Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry Movie Poster
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In Theaters: July 7, 1960

2h 25m | Drama


Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster), a drunken, dishonest street preacher allegedly patterned on Billy Sunday, wrangles a job with the travelling tent ministry conducted by Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons). Thanks to Gantry's enthusiastic hellfire-and-brimstone sermons, Sister Sharon's operation rises to fame and fortune, enough so that Sharon realizes her dream of building her own enormous tabernacle. These ambitions are put in jeopardy when a prostitute (Oscar-winning Shirley Jones), a former minister's daughter who'd been deflowered by Gantry years earlier, lures Gantry into a compromising situation and has photographs taken. It took several years for any Hollywood studio to take a chance with Sinclair Lewis' novel, and when it finally did arrive on the screen, producer/director Richard Brooks was compelled to downplay some of the more sacrilegious passages in the original. Also appearing in Elmer Gantry are Arthur Kennedy as an H.L. Mencken-style atheistic journalist, and Edward Andrews as George Babbitt, a character borrowed from another Sinclair Lewis novel.

Director: Richard Brooks
Studio: MGM/UA Home Entertainment Inc.
Cast: John McIntire, Barry Kelley, Shirley Jones, Jean Simmons, Burt Lancaster, Philip Ober, Hugh Marlowe, Jean Willes, Rex Ingram, Everett Glass, Arthur Kennedy, Dean Jagger, Edward Andrews
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