Write Me a Note 6. Buzz Fly 7. Fixin' to Die 8. If the Caps Fits 9. Way Life Is That's the Way the Wind B Hold Up the Light Hold on Put Your Hands Up Love's Got a Hold on Me End Up Crying Knives in Their Backs Rock 'n' Roll Hoochie Coo Show Biz Blues You Can't Beat Your Brain Living on the Highway Take You Down Let's Spend the Night Tog You see it takes a sure-enough dyed-in-the-wool brave man to be big enough to give Jesus a shot at him, and admit he's licked when he tries to fight God!
It takes a man with guts to kneel down and admit his worthlessness when all the world is jeering at him! And you haven't got that kind of courage, Elmer.
Oh, you think you're such a big cuss--". Old Jud swung him around; Old Jud's hand was crushing his shoulder. You could knock out any of 'em, couldn't you! Well, I'm one of 'em. Want to knock me out? With one swift jerk Roberts had his coat off, stood with a striped silk shirt revealing his hogshead torso. I'm willing to fight you for the glory of God! God needs you! Can you think of anything finer for a big husky like you than to spend his life bringing poor, weak, sick, scared folks to happiness?
Can't you see how the poor little skinny guys and all the kiddies would follow you and praise you and admire you, you old son of a gun? Am I a sneaking Christian? Can you lick me? Want to fight it out? I pack a pretty good wallop, but I'm not going to take any chance on you!
Going to allow me to be a friend of yours, if I don't butt in on your business? Will you come to our big meeting tomorrow night?
You don't have to do a thing. If you think we're four-flushers--all right; that's your privilege. Only will you come and not decide we're all wrong beforehand, but really use that big fine incisive brain of yours and study us as we are? Will you come? Mighty proud to have you let me come butting in here in this informal way.
Remember: if you honestly feel I'm using any undue influence on the boys, you come right after me and say so, and I'll be mighty proud of your trusting me to stand the gaff. So long, old Elm! So long, Jim. God bless you! He was gone, a whirlwind that whisked the inconspicuous herb Eddie Fislinger out after it. And then Jim Lefferts spoke. For a time after Judson Roberts' curtain, Elmer stood glowing, tasting praise.
He was conscious of Jim's eyes on his back, and he turned toward the bed, defiantly. You haven't got to the miracle-pulling stage yet. Sure he's intelligent. I never heard a better exhibition of bunco-steering in my life.
He's just crazy to have you come up and kick him in the ear and tell him you've decided you can't give your imprimatur--". He read all about your great game with Thorvilsen. Sent off to New York to get the Review of Reviews and read more about it. Eddie Fislinger never told him a word. He read about your tackling in the London Times.
You bet. Didn't he say so? And he's a saved soul--he couldn't lie. And he just couldn't stand it if he didn't become a friend of yours. He can't know more than a couple of thousand collidge boys to spring that stuff on! You bet I believe in the old bearded Jew God! Nobody but him could have made all the idiots there are in the world! I don't. When he could be a decent prize-fighter, and not have to go around with angleworms like Eddie Fislinger day after day!
But Elmer was at Judson Roberts' meeting next evening, unprotected by Jim, who remained at home in so vile a temper that Elmer had sent in a doctor and sneaked away from the room for the afternoon. It was undoubtedly Eddie who wrote or telegraphed to Mrs. Gantry that she would do well to be present at the meeting.
Paris was only forty miles from Gritzmacher Springs. Elmer crept into his room at six, still wistfully hoping to have Jim's sanction, still ready to insist that if he went to the meeting he would be in no danger of conversion. He had walked miles through the slush, worrying. He was ready now to give up the meeting, to give up Judson's friendship, if Jim should insist. Cozily, "Can't I run up and see my two boys if I want to, Elmy? I declare, I believe you'd of killed Jim, with all this nasty tobacco air, if I hadn't come in and aired the place out.
I thought, Elmer Gantry, you weren't supposed to smoke in Terwillinger! By the rules of the college! I thought, young man, that you lived up to 'em! But never mind. Uneasily--for Jim had never before seen him demoted to childhood, as he always was in his mother's presence--Elmer grumbled, "But honest, Ma, what did you come up for? I've got a vacation coming, too! Now don't you worry one mite about me. I guess I can take care of myself after all these years!
The first traveling I ever done with you, young man--the time I went to Cousin Adeline's wedding--I just tucked you under one arm--and how you squalled, the whole way! Don't you worry one mite about me. I'm only going to stay over the night--got a sale on remnants starting--going back on Number Seven tomorrow.
I left my valise at that boarding-house right across from the depot. But there's one thing you might do if 'tain't too much trouble, Elmy. You know I've only been up here at the college once before. I'd feel kind of funny, country bumpkin like me, going alone to that big meeting, with all those smart professors and everybody there, and I'd be glad if you could come along. But before Elmer was carried away, Jim had the chance to whisper, "God, do be careful!
Remember I won't be there to protect you! Don't let 'em pick on you! Don't do one single doggone thing they want you to do, and then maybe you'll be safe! The climactic meeting of the Annual Prayer Week, to be addressed by President Quarles, four ministers, and a rich trustee who was in the pearl-button business, with Judson Roberts as star soloist, was not held at the Y.
The church was a welter of brownstone, with Moorish arches and an immense star-shaped window not yet filled with stained glass. Elmer hoped to be late enough to creep in inconspicuously, but as his mother and he straggled up to the Romanesque portico, students were still outside, chattering. He was certain they were whispering, "There he is--Hell-cat Gantry.
Say, is it really true he's under conviction of sin? I thought he cussed out the church more'n anybody in college. Meek though Elmer had been under instruction by Jim and threats by Eddie and yearning by his mother, he was not normally given to humility, and he looked at his critics defiantly. If they think I'm going to sneak in--". He swaggered down almost to the front pews, to the joy of his mother, who had been afraid that as usual he would hide in the rear, handy to the door if the preacher should become personal.
There was a great deal of decoration in the church, which had been endowed by a zealous alumnus after making his strike in Alaskan boarding-houses during the gold-rush. There were Egyptian pillars with gilded capitals, on the ceiling were gilt stars and clouds more woolen than woolly, and the walls were painted cheerily in three strata--green, watery blue, and khaki.
It was an echoing and gaping church, and presently it was packed, the aisles full. Professors with string mustaches and dog-eared Bibles, men students in sweaters or flannel shirts, earnest young women students in homemade muslin with modest ribbons, over-smiling old maids of the town, venerable saints from the back-country with beards which partly hid the fact that they wore collars without ties, old women with billowing shoulders, irritated young married couples with broods of babies who crawled, slid, bellowed, and stared with embarrassing wonder at bachelors.
Five minutes later Elmer would not have had a seat down front. Now he could not escape. He was packed in between his mother and a wheezing fat man, and in the aisle beside his pew stood evangelical tailors and ardent school-teachers. His mother nestled happily beside him, her hand proudly touching his sleeve, and he was stirred by the march and battle of the hymn:. When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more, And the morning breaks eternal, bright and far.
They stood for the singing of "Shall We Gather at the River? Elmer's own people. Could he be a traitor to them, could he resist the current of their united belief and longing? Yes, we'll gather at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river, Gather with the saints at the river That flows by the throne of God. Could he endure it to be away from them, in the chill void of Jim Lefferts' rationalizing, on that day when they should be rejoicing in the warm morning sunshine by the river rolling to the imperishable Throne?
His mother stroked his sleeve. He remembered that she had maintained he was the best singer she had ever heard; that Jim Lefferts had admitted, "You certainly can make that hymn dope sound as if it meant something. The preliminaries merely warmed up the audience for Judson Roberts. Old Jud was in form. He laughed, he shouted, he knelt and wept with real tears, he loved everybody, he raced down into the audience and patted shoulders, and for the moment everybody felt that he was closer to them than their closest friends.
Roberts was really a competent athlete, and he really had skill in evoking pictures. He described the Chicago-Michigan game, and Elmer was lost in him, with him lived the moments of the scrimmage, the long run with the ball, the bleachers rising to him. Roberts voice softened. He was pleading. He was not talking, he said, to weak men who needed coddling into the Kingdom, but to strong men, to rejoicing men, to men brave in armor.
There was another sort of race more exhilarating than any game, and it led not merely to a score on a big board but to the making of a new world--it led not to newspaper paragraphs but to glory eternal.
Dangerous--calling for strong men! Ecstatic--brimming with thrills! The team captained by Christ! No timid Jesus did he preach, but the adventurer who had joyed to associate with common men, with reckless fishermen, with captains and rulers, who had dared to face the soldiers in the garden, who had dared the myrmidons of Rome and death itself!
Who was gallant? Who had nerve? Who longed to live abundantly? Let them come! They must confess their sins, they must repent, they must know their own weakness save as they were reborn in Christ. But they must confess not in heaven-pilfering weakness, but in training for the battle under the wind-torn banners of the Mighty Captain.
Who would come? Who was for vision and the great adventure? He was among them, Judson Roberts, with his arms held out, his voice a bugle.
Young men sobbed and knelt; a woman shrieked; people were elbowing the standers in the aisles and pushing forward to kneel in agonized happiness, and suddenly they were setting relentlessly on a bewildered Elmer Gantry, who had been betrayed into forgetting himself, into longing to be one with Judson Roberts. His mother was wringing his hand, begging, "Oh, won't you come? Won't you make your old mother happy?
Let yourself know the joy of surrender to Jesus! The basket-ball player was patting his other arm, begging, "Dear old Hell-cat, you've never let yourself be happy! You've been lonely! Let yourself be happy with us! You know I'm no mollycoddle. Won't you know the happiness of salvation with us? A thread-thin old man, very dignified, a man with secret eyes that had known battles, and mountain-valleys, was holding out his hands to Elmer, imploring with a humility utterly disconcerting, "Oh, come, come with us--don't stand there making Jesus beg and beg--don't leave the Christ that died for us standing out in the cold, begging!
And, somehow, flashing through the crowd, Judson Roberts was with Elmer, honoring him beyond all the multitude, appealing for his friendship--Judson Roberts the gorgeous, beseeching:. Are you going to let me go away miserable and beaten, old man? Are you going to betray me like Judas, when I've offered you my Jesus as the most precious gift I can bring you? Are you going to slap me and defile me and hurt me?
Think of the joy of being rid of all those nasty little sins that you've felt so ashamed of! Won't you come kneel with me, won't you? His mother shrieked, "Won't you, Elmer? With him and me? Won't you make us happy? Won't you be big enough to not be afraid? See how we're all longing for you, praying for you!
An instant he saw Jim Lefferts, and heard him insist: "Why, sure, course they believe it. They hypnotize themselves. But don't let 'em hypnotize you! He saw Jim's eyes, that for him alone veiled their bright harshness and became lonely, asking for comradeship.
He struggled; with all the blubbering confusion of a small boy set on by his elders, frightened and overwhelmed, he longed to be honest, to be true to Jim--to be true to himself and his own good honest sins and whatsoever penalties they might carry.
Then the visions were driven away by voices that closed over him like surf above an exhausted swimmer. Volitionless, marveling at the sight of himself as a pinioned giant, he was being urged forward, forced forward, his mother on one arm and Judson on the other, a rhapsodic mob following. But as he came to the row kneeling in front of the first pew, he had a thought that made everything all right.
He could have both! He could keep Judson and his mother, yet retain Jim's respect. He had only to bring Jim also to Jesus, then all of them would be together in beatitude! Freed from misery by that revelation, he knelt, and suddenly his voice was noisy in confession, while the shouts of the audience, the ejaculations of Judson and his mother, exalted him to hot self-approval and made it seem splendidly right to yield to the mystic fervor.
He had but little to do with what he said. The willing was not his but the mob's; the phrases were not his but those of the emotional preachers and hysterical worshipers whom he had heard since babyhood:. My sins are heavy on me! I am unworthy of compassion! O Jesus, intercede for me!
Oh, let thy blood that was shed for me be my salvation! O God, I do truly repent of my great sinning and I do long for the everlasting peace of thy bosom! Thank God, thank God, thank God! Oh, hallelujah, Brother, thank the dear loving God! He was certain that he would never again want to guzzle, to follow loose women, to blaspheme; he knew the rapture of salvation--yes, and of being the center of interest in the crowd.
Others about him were beating their foreheads, others were shrieking, "Lord, be merciful," and one woman--he remembered her as a strange, repressed, mad-eyed special student who was not known to have any friends--was stretched out, oblivious of the crowd, jerking, her limbs twitching, her hands clenched, panting rhythmically. But it was Elmer, tallest of the converts, tall as Judson Roberts, whom all the students and most of the townpeople found important, who found himself important.
His mother was crying, "Oh, this is the happiest hour of my life, dear! This makes up for everything! Judson was clawing Elmer's hand, whooping, "Liked to had you on the team at Chicago, but I'm a lot gladder to have you with me on Christ's team! If you knew how proud I am! Then the others were crowding on him, shaking his hand, congratulating him: the football center, the Latin professor, the town grocer.
President Quarles, his chin whisker vibrant and his shaven upper lip wiggling from side to side, was insisting, "Come, Brother Elmer, stand up on the platform and say a few words to us--you must--we all need it--we're thrilled by your splendid example!
Elmer was not quite sure how he got through the converts, up the steps to the platform. He suspected afterward that Judson Roberts had done a good deal of trained pushing. He looked down, something of his panic returning. But they were sobbing with affection for him.
The Elmer Gantry who had for years pretended that he relished defying the whole college had for those same years desired popularity. Nothing I have ever done has been right, because it didn't lead to the way and the truth! Here I thought I was a good church-member, but all the time I hadn't seen the real light. I'd never been willing to kneel down and confess myself a miserable sinner. But I'm kneeling now, and, oh, the blessedness of humility! He wasn't, to be quite accurate, kneeling at all; he was standing up, very tall and broad, waving his hands; and though what he was experiencing may have been the blessedness of humility, it sounded like his announcements of an ability to lick anybody in any given saloon.
But he was greeted with flaming hallelujahs, and he shouted on till he was rapturous and very sweaty:. Come to him now! Oh, it's funny that I who've been so great a sinner could dare to give you his invitation, but he's almighty and shall prevail, and he giveth his sweet tidings through the mouths of babes and sucklings and the most unworthy, and lo, the strong shall be confounded and the weak exalted in his sight!
It was all, the Mithraic phrasing, as familiar as "Good morning" or "How are you? A pimply youth, long known as a pool-room tout, leaped up, his greasy face working, shrieked, "O God, forgive me! Then the hallelujahs rose till they drowned Elmer's accelerated pleading, then Judson Roberts stood with his arm about Elmer's shoulder, then Elmer's mother knelt with a light of paradise on her face, and they closed the meeting in a maniac pealing of.
But it had been only the devoted, the people who had come early and taken front seats, of whom he had been conscious in his transports. The students who had remained at the back of the church now loitered outside the door in murmurous knots, and as Elmer and his mother passed them, they stared, they even chuckled, and he was suddenly cold.
You'll need your sleep, after all this stirrin' up you've had tonight--I was so proud--I've never known anybody to really wrestle with the Lord like you did. Oh, Elmy, you'll stay true? You've made your old mother so happy! All my life I've sorrowed, I've waited, I've prayed and now I shan't ever sorrow again! Oh, you will stay true? He threw the last of his emotional reserve into a ringing, "You bet I will, Ma! He had no emotion left with which to face walking alone, in a cold and realistic night, down a street not of shining columns but of cottages dumpy amid the bleak snow and unfriendly under the bitter stars.
His plan of saving Jim Lefferts, his vision of Jim with reverent and beatific eyes, turned into a vision of Jim with extremely irate eyes and a lot to say. With that vanishment his own glory vanished. I really did repent all these darn' fool sins.
Even smoking--I'm going to cut it out. I did feel the--the peace of God. I did feel different! I did! Or was it just because Judson and Ma and all those Christers were there whooping it up With all his Big Brother stuff. Prob'ly pulls it everywhere he goes. Jim'll claim I--Oh, damn Jim, too!
I got some rights! None of his business if I come out and do the fair square thing! And they did look up to me when I gave them the invitation! It went off fine and dandy! And that kid coming right up and getting saved. Mighty few fellows ever've pulled off a conversion as soon after their own conversion as I did!
Moody or none of 'em. I'll bet it busts the records! Yes, sir, maybe they're right. Maybe the Lord has got some great use for me, even if I ain't always been all I might of been. Trouble with him is, he thinks he knows it all. I guess these wise old coots that've written all these books about the Bible, I guess they know more'n one smart-aleck Kansas agnostic!
Even if a fellow don't do what's right himself, no excuse for his sneering at fellows that do, like preachers. There's where Jim makes his mistake. But if Jim Lefferts thinks for one single solitary second that I'm afraid to be a preacher because he pulls a lot of gaff--I guess I know how I felt when I stood up and had all them folks hollering and rejoicing--I guess I know whether I experienced salvation or not!
And I don't require any James Blaine Lefferts to tell me, neither! Thus for an hour of dizzy tramping; now colder with doubt than with the prairie wind, now winning back some of the exaltation of his spiritual adventure, but always knowing that he had to confess to an inexorable Jim. It was after one. Surely Jim would be asleep, and by next day there might be a miracle. Morning always promises miracles. He eased the door open, holding it with a restraining hand. There was a light on the washstand beside Jim's bed, but it was a small kerosene lamp turned low.
He tiptoed in, his tremendous feet squeaking. Jim suddenly sat up, turned up the wick. He was red-nosed, red-eyed, and coughing. He stared, and unmoving, by the table, Elmer stared back. You've gone and done it! You've been saved! You've let them hornswoggle you into being a Baptist witch-doctor! I'm through!
You can go--to heaven! I've got nothing more to say. And now you listen to me! Most of the night they struggled for the freedom of Elmer's soul, with Jim not quite losing yet never winning.
As Jim's face had hovered at the gospel meeting between him and the evangelist, blotting out the vision of the cross, so now the faces of his mother and Judson hung sorrowful and misty before him, a veil across Jim's pleading. Elmer slept four hours and went out, staggering with weariness, to bring cinnamon buns, a wienie sandwich, and a tin pail of coffee for Jim's breakfast.
They were laboring windily into new arguments, Jim a little more stubborn, Elmer ever more irritable, when no less a dignitary than President the Rev. Willoughby Quarles, chin whisker, glacial shirt, bulbous waistcoat and all, plunged under the fat soft wing of the landlady.
The president shook hands a number of times with everybody, he eyebrowed the landlady out of the room, and boomed in his throaty pulpit voice, with belly-rumblings and long-drawn R's and L's, a voice very deep and owlish, most holy and fitting to the temple which he created merely by his presence, rebuking to flippancy and chuckles and the puerile cynicisms of the Jim Leffertses--a noise somewhere between the evening bells and the morning jackass:.
I have never seen a braver! For a great strong man of your gladiatorial powers to not be afraid to humble himself! And your example will do a great deal of good, a grrrrrreat deal of good!
And we must catch and hold it. You are to speak at the Y. You must! It's already announced. If you'll go out within the next hour, you'll be gratified to see posters announcing it all over town! I myself shall call for you at a quarter to seven. Elmer was completely frightened, completely unwilling, and swollen with delight that after long dark hours when Jim, an undergraduate, had used him dirtily and thrown clods at his intellect, the President of Terwillinger College should have welcomed him to that starched bosom as a fellow-apostle.
While Elmer was making up his mind to do what he had made up his mind to do, Jim crawled into bed and addressed the Lord in a low poisonous tone. For an hour, late that afternoon, after various classes in which every one looked at him respectfully, Elmer tried to prepare his address for the Y.
Jim was sleeping, with a snore like the snarl of a leopard. In his class in Public Speaking, a course designed to create congressmen, bishops, and sales-managers, Elmer had had to produce discourses on Taxation, the Purpose of God in History, Our Friend the Dog, and the Glory of the American Constitution. But his monthly orations had not been too arduous; no one had grieved if he stole all his ideas and most of his phrasing from the encyclopedia.
The most important part of preparation had been the lubrication of his polished-mahogany voice with throat-lozenges after rather steady and totally forbidden smoking. He had learned nothing except the placing of his voice. It had never seemed momentous to impress the nineteen students of oratory and the instructor, an unordained licensed preacher who had formerly been a tax-assessor in Oklahoma.
He had, in Public Speaking, never been a failure nor ever for one second interesting. Now, sweating very much, he perceived that he was expected to think, to articulate the curious desires whereby Elmer Gantry was slightly different from any other human being, and to rivet together opinions which would not be floated on any tide of hallelujahs. He tried to remember the sermons he had heard. But the preachers had been so easily convinced of their authority as prelates, so freighted with ponderous messages, while himself, he was not at the moment certain whether he was a missionary who had to pass his surprising new light on to the multitude, or just a sinner who Just a sinner!
For keeps! Nothing else! Damned if he'd welsh on old Jim! No, sir! Or welsh on Juanita, who'd stood for him and merely kidded him, no matter how soused and rough and mouthy he might be! Her hug. The way she'd get rid of that buttinsky aunt of Nell's; just wink at him and give Aunty some song and dance or other and send her out for chow If Juanita were only here! She'd give him the real dope. She'd advise him whether he ought to tell Prexy and the Y.
Here Prexy had said he was the whole cheese: gotten up a big meeting for him. Prexy Quarles and Juanita!
Aber nit! Never get them two together! And Prexy had called on him Suppose it got into the newspapers! How he'd saved a tough kid, just as good as Judson Roberts could do. Juanita--find skirts like her any place, but where could they find a guy that could start in and save souls right off the bat? Chuck all these fool thoughts, now that Jim was asleep, and figure out this spiel.
What was that about sweating in the vineyard? Something like that, anyway. In the Bible. However much they might rub it in--and no gink'd ever had a worse time, with that sneaking Eddie poking him on one side and Jim lambasting him on the other--whatever happened, he had to show those yahoos he could do just as good Let's see now. Gee, there was a bully thought! Tell 'em about how a strong husky guy, the huskier he was the more he could afford to admit that the power of the Holy Ghost had just laid him out cold He shouldn't say "hell.
Stay converted, no matter how hard it was. He wasn't afraid of--Him and Old Jud, they were husky enough to It wasn't Old Jud; it was his mother. What'd she think if she ever saw him with Juanita? That sloppy brat! No modesty! Elmer grasped the edge of his work-table. The top cracked. His strength pleased him. He pulled up his dingy red sweater, smoothed his huge biceps, and again tackled his apostolic labors:. He had it! Nobody ever amounted to a darn except as the--what was it?
Elmer was very busy making vast and unformed scrawls in a ten-cent-note-book hitherto devoted to German. He darted up, looking scholarly, and gathered his library about him: his Bible, given to him by his mother; his New Testament, given by a Sunday School teacher; his text-books in Weekly Bible and Church History; and one-fourteenth of a fourteen-volume set of Great Orations of the World which, in a rare and alcoholic moment of bibliomania, he had purchased in Cato for seventeen cents.
He piled them and repiled them and tapped them with his fountain-pen. Well, he'd get help from the Bible. It was all inspired, every word, no matter what scoffers like Jim said. He'd take the first text he turned to and talk on that.
He opened on: "Now therefore, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which are beyond the river, be ye far from thence," an injunction spirited but not at present helpful. The only way of putting it all over life was to understand these Forces that the scientists, with their laboratories and everything, couldn't savvy, but to a real Christian they were just as easy as rolling off a log He hadn't taken any lab courses except Chemistry I, so he couldn't show where all these physicists and biologists were boobs.
Why don't you pinch your first sermon from the heathen? You won't be the first up-and-coming young messiah to do it! Jim shied a thin book at him, and sank again into infidel sleep.
Elmer picked up the book. It was a selection from the writings of Robert G. Take his speech from Ingersoll, that rotten old atheist that said--well, anyway, he criticized the Bible and everything! Fellow that couldn't believe the Bible, least he could do was not to disturb the faith of others. Darn' rotten thing to do! Fat nerve of Jim to suggest his pinching anything from Ingersoll! He'd throw the book in the fire! But--Anything was better than going on straining his brains.
He forgot his woes by drugging himself with heedless reading. You're all sinners. You're all doomed to perdition. You're all goin' to the painful, stinkin', scaldin', everlastin' tortures of a fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless, unless, unless you repent.
Mencken disciple, as having exceptional qualities:. I've heard many a powerful Bible-walloper, but you not only put the fear of God into them, you scared the hell out of 'em. And the way you strung certain words together - "America, home, mother.
Heaven, hell Love, hate, sin. But as long as I got a foot, I'll kick booze. And, as long as I got a fist, I'll punch it. And, as long as I got a tooth, I'll bite it. And, when I'm old and gray and toothless and bootless, I'll gum it till I go to heaven and booze goes to hell. His popularity helps to increase her fame and fortune, and she is able to realize her dream of building her own tabernacle of worship. In an act of revenge, one of his old jilted girlfriends, minister's daughter-turned-prostitute Lulu Bains Shirley Jones sets him up with her pimp and frames him with photographs taken in a compromising situation.
She uses the photos as blackmail to ruin his reputation and turn the public against him. At one point earlier in the film, she remembers how Gantry had seduced and violated her when she was 'saved' as a teenager, when asked if Gantry could save anybody:.
Can he? Ha, ha, ha, ha! Can he!? Anywhere, anytime. In a tent, standin' up, layin' down, or any other way. And he's got plenty of ways Sister, I was saved by him way back in Schoenheim, Kansas. Not the carnal, but the divine love! He got to howlin' "Repent! Save me!
The next thing I knew, I was out in the cold, hard snow in my bare little soul. Although Gantry is later vindicated and cleared of morals charges, and his reputation is restored, he still jeopardizes the ambitions of Sister Falconer's ministry. The new tabernacle opens, but Sister Falconer, after miraculously curing a deaf man in her audience during a faith healing, tragically dies in a blazing tent fire set by a carelessly-tossed cigarette.
Almost mesmerized by the flames and her newfound power, Sister Falconer begs the fleeing crowds and Gantry who attempts a rescue to remain calm and faithfully trust in God during the conflagration, and then perishes when she runs back into the burning tent that collapses onto her.
The next morning, the evangelizing Gantry leads the crowd in the singing of a gospel spiritual-song: "I'm on my way, up to Canaan land".
When asked if he will carry on Sister Sharon's work in the lucrative revivalist business, Gantry quotes scripture to explain how experiences have matured him, and why he will not continue and run the new proposed "bigger" tent-tabernacle that would be rebuilt:. When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.
First Corinthians. Thirteen eleven. Unflappable, he exits with the film's final line of dialogue: "So long, Bill" spoken to Sister Falconer's manager William Morgan Dean Jagger and walks off down the pier with a half-smile on his face, as the film ends.
0コメント