I really like these stills in some of the posts. Where did they come from?
Been meaning to post this for a while:
I just googled "If I have no teeth I will gum you" and came up with this, from groupsrv.com:
In THERE WILL BE BLOOD Eli Sunday makes an evangelist speech yelling,
"And as long as I have teeth I will bite you. And if I have no teeth,
I will gum you. And as long as I have fists, I will bash you, now get
out of here ghost! Get out of here ghost, get out of here ghost."
In the discussions I have seen nobody seems to have noticed and
commented that this is a borrowing from ELMER GANTRY. Burt Lancaster
as Gantry yells "As long as I got a foot I'll kick booze. As long as
I got a fist, I'll punch it. And as long as I got a tooth I'll bite
it. And when I'm old and gray and toothless and bootless I'll gum it
till I go to heaven and booze goes to hell."
Nobody seems to comment on this. It seems like a steal unless there
is some other source they are both alluding to. Did you notice? Any
know what the story is?
I guess both are about spirits.And both films are based on books
by Sinclairs. :-)
-- Mark Leeper
My dear, dear Mr. Leeper,
Don't you know that when a politician takes intellectual property without properly attributing its origin that's called stealing, but when an artist does it it's called an homage, and is the highest form of tribute? And in this age of mash-ups, deconstruction, and the merry chaos that is the "world-wide internets," what truly can be called original?
After all, Philip Thomas Anderson lifted the "milkshake" bit from a Congressional investigation into the Teapot Dome scandal. Now I ask you, is that stealing or finding new uses for old ideas?
Rest assured, Mr. Leeper, neither Sinclair Lewis nor Burt Lancaster will miss any meals on account of the artistic liberties that Messers Anderson and Dano may or may not have taken.
As to sources, I started reading through the Billy Sunday sermons to see what I could find; nothing matching the Eli/Elmer Gantry speech, *but* this was kind of interesting:
"When the Standard Oil Company was trying to refine petroleum there was a substance that they couldn't dispose of. It was a dark, black, sticky substance and they couldn't bury it, couldn't burn it because it made such a stench; they couldn't run it in the river because it killed the fish, so they offered a big reward to any chemist who would solve the problem. Chemists took it and worked long over the problem, and one day there walked into the office of John D. Rockefeller, a chemist and laid down a pure white substance which we since know as paraffine [paraffin wax].
You can be as black as that substance and yet Jesus Christ can make you white as snow. "Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow." (Isa. 1:18)"
I'm giving up on reading the sermons. Although, I feel sort of compelled.
I need to do more research on the subject of early 20th century preachers. My grandmother had a small bible dating from the 20s or 30s. At night while my grandfather was off raising hell in the local beer joints, my grandmother was sitting alone (or later, with my mother) in a tiny Texaco company house, on the plains of Texas, thumbing her bible and listening to radio preachers. Apparently one had a running catch-phrase--something about "Christ the Pilot"--because my grandmother scribbled it into the margins of that bible in several places.
Interestingly, Billy Sunday almost seemed "progressive" in his defense of women and children, who suffered because of their husbands and fathers drinking. He actually talked very openly about the spread of venereal disease, for example. His main target sure was the "local beer joints." He sees alcohol as the sources of all vices.
Yep, that "gum it" quote seems to be only from the movie version of Elmer Gantry -- I looked through the book and didn't see it. Terrific movie, BTW -- if you haven't seen it in awhile, watch it again. Absolutely, E.W. -- a homage! And I seem to recall reading that Sinclair Lewis used a lot of catchphrases from the hellfire preachers of the day in Gantry, whcih is why his book was so controversial at the time -- so he did some "homaging" himself!
nice