Review: Elmer Gantry

Set in the 1920s, Burt Lancaster is the title shameless travelling salesman and con artist with a two dollar smile and the gift of the gab. After catching a revival meeting with Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) he discovers a new way to make a buck and is soon trying to ingratiate himself into her inner circle. She’s initially frosty and sceptical of the shameless womaniser, but she sees something useful in his speechifyin’ and bluster. Before long, Elmer’s delivering passionate oratory sermons about damnation and sin at her revivalist meetings across the country, making both of them rich and famous in the process. That is until Elmer’s human failings (chiefly the sin of lust) threaten to derail the whole damn thing. Also following them is a cynical, atheistic newspaper journalist named Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), who is friendly enough, but isn’t for a second suckered into their ranting and raving, entertaining as it may be. Patti Page (apparently a pop singer) plays a naïve follower of Sister Sharon, Dean Jagger is Sister Sharon’s concerned manager, Shirley Jones plays a woman of ill-repute from Elmer’s past come back to cause trouble, and John Qualen (uncredited for some reason) plays a storekeeper friend of Elmer’s. Hugh Marlowe, Philip Ober, and John McIntire play religious figures who aren’t entirely on board with the rather showy, seemingly disingenuous revivalist movement, especially once Elmer becomes involved.

 

Although one might not consider it the most realistic, Stanislavsky-esque performance of all-time, Burt Lancaster definitely delivers one helluva performance in this powerful 1960 film from eclectic writer-director Richard Brooks (“Blackboard Jungle”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “In Cold Blood”, “The Professionals”). Lancaster could be stoic and silent when need be, but he uses his great oratory skills and boundless energy to brilliant effect here. When he talks- which is often- you are riveted. It’s a showy and wonderfully entertaining performance that won the talented and versatile Lancaster his only Oscar. There’s an especially amazing scene where he enters an African-American church and joins in on their singing with seemingly great passion. Make no mistake, though, the character Robert Mitchum played in “Night of the Hunter” had more religious conviction than Elmer Gantry, albeit with a much nastier and homicidal disposition. It’s a cynical and damning film, but as Brooks (a wonderfully eclectic filmmaker) makes clear from the opening crawl, it’s not an anti-religion film. Devoutly religious people should be just as condemning of the hucksters depicted in this film as Brooks clearly is.

 

The supporting cast is excellent, with Jean Simmons absolutely robbed of at least an Oscar nomination for what is her best-ever screen work, along with the lesser-known “So Long at the Fair”. Hers is a very difficult role, and seeing her pull it off so well makes one so angry that most of her other performances don’t even come close to touching her accomplishment here. The relationship between Simmons’ Sister Sharon Falconer and Elmer Gantry is a fascinating one. Elmer’s pretty much an open book to anyone with a working set of eyes and ears, he’s a con man, albeit a likeable and thoroughly charming one who means no one any harm, and who does at the end of the day seem to lean more towards being religious than non-religious, hard as it is to see behind the used car salesman schtick (albeit enthusiastically delivered schtick). That’s what probably makes him so hard to dislike, because he does seem to be on the side of God, albeit largely because it benefits him. Sister Sharon is much, much more difficult to read. It’s obvious that she’s not quite everything she claims to be, but just how aware of that is Sister Sharon herself? It’s only towards the end of the film when Sister Sharon is asked to heal a deaf man that one gets a sense of the character definitively. The looks on both Elmer Gantry and cynical journalist Jim Lefferts’ faces say it all. In fact, the entire fiery climax is memorably horrifying. The film also offers up startling casting of Shirley Freakin’ Jones as a tarty, scantily clad hooker. Her negligee in her first scene is so loose you almost see Mrs. Partridge’s pear trees! Jones is surprisingly hot as hell in the role, but as good as she is in the part, it seems such a small role for her to have bagged an Oscar when the much more impressive Simmons failed to even earn a nomination in her lead role. The underrated Arthur Kennedy is pitch-perfect casting as the cynical, largely atheistic journalist (essentially based on the infamous H.L. Mencken) who covers Sister Sharon’s barnstorming revivalist shows. At times one wonders if he’s the bad guy here or the revivalist phonies he’s attempting to expose, and the casting of both Kennedy and Simmons has a lot to do with that slight ambiguity. Dean Jagger and the always welcome John Qualen also offer up nice, smaller turns, though Philip Ober, John McIntire, and especially Hugh Marlowe don’t get much to do. Marlowe has a particularly thankless role as a reverend who isn’t a fan of revivalism. McIntire says his few lines with absolute authority, however, as always.

 

Honestly, the only drawback to this film is the pretty awful, overly insistent and shockingly Oscar-nominated score by Andre Previn (“Bad Day at Black Rock”, “Porgy and Bess”, “My Fair Lady”). It’s particularly shrill and ear-bleedingly overboard over the wannabe Saul Bass opening credits. It settles down after that, but is still far too intrusive.

 

A riveting, well-acted look at revivalist con artists and charlatans, but it would’ve been a bit of a chore were it not so charismatically performed by a lively Burt Lancaster and surprisingly strong Jean Simmons. An absolute must-see and unforgettable once seen. Brooks’ screenplay also won an Oscar, based on a novel by Sinclair Lewis, which was apparently controversial in its day (the late 1920s).

 

Rating: A-