Elmer Gantry Explained

Elmer Gantry is a 1927 satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis that presents aspects of the religious activity of the United States in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, the protagonist, is attracted by drinking, chasing women, and making easy money (although eventually renouncing tobacco and alcohol). In the novel's fictional world, after various forays into smaller fringe churches, Gantry becomes a major moral and political force in the Methodist Church despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.^[1]

Elmer Gantry was published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927, dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken.

Background

Biographer Mark Schorer states that while researching the book, 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."October 2024. According to others, Lewis researched the novel by observing the work of various preachers in Kansas City in his so-called "Sunday School" meetings on Wednesdays. There, he first worked with William L. "Big Bill" Stidger,^[2] pastor of the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, thus Lewis engaged with Unitarian pastor L. M. Birkhead^[2] (an agnostic). Lewis preferred the liberal Birkhead to the conservative Stidger, and on his second visit to Kansas City, Lewis chose Birkhead as his guide. 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).

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

Experts have noted 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), 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.

Synopsis

The novel tells the story of the young, womanizing college athlete, Elmer Gantry, who abandons an early ambition to become a lawyer. After college, he attends a Baptist seminary, and is ordained as a minister. He successfully hides sexual involvements that are prohibited, 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 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, 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 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.

Publication history

• Book: Lewis, Sinclair . Sinclair Lewis . March 1927 . Elmer Gantry . First . New York, NY . . 185039547.

Reception

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] [6]} and denounced from pulpits across the United States. 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]

Criticism

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."October 2024. 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.

Adaptations

As of November 2007, there have been five adaptations of the novel:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Related inspired works

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.

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.^[9] Chaudhri sought investors for an initial $20 million budget,^[10] but as of this date, a remake has never been made. Rossi then began writing his own story of an Elmer Gantry-ish evangelist in a contemporary setting, which became the film Canaan Land.^[11]

Further reading

Including audiovisual

• Web site: Adams, Noah . 2008-02-22 . Elmer Gantry, a Flawed Preacher for the Ages . NPR.org . 2015-11-13 . Washington, DC and Culver City, CA . National Public Radio.

Books

• Blake, John Tyler. Sinclair Lewis's Kansas City Laboratory: The Genesis of Elmer Gantry. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1999.
• Corder, Robert Gibson. Edward J. Pawley: Broadway's Elmer Gantry, Radio's Steve Wilson, and Hollywood's Perennial Bad Guy, Outskirts Press, 2006.
• Hutchisson, James M. The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920–1930. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996.
• Lingeman, Richard R. Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005, .
• Schorer, Mark Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, 1961, McGraw-Hill. .

Chapters and articles

• Blake, Nelson Manfred. "How to Learn History from Sinclair Lewis and Other Uncommon Sources", in American Character and Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-Century Perspectives. John A. Hague (ed.). Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979. 111–23.
• Dixon, Wheeler. "Cinematic Adaptations of the Works of Sinclair Lewis", in Sinclair Lewis at 100: Papers Presented at a Centennial Conference, ed. Michael Connaughton. St. Cloud, MN: St. Cloud State University, 1985, pp. 191–200.
• Higgs, Robert J. "Religion and Sports: Three Muscular Christians in American Literature", in American Sport Culture: The Humanistic Dimensions Wiley Lee Umphlett (ed.). Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1985, pp. 226–34.
• Killough, George. "Elmer Gantry, Chaucer's Pardoner, and the Limits of Serious Words", in Sinclair Lewis: New Essays in Criticism. James M. Hutchisson (ed.). Troy, New York: Whitston, 1997. 162–74.
• Martin, Edward A. "The Mimic as Artist: Sinclair Lewis", in H. L. Mencken and the Debunkers. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1984. 115–38.
• Mayer, Gary H. "Love is More Than the Evening Star: A Semantic Analysis of Elmer Gantry and The Man Who Knew Coolidge", in American Bypaths: Essays in Honor of E. Hudson Long. Ed. Robert G. Collmer and Jack W. Herring. Waco: Baylor University Press, 1980. 145–66.
• Moore, James Benedict. "The Sources of Elmer Gantry", in The New Republic, 143 (8 August 1960): 17–18.
• Piacentino, Edward J. "Babbittry Southern Style: T. S. Stribling's Unfinished Cathedral". Markham Review 10 (1981): 36–39.
• Prioleau, Elizabeth S. "The Minister and the Seductress in American Fiction: The Adamic Myth Reduz", Journal of American Culture, 16.4 (1993): 1–6.
• Schorer, Mark. "Afterword", in Elmer Gantry [Sinclair Lewis] Signet Books edition, 1970.
• Shillito, Edward. "Elmer Gantry and the Church in America", in Nineteenth Century and After, 101 (1927): 739–48.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Lewis, Sinclair . Sinclair Lewis . 1927 . Elmer Gantry . 2015-11-13 . As a primary source, and lacking edition and publisher information, this source does not support the lead content (without editorial original research).
2. Book: Trollinger, William Vance . 1990 . God's Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism . 3 . History of American Thought and Culture . 9780299127145 . 2015-11-13 . Madison, WI . University of Wisconsin Press . Sinclair Lewis began the process of writing his classic satire of popular religion, Elmer Gntry, by doing some research into the current state of Christianity in America. As part of his preparation, Lewis went to Kansas City in January 1926 and immersed himself in the religious life of the community. While the prominent New York fundamentalist John Roach Straton seems to have been the initial model for Lewis' protagonist, in Kansas City the author fleshed out the character of the infamous Gantry with material from the lives of Methodist minister William "Big Bill" Stidger and Unitarian pastor L. M. Birkhead. In the process, Lewis became quite friendly with Birkhead and his wife. After accumulating piles of notes, and armed with a twenty-thousand-word outline, Lewis withdrew with the Birkheads to a summer resort in northern Minnesota, where he began to write the novel.[superscript 1] / While in Minnesota Lewis apparently concluded that he needed more data for his portrait of a fundamentalist preacher. He thus made efforts to interview, William Bell Riley, strident fundamentalist, and pastor of the first Baptist Church of Minneapolis. As Riley recounted later, 'when L. M. Birkhead, Universalist Pastor of Kansas City, and Sinclair Lewis brought their half heads together in order to produce the book entitled, Elmer Gantry, they . . . invited me to spend a week with them on Long Lake . . . in the hopes of getting something on me that they might work into that rotten volume.' Fortunately, Riley observed, 'God, who knows all things, knew they were coming,' and so filled Riley's week with commitments that... [he] was forced to decline the invitation..
3. Book: Hackett, Alice Payne and Burke, James Henry . 80 Years of Bestsellers: 1895 - 1975 . 1977 . R.R. Bowker Company . New York . 0835209083 . 103.
4. News: NYT Staff . April 13, 1927 . Boston Bans Sale of 'Elmer Gantry' . . 29 October 2024 . [Subtitle] Will Prosecute Any Who Sell Lewis Novel Under Law Against 'Indecent and Obscene' Books. Ten More Under Scrutiny. Publishers Will Hand to District Attorney Today 57 Works Held as Frank as Lewis's..
5. Web site: Boston, Rob . September 22, 2014 . The Censorship Crusade: A Story For Banned Books Week . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150713034218/https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/the-censorship-crusade-a-story-for-banned-books-week . 2015-07-13 . 29 October 2024 . Washington, DC . Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU).
6. Web site: Thomas, Ruth . 2015-04-24 . Research Guides; Boston and Its Neighborhoods; "Banned in Boston": Selected Sources . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20150424025925/http://www.bu.edu/library/guide/boston/banned/ . 2015-04-24 . 29 October 2024 . Boston, MA . Boston University Libraries and Archives.
7. News: Weiler. A. H.. 1960-07-08. Screen: A Living, Action-Packed 'Elmer Gantry'. 16. . 28 October 2024.
8. Web site: AMPAS Staff . 29 October 2024 . Oscars Ceremonies: The 33rd Academy Awards—1961 . . 29 October 2024 . Los Angeles, CA . Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
9. News: Herald Staff . April 5, 1999 . Controversial Clergyman Tapped for a Remake of Film 'Elmer Gantry' . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20160115010923/http://www2.sharonherald.com/localnews/recentnews/9904/ln040599a.html . 2016-01-15 . 29 October 2024 . Sharon, PA . The Sharon Herald Co..
10. News: Herald Staff . April 6, 1999 . Chaudhri Seeking Investors to Remake 'Elmer Gantry' . . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20141129034517/http://www2.sharonherald.com/localnews/recentnews/9904/ln040699c.html . 2014-11-29 . 29 October 2024 . Sharon, PA . The Sharon Herald Co..
11. News: Hill. Tim. Televangelists Threaten Controversial New Film 'Canaan Land' That Exposes Charismatic Movement's 'Frauds'. August 5, 2016. Faith News Network. March 4, 2016.