Elmer Gantry
Search results
Elmer Gantry is a 1960 American drama film about a confidence man and a female evangelist selling religion to small-town America. Adapted by director Richard Brooks, the film is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Sinclair Lewis, and stars Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Shirley Jones and Patti Page .
Elmer Gantry: Directed by Richard Brooks. With Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Dean Jagger. A fast-talking traveling salesman with a charming, loquacious manner convinces a sincere evangelist that he can be an effective preacher for her cause.
When hedonistic but charming con man Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) meets the beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), a roadside revivalist, he feigns piousness to join her act as a ...
Salesman Elmer Gantry, salesman teams up with evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer to sell religion to 1920s America. They make enough money to build a temple, and Sister Sharon falls for Elmer. He is tested by temptation and almost capitulates, but is then wrongly accused by the jilted temptress.
Despite his magnetism, Gantry remains penniless, and soon hops a train to avoid paying his hotel bill. There, a group of tramps steal his shoes and, to escape, he jumps off. Barefoot and filthy, Gantry enters an all-black church and soon wins over the crowd with his ardent singing.
Synopsis. The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry. After college, he attends a Baptist seminary, and he is ordained as a Baptist minister.
Elmer Gantry, American film drama, released in 1960, that was an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s novel of the same name and featured Academy Award-winning performances by Burt Lancaster and Shirley Jones.
