Elmer Gantry

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Biographer Mark Schorer states that while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City,^{[citation needed]} and that, "He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community."^{[This quote needs a citation]} According to others,^[who?] Lewis researched the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays.^{[citation needed]} There, he first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger,^[2] pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church.^{[citation needed]} Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen,^{[citation needed]} thus Lewis engaged with Unitarian pastor L. M. Birkhead^[2] (an agnostic^{[citation needed]}). Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City, Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide.^{[citation needed]} Other Kansas City ministers Lewis interviewed included Burris Jenkins, Earl Blackman, I. M. Hargett, Bert Fiske, and Robert Nelson Horatio Spencer, who was rector of Grace and Holy Trinity Church (now the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri).^{[citation needed]}

The character of Sharon Falconer was reportedly based on events in the career of the radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson,^{[according to whom?]} who founded the Pentecostal Christian denomination known as the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1927.^{[citation needed]} Lewis reportedly finished the book while mending a broken leg on Jackfish Island in Rainy Lake, Minnesota.^{[citation needed]}

Experts have noted^[who?] that George Babbitt, the namesake of one of Lewis' better-known novels, appears in Elmer Gantry (briefly, during an encounter at the Zenith Athletic Club),^{[citation needed]} and that the Elmer Gantry character appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels, The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish.^{[citation needed]}

This Section needs an improved plot summary (detailed and descriptive, without reintroducing interpretation and editorialising). (October 2024)

The novel tells the story of the young, womanizing college athlete, Elmer Gantry, who abandons an early ambition to become a lawyer. After college,^{[clarification needed]} he attends a Baptist seminary,^{[clarification needed]} and is ordained as a minister. He successfully hides sexual involvements that are prohibited,^{[clarification needed]} but is thrown out of the seminary before completing his bachelor of divinity because he is too drunk to appear at a church where he is supposed to preach.

After several years as a traveling salesman of farm equipment, Gantry becomes a confidante of Sharon Falconer, a popular evangelist and motivational speaker^{[clarification needed]} who has her own traveling "road church". Gantry becomes her lover, but she and scores of individuals attending one of her meetings are killed in a catastrophic fire in her tent tabernacle, and so Gantry loses both relationship and position. After the tragedy, he briefly acts as a "New Thought" evangelist,^{[clarification needed]} and eventually becomes a Methodist minister.

Gantry marries a local parishioner. Although he is unhappy with her sexual frigidity, he remains with her for sake of appearances. Years later, Methodist leaders award him a larger congregation in the city of Zenith. With his career and power at their peak, Gantry manipulates local, state and national political figures, resulting in police raids against bootleggers and bar patrons.

Gantry's corruption and power hunger^{[clarification needed]} contribute to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a former associate, Frank Shallard, a sincere minister who questions the moral purpose of his church. Shallard is nearly beaten to death by Gantry loyalists who are angered by perceived "atheistic" divergences from Christian teachings.

Gantry's career comes close to a major scandal when one of his affairs turns out to involve a husband and wife blackmail team. Gantry is helped in avoiding potential downfall by a close friend, and via political alliances with Deacon Eversley, a powerful lawyer; and a private detective agency. A thoroughly repentant Gantry swears to abstain from his sinful proclivities. As the book closes, Gantry notices a younger woman during a closing sermon scene.

This section needs expansion with: important English editions of this work, including reliable post-copyright electronic versions. You can help by adding to it. (October 2024)

• Lewis, Sinclair (March 1927). Elmer Gantry (First ed.). New York, NY: Harcourt Trade Publishers. OCLC 185039547.^{[full citation needed]}

Sinclair's Elmer Gantry was a commercial success, and was the best-selling work of fiction in America for 1927 (according to Publishers Weekly).^[3] However, on its publication, it created a public furor—it was banned in Boston and in other cities,^{[4][5][better source needed][6]} and denounced from pulpits across the United States.^{[citation needed]} Contemporary Sinclair Lewis biographer Mark Schorer notes that one cleric suggested Lewis be imprisoned for five years; others note that evangelist Billy Sunday threatened to beat him up and called him "Satan's cohort", and Lewis reportedly received an invitation to his own lynching.^{[5][better source needed]}

Criticism

This section needs expansion with: literary critical response, contemporary and modern, relating to this classic work. You can help by adding to it. (October 2024)

Lewis biographer Schorer 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."^{[This quote needs a citation]} Schorer concludes, in view of Lewis' research, that the novel satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it.^{[citation needed]}

This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2024)

As of November 2007, there have been five adaptations of the novel:^{[needs update][citation needed]}

• A Broadway play by Patrick Kearney opened on August 7, 1928 at the Playhouse Theatre, where it ran for 48 performances; the cast included Edward J. Pawley (later of Big Town fame) as Elmer Gantry, and Vera Allen as Sister Sharon Falconer.^{[according to whom?]}
• Director-screenwriter Richard Brooks' 1960 Elmer Gantry starred, among others, Burt Lancaster as Gantry, Shirley Jones as Lulu Bains, and Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon Falconer,^[7] and won Brooks the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for Lancaster and Jones, respectively.^[8]
• A 1970 Broadway musical adaptation, titled Gantry, opened and closed on the same night, February 14, 1970.
• A 1998 play adaptation by Richard Rossi was performed in Los Angeles and broadcast on TV October 24, 1998.^{[citation needed]}
• In November 2007, an opera, also titled Elmer Gantry, by Robert Aldridge and Herschel Garfein, premiered in the James K. Polk Theater in Nashville, Tennessee.^[9]

Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely syndicated newspaper article titled "The New American People", in which he largely bases his observations of American culture on Lewis's novels, including Elmer Gantry.^{[citation needed]}

After the 1998 play by Richard Rossi, that playwright was cast in the lead role of Elmer Gantry in a film remake of the 1960 Academy Award-winning film of the same name, slated to be directed by Amin Q. Chaudhri.^[10] Chaudhri sought investors for an initial $20 million budget,^[11] but as of this date,^[when?] a remake has never been made.^{[citation needed]} Rossi then began writing his own story of an Elmer Gantry-ish evangelist in a contemporary setting, which became the film Canaan Land.^[12]