. Gantry is charismatic and enigmatically complex, even if Lancaster is occasionally too much a bull in a china shop to convey his character's subtler motivations. Still, there's no denying his magnetism, which helped Lancaster earn his first and only Academy Award. Jean Simmons offers a more quietly sophisticated portrayal as Sister Sharon Falconer, but it is Shirley Jones, in the flashier role of Gantry's ex-flame and prostitute Lulu, who garnered the Best Supporting Actress nod from the Academy. Some questionable character development in the film's latter stages is overcome by writer/director Richard Brooks's barbed and darkly satirical Oscar-winning script, which also keeps the film from getting bogged down in obvious moralizing, as we are encouraged to love, loathe, and forgive the characters. Brooks' sharp editing and quick pacing are also an important asset in this dialogue-driven 2 1/2-hour film. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
Edward Carrere - Art Director, Dorothy Jeakins - Costume Designer, Richard Brooks - Director, Marjorie Fowler - Editor, Andre Previn - Composer (Music Score), Robert J. Schiffer - Makeup, Harry Maret - Makeup, John Alton - Cinematographer, Gilbert Kurland - Production Manager, Bernard Smith - Producer, William F. Calvert - Set Designer, Frank A. Tuttle - Set Designer, Harry D. Mills - Sound/Sound Designer, Richard Brooks - Screenwriter, Sinclair Lewis - Book Author
Elmer Gantry is a 1960drama film about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small town America. Adapted by director Richard Brooks, the film is based on the 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis and stars Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons. The movie presents fewer than 100 pages of the novel, deleting many characters and fundamentally changing the character and actions of female evangelist Sharon Falconer, played by Simmons. The story's use of a female evangelist bears a resemblance to true-life Sister Aimee Semple McPherson. The film won numerous awards.
Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a hard-drinking, fast-talking traveling salesman with a charismatic personality. While traveling, he's drawn to the road show of Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) and is immediately attracted to the saintly revivalist. He soon cons his way into her good graces and joins the troupe as a fiery preacher. Gantry and Falconer develop what her manager calls a "good cop/bad cop" routine, with Elmer telling the audience members that they will burn in Hell for their sins and Sharon promising them salvation if they repent. With Elmer's support, the group makes its way out of exclusively provincial venues and into Zenith, Winnemac. Falconer eventually admits to Gantry that her real name is Katie Jones and that her origins are humbler than she publicly admits. Falconer becomes Gantry's lover and loses her virginity to him.
Gantry's on-stage antics draw the attention of big city reporter and nonbeliever Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy). Lefferts is shown to be torn between his disgust for religious hucksterism and his genuine admiration for Gantry's charm and cunning. The two men begin a public feud which increases the notoriety of both.
The success of the Falconer-Gantry team is mired by Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones), Elmer's former girlfriend. Baines fell into disrepute and became a prostitute when her affair with Gantry ruined her standing in her minister father's eyes. Gantry, acting as a moralist, unwittingly invades the brothel where Lulu works, with police and media in tow and sends the prostitutes out of town. Lulu frames Gantry out of revenge for this and out of jealousy for his relationship with Falconer.
Baines blackmails Gantry and asks Falconer to bring money in exchange for incriminating pictures. Falconer brings the money, but Baines refuses to accept; it is unclear why.
Though Baines first offers Lefferts the story of Gantry's sexual indiscretion, he refuses, shrugging the pictures off as merely proof that Gantry is as human as anyone else. Later, when an angry mob threatens Gantry at the tent revival following the publication of the incriminating photos, Lefferts fights in Gantry's defense.
Lulu joins the congregation at this tent revival to see Gantry's humiliation. However, as she watches the mob curse Gantry and cover him with eggs and other produce, she is emotionally shaken and flees the scene. She returns to the brothel, which is now in a dilapidated state from Gantry's publicity stunt. The photographer who helped frame Gantry is there to collect his money. When Baines cannot pay him, he beats her. Gantry comes to Baines's rescue in the midst of this beating. He disposes of the photographer and apologizes to Baines. She soon publicly confesses to having framed Gantry.
Elmer returns to Sharon the night her tabernacle opens and tells her that he wants them to live like a more normal couple. Sharon is unable to give up her soul-saving ventures, though, and insists that she and Elmer were brought together by God to do His work. Sharon tragically dies in a fire at her tabernacle, unable or unwilling to see past her own religious zeal when the place is engulfed in a fire. Deeply saddened by Sharon's death and having reached something of a moral awakening, Elmer decides to stop evangelizing, quoting from the Bible: "When I was a child, I understood as a child and spake as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things." (1 Corinthians 13:11)
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.
