Richard Brooks‘ Elmer Gantry (’60), an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s 1927 novel about an opportunistic evangelist hustler, has never been remade.
But if someone were to try, this church gospel scene would most likely be dropped. Wokesters would probably fault it for conveying a slightly patronizing view of black churchgoers and an overly flattering (or even an enobling) opinion of a white interloper.
Plus there are very few actors who can deliver the charisma that Burt Lancaster had in his heyday (late ’40s to mid ’60s). He was 46 or 47 when the film was made, but seemed a decade younger.
Lancaster’s performance won the 1960 Best Actor Oscar, which was handed out on 4.17.61 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. He also won the New York Film Critics Best Actor Award for same; ditto a Golden Globe award.
Gantry contains one unintentionally funny scene. When Lancaster’s titular character manages to seduce Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), an evangelist based on the real-life Aimee Semple McPherson, Andre Previn‘s orchestral score thunders with summonings of sin and doom.
Brooks, Simmons’ husband at the time, was evidently a thumping moralist, at least as far as his feelings about a religious figure enjoying carnal relations outside of wedlock were concerned.