Elmer Gantry **** (1960, Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Shirley Jones, Dean Jagger) – Classic Movie Review 5688

Writer-director Richard Brooks’s barnstorming 1960 drama triumphed at the Academy Awards with three Oscar wins – for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. However it missed out on Best Picture (for producer Bernard Smith) and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (for André Previn).

Burt Lancaster carries all before him on top Best Actor Oscar-winning form as the traveling salesman and charlatan evangelist Elmer Gantry exploiting Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons)’s barnstorming pulpit troupe in the 1920s American Mid-West. Lancaster also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor – Drama.

There were Oscars too for best supporting actress Shirley Jones as Lulu Bains, Elmer Gantry’s jilted girlfriend turned prostitute, and for writer-director Richard Brooks for his sharp screenplay, based on the 1927 novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis.

Arthur Kennedy also does well as Jim Lefferts, the journalist out to expose Lancaster, though Simmons is too demure and low-key in this fiery company.

John Alton’s superb Eastman Color cinematography (in his final film) helps to conjure up the flavour of the special Mid-West atmosphere of Lewis’s novel.

Also in the cast are Dean Jagger as William L Morgan, Edward [Ed] Andrews as George F Babbitt, Patti Page as Sister Rachel, John McIntire as the Rev John Pengilly, Joe Maross, Everett Glass, Michael Whalen, Hugh Marlowe, Philip Ober, Wendell Holmes, Barry Kelly, Rex Ingram and Jean Willes.

It is Lancaster’s only Oscar, though he was also nominated as Best Actor for From Here to Eternity (1953), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Atlantic City (1980).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5688

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