Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1960) is a Richard Brooks drama you can watch online on iFILM, based on Sinclair Lewis's biting 1927 novel about faith, fraud, and the showmanship that holds them together. Burt Lancaster plays the title character — a broke, fast-talking travelling salesman who stumbles onto the revival circuit and immediately grasps its potential.

Gantry attaches himself to Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), a genuine evangelist with a real following, and turns her tent meetings into packed spectacles. He's smooth enough to believe his own pitch, which makes him genuinely dangerous. Arthur Kennedy plays the skeptical journalist tracking the whole operation, and Shirley Jones — cast against type — delivers the film's most devastating performance as a woman from Gantry's past who knows exactly who he is.

Lancaster took home the Academy Award for Best Actor, Jones claimed Best Supporting Actress, and Brooks won for his screenplay — three Oscars for a film that's less about religion than about the American appetite for being sold something. Stream Elmer Gantry (1960) online on iFILM.