Elmer Gantry (film)

Elmer Gantry is a 1960 drama film about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small town America. Adapted by director Richard Brooks, the film is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Sinclair Lewis and stars Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy and Shirley Jones.

Elmer Gantry Burt Lancaster is a harddrinking, fasttalking traveling salesman with a charismatic personality who infuses biblical passages and fervor into his pitches as a way to ease and collect money. He is drawn to the road show of Sister Sharon Falconer Jean Simmons and is immediately attracted to the saintly revivalist. As the troupe leaves town for Kansas, Gantry sweettalks her naive assistant, Sister Rachel Patti Page, into telling him information regarding Falconers past. He uses that information to con his way into Sister Sharons good graces and joins the troupe preaching Christ in commerce and how he is a saved salesman.Gantry and Falconer develop what her manager, Bill Morgan Dean Jagger, calls a good copbad cop routine, with Gantry telling the audience members that they will burn in Hell for their sins and Sharon promising salvation if they repent. Because of Gantrys fire and brimstone sermons, the group comes to the attention of the church council in Zenith, Winnemac, a larger city. Though Morgan does not think Falconer is ready to preach outside of the smaller venues, Gantry convinces her to go to Zenith. They meet with the church leaders, most of whom are wary of turning religion into a spectacle as Gantry does, but he convinces them that the churches must earn money to stay open. ........

Source: Wikipedia