The Moment Elmer Gantry Was Jesus

Recently, I watched with my family the movie Elmer Gantry from 1960 starring Burt Lancaster. We were motivated to watch because Jeffrey Robbins, a Westar Scholar, included comments on the movie in his latest book. I was quite taken by the way acting on film at that time was still more like filming live theater than a movie is today. That aspect of watching the movie was interesting, but the plot was most interesting.

For those unfamiliar, Elmer Gantry is a novel by Sinclair Lewis from 1927 adapted to screen in 1960. Burt Lancaster won the only Oscar of his career in 1961 for playing the role of Elmer Gantry.

Elmer Gantry, as Jeff discusses in his book The Willing Damned (Westar Press, 2025) is a con artist who leaves his fast-paced life as a traveling sales representative for the slower but higher conning life of a religious revivalist. His life in sales gave him the gift of eloquent deception and fervent salvation pitches. He joins Sister Sharon Falconer, played by Jean Simmons, on her traveling revival tour and soon becomes the starring attraction in their duo performance. In the course of events, as they successfully establish Sister Falconer’s dream of a permanent tabernacle, Gantry falls in love with Falconer. His love becomes genuine, which is perhaps the only genuine part of his character.

Close to the end of this film, a part of Gantry’s past life emerges. He had a fling with a preacher’s daughter named Lulu, played by Shirley Jones, when he was briefly in a seminary. He more or less ruined her reputation, and for survival she turned to a life of prostitution. Their paths cross again when Gantry is still acting out his fake evangelical righteousness and directing the police to close the house of prostitution where Lulu lives. To get even for this heartless act of forcing the company of women onto the street, Lulu invites Gantry to her apartment, asks for a final kiss, has the moment photographed, and then sends the picture to the papers. Gantry is now exposed as a fraud even though in fact he is actually being righteous in apologizing to Lulu and seeking to support her after his admittedly outrageous act. Lulu’s deception works, and Gantry is ruined. But it is his honest self this time that is ruined whereas earlier it was his con-artistry self that made him successful. This sets up the scene that I want to comment on.

After his ruin, Gantry is again in front of an audience at the tabernacle. Few people are there to hear him. He walks before them to speak, but they all gang up on him. He stands there in silence while eggs, tomatoes, and other objects are thrown at him. A trumpeter comes forward and blasts a tune directly in his ears. He stands there. He is not angry but forgiving. He walks out saying nothing. He takes their hate as his badge of honor. It is the only time in the movie where he is like Jesus. Now he is an honest person who loses. He knows tragedy, and he faces it rather than trying to con his way out of it. He has integrity maybe for the first time in his life. The despicable man suddenly becomes a man of love, and the viewer suddenly feels compassion for this soul who was lost and has now found, in nothingness and in emptiness, all that the world truly has to offer—a deep peace and an unremitting love.

That is the great paradox of life. Sometimes we need to lose in order to win. Sometimes we need loss to understand love, and we need to come in second to place humanity first. In our world of winning at all costs, it would probably benefit us all to lose once in a while for the sake of common love and for the fate of our common humanity.

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