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For information on the UK singer Elmer Gantry, aka Dave Terry, see Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera 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.
The novel 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 tangential 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. Film adaptation The novel was filmed in 1960 under the same title, starring a young Burt Lancaster as Gantry and Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon. Burt Lancaster was not, however, the first actor to portray the character of Elmer Gantry. Broadway star, Edward J. Pawley, was the original Elmer Gantry having played that role in the 1928 Broadway production, Elmer Gantry. Pawley left the Broadway stage in 1933 and went to Hollywood where he appeared in over 50 movies during a 10-year period. He later replaced Edward G. Robinson as "Steve Wilson" in the highly-popular radio drama series titled Big Town. | ||||||||
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