I’d say that’s a shame, but most of the books that made his reputation are long and windy and about as welcome as a sermon on marriage from Newt Gingrich.

 

Indeed, it says something that when Sinclair Lewis was my Favorite Writer, I was 13. And it’s not surprising, therefore, that Main Street and Babbitt  were the books that made me swoon — I lived in a cookie-cutter suburb and Lewis had delivered, in these two books, nearly 1,000 pages of body blows to the petty, insular lives in Midwestern small towns.   (My brother, as a kid, was so knocked out by Arrowsmith, the saga of an idealist doctor and medical researcher, that he became a doctor and medical researcher.)

 

Decades later, I fell hard for “Dodsworth.” I was right to, and I encourage you to fall for it too. It’s a brisk, adult, international romance, filled with betrayal. And it’s modern “modern” than many adults I now know — adultery happens here, and the world doesn’t end.  (The paperback inexplicably costs $29.99 at Amazon. Equally insane: there’s no Kindle edition. To buy the $18 American Library edition — which also includes "Arrowsmith" and "Elmer Gantry" — from Amazon, click here. To read more about "Dodsworth" on HeadButler.com, click here. To buy the DVD of the film from Amazon, click here. To watch it for $2.99 on your computer or TV, click here.) 

 

In all my time with Sinclair Lewis, I never read “Elmer Gantry.” With good reason. It was thick: 490 pages. And it was about a 1920s evangelist who just happened to be a scam artist — what a news flash, huh? Easy to pass. I read it recently. I can’t say I recommend it. (To buy the book from Amazon, click here. To download the Kindle edition, click here.)

 

But a few weeks ago, I saw the movie of “Elmer Gantry,” and I was knocked back in my chair. It was made in 1960 — 35 years after the novel’s publication — by writer-director Richard Brooks. It would not be made now. The hypocrisy is too bluntly presented, the sex is too hot, the large supporting cast of naïve victims is too familiar to anyone who’s taken even a cursory glance at our Religious Right. And, most of all, it cut all the bullshit from the novel and turned a satire into a thriller.

 

The movie of “Elmer Gantry” is a hundred times — at least — better than the novel. [To buy the DVD of the film from Amazon for $7.49, click here.] 

 

There’s a reason. In the ‘20s, Lewis threw himself into research for this novel. He went to revival meetings and evangelical churches, interviewed preachers, read theology. And, as writers will, he used that research — all of it. So the novel is full of metaphysical conversation. Often, Lewis stops the plot to rant. And the pages are littered with colorful characters who don’t advance the story.

 

Back in 1926, that overstuffed story infuriated right-thinking Americans. “Elmer Gantry” was banned in Boston. Lewis was derided as “Satan’s cohort.” There were threats of violence against him.

 

The people who hated the novel would have flipped over the movie, for Brooks has rearranged and streamlined the plot . His Elmer Gantry never had a serious spiritual thought before he stumbled over Sister Sharon Falconer’s tent revival; he’s a first-class operator and con man, with the smooth talker’s love of sex and a knack for getting women to give it to him. This Sharon Falconer talks purity, but she’s susceptible to counting the take before she tallies the number of souls she’s saved. And the young woman ruined by Gantry is now a “$5 hooker,” with sass to burn.

 

The casting supersizes the sex, smarm and hypocrisy. Burt Lancaster is Gantry, and he gave what might be the performance of a lifetime. Jean Simmons is Sharon Falconer, and she was so appealing Brooks married her. And Shirley Jones is the hooker with a soft spot for hot sex.

 

Burt Lancaster won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Shirley Jones was named Best Supporting Actress. Richard Brooks won for Best Adapted Screenplay.

 

How sleazy is Elmer Gantry? Watch as he hears the song coming from a revival meeting. “I’m on my way to Canaan land.” Watch as Lancaster enters the tent, looks around, joins in the song. And watch his expression at the very end of the scene. Yeah, he’s on his way…

 

Sexy? Watch this. You can’t help but snap to attention when you’re hit with a line like this: “Oh, he gave me special instructions — back of the pulpit Christmas Eve. He got to howlin’ ‘Repent! Repent!’ and I got to moanin’ ‘Save me! Save me!’ and the first thing I know he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man’s footsteps!"

 

And, finally, the film’s trailer…

 

“Sin, Sin, Sin,” Lancaster shouts. “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.”

 

You don’t need to go that far. But you do need to feel guilty that you’ve never seen the movie. And you need to see it and rid yourself of that guilt.