Elmer Gantry (1960)

I was fascinated and puzzled by Elmer Gantry, one of the nominees for Best Picture of 1960. It's the story of a down-on-his-luck traveling appliance salesman who becomes part of the rise of evangelism in the 1920s. What is intriguing to me about this movie is that I could never quite get a handle on how we are supposed to feel about the preachers and their followers. I know this movie is an adaptation of a Sinclair Lewis book, and I would expect his novel to be a rather scalding indictment of evangelism. However, given how mesmerizing the central character is and the intensity of his sermons, I'm not sure that the impact of the film is truly to make him into despicable person. Instead, he seems awfully charismatic, someone others would want to follow.

In the capable hands of Burt Lancaster, the title role of Elmer Gantry is a fascinating one. When we first meet him, he is telling off-color jokes to a group of salesmen in a bar on Christmas Eve. When two women from the Salvation Army try to take up a collection, Elmer starts preaching on their behalf, shaming his fellow salesman into making some significant contributions. Given the passion of his talk, you really expect that he believes what he says. However, he then spends the night with a woman he meets in the bar and skips out of the hotel before she awakens.

Elmer has an odd series of what might be considered lucky incidents. He stumbles into a black church and joins the congregation in singing hymns. Lancaster sings every hymn in the movie with such gusto; he has a fine singing voice, strong and deep. After getting help from the minister of the black church, Elmer next stumbles upon a tent revival starring Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons). He's immediately intrigued by her and uses one of the singers in her band, Sister Rachel (played by the singer Patti Page), to get closer to Sister Sharon. Initially, Sister Sharon rejects him because she quickly sizes him up as a gambler, drinker, and womanizer--all true, by the way. However, Elmer is nothing if not persistent, and eventually, he worms his way into talking during one of Sister's meetings. After telling the crowd how the Lord helped him to sell toasters--remember that he's been pretty much broke throughout the early scenes of the movie--he's hired for the job on a more permanent basis.

It's not impossible to see that Sister Sharon is physically attracted to Elmer. He's unlike any of the men who surround her. They all tend to be conservative clergymen or the like, men who are timid and prefer to let Sister Sharon take charge of the meetings. That's why she's always tired, she says. However, once she gets to know Elmer, she says to him, "You're amusing, and you smell like a real man." Elmer is a man who seems to enjoy the physical aspects of life to their fullest. Despite warnings from her chief advisor, William L. Morgan (Dean Jagger), Sister Sharon becomes involved with Elmer.

There's a coterie of press people who follow the sister wherever she goes. One of those is newspaperman Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), who eventually digs up enough information about Sister Sharon and Elmer to print an expose about the evangelism movement. Elmer, for example, was expelled from a seminary when he was younger, and Sister Sharon has no credentials to be a preacher. Rather than be upset, Elmer suggests that they use the publicity to draw even bigger crowds. In fact, he befriends Lefferts, admitting that each of them uses the other to full advantage. Elmer even invites the press along as he goes around destroying liquor bottles and trashing houses of prostitution.

The biggest obstacle faced by Sister Sharon and Elmer arises when they reach the city of Zenith, which appears in several of Lewis' novels, by the way. It's there that Lulu Bains, a prostitute who knows Elmer from a few years back, gets involved. She's played by Shirley Jones, who had heretofore done more wholesome fare, such as musicals like Oklahoma and Carousel. This performance marked quite a turning point for Jones, and she was awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for it. Lulu, you see, still loves Elmer but tries to cash in on his notoriety by having some incriminating photos taken of the two of them. How Elmer manages to redeem his reputation is really quite interesting to watch during the final third of the film.

As I stated at the beginning, this movie leaves me with more questions than answers. I never can quite tell if Elmer converts or if he's still the con man at the end that he was at the beginning. There's such a fervor to Lancaster's speeches--and that hair doesn't hurt, either--that it's really tough to tell which side you should be on at movie's end. Lewis himself was harshly critical of religion, so I think the film version has taken more than a few liberties with the subject matter. Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to be more balanced; even the atheist newspaperman played by Kennedy is subjected to criticism for his beliefs. There's a lot of talk about the intersection of religion and money, and the film certainly shows many people who are skeptical of evangelism. To call Elmer Gantry an anti-Christian movie, however, would be too simplistic of an assessment.