United States

BURT LANCASTER IN HIS GREATEST ROLE
Oscar-winning Burt Lancaster stars in and as Elmer Gantry, the hero of Sinclair Lewis' celebrated novel about Bible-thumping tent-show revivalism in the Mid West of the twenties. A divinity student who has been expelled from college for seducing a deacon's daughter, Gantry takes to the road as a salesman of vacuum cleaners, keeping one eye firmly fixed on women, the other on the main chance. Women and chance turn up together in the person of Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), who is touring the Mid West with a religious tent show. Gantry immediately falls in love with her, joins her troupe, shares her preaching chores, and in no time at all whoops up her modest tent show into the revivalist equivalent of a three-ring circus. Then calamity strikes. In a city called Zenith, Gantry runs into Lulu, the deacon's daughter, who has now become a prostitute. Intent on revenge, Lulu successfully sets out to ruin Gantry's romance with Sister Sharon, as well as their popular tent show. Only a miracle can save the virile, charismatic Gantry now... and it does.