The woman who does match Lancaster is Oklahoma-born Patti Page, making her film debut. Then his past comes back to haunt him in the form of Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones) who is now a prostitute. Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth century literature. Singer Patti Page in her first film role, with Burt Lancaster, in "Elmer Gantry", Opening title of "Elmer Gantry" (1960), directed by Richard Brooks, Richard Brooks directs Burt Lancaster and Shirley Jones in "Elmer Gantry", Jean Simmons & Lancaster: Italian movie poster for "Elmer Gantry", Shirely Jones (2nd from left) & Lancaster (far right), with Oscars, 1961, Lancaster as Elmer Gantry: "When I was a child, I understood as a child", Rosy Simas of Rosy Simas Danse is Haudenosaunee, Seneca, Heron Clan. He calls out to God for help. The new Wellspring Church has been built, and Elmer is awarded an honorary doctorate from Abernathy College. ", Movie Lacks Something, But a Stunning Lead Performance Isn't It. She sinks into Elmers arms. Pengilly sees through him with the spiritual eye of an eagle, and asks, Mr. There is a definite give and take between Gantry and Falconer and the congregants in Elmer Gantry. . Jim doubts the literal truth of the Bible and has contempt for the church. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. WebElmer Gantry. In Lincoln, he persuades her to let him speak at the meeting about how he, a businessman, was converted. He cribs some passages from a book and then gives a rousing sermon. In it he established ties with Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. Excellent recounting based on the controversial Sinclair Lewis novel that got three Academy Awards . Gantry's noisy methods seem to work, even if they draw derision from the religious establishment and attacks from the cynical press. [2][3] Elmer Gantry, like the big Lewis novels that preceded it, is centrally concerned with the struggle between the old and the new. Given, too, that the film's production was 1960, we can say that "Elmer Gantry" does not reflect the current, 21st century, state of religious fundamentalism in America. 12631. He has an affair with his secretary, who then tries to blackmail him, and only escapes ruin because he has a clever lawyer. Like a priestess she takes him to the chapel, a shrine with hangings, a crucifix, statues of the Virgin, and heathen idols, including a naked Venus. WebSpecialties: Welcome to Garrison Brothers, home of the first and oldest legal whiskey distillery in Texas. publication online or last modification online. One attendant of the revivals even describes himself as only being a good Christian when a revival is in town, and then going back to his old ways once it is gone. Sharon believes she is above sin and that she can do anything she wants to because she is Gods messenger. The purpose of Napap is to make life conform to the ideals agreed upon by the principal Christian Protestant denominations. This would be accomplished by combining into one association all the moral organizations in Americathe Anti-Saloon League, the Lords Day Alliance, the Watch and Ward Society, and the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Moralsand then lobbying for legislated morality. At times I wondered if he wasn't overacting, but his character called for a very animated salesman-type person. At the novels beginning, Gantry is captain of the football team at the rowdy campus at Terwillinger College, a Baptist school. The bell-boy is scarcely out of the room when Elmer grabs Cleo. 12630. What has educated Elmer (a few books, oratory, sermons, tracts, hymns, and a smattering of a college education) must be ridiculed in order to purge it from the land. The college president declares that he is a born preacher, and everyone urges him to become a minister. cheyenne mountain resort presidential suite; spartanburg county building setbacks 4953. But Elmer does have a program in Napap, which he hopes will make him something of a moral dictator. At Sparta, Elmer gains statewide fame for his sensational sermons denouncing drinking and other sins. He seeks out Shallard, who has largely given up his faith but has been persuaded by a Methodist pastor to continue in the ministry and is now at a church in Zenith. Good drama that had the potential to be one of the greats. WebElmer Gantry is a fast-talking, hard-drinking traveling salesman who always has a risqu story and a hip flask to entertain cronies and customers alike. With Jim (who is more skeptical and quick-witted than Gantry) home sick in bed, Gantry attends the meeting with his mother and is converted. WebVoila! When she overhears Gantry seducing their pianist, she fires them, but Gantry convinces her to reconsider. These blossoming words, these organ-like phrases, these profound notions, had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use. Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon Falconer, the two main religious leaders of the film, are portrayed as morally dubious though Gantry has a small redemption and Falconer clearly truly believes in her cause. Ferguson, Charles W., Review of Elmer Gantry, in Critical Essays on Sinclair Lewis, edited by Martin Bucco, G. K. Hall, 1986, pp. Based on the muckraker Sinclair Lewis' novel, and superbly translated to the screen by Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood , The Professionals, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), this story of huckster-ism by religion is a masterpiece. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. "You're all sinners! Jean Simmons is lovely and convincing as as Sister Sharon Falconer, the charismatic female evangelist who wins Gantry's heart (and lust)as they team up to jump-start America's dwindling religious beliefs. After collecting money from the patrons, Gantry takes a drunken barfly back to his hotel room. He marries a woman he does not love. Ive made herby prayer and by having a right to be her!. I guess it's hard to imagine that your beloved one has faded into nothingness, so religion brings you a certain psychological comfort in knowing that there's such a thing as a soul and that, depending on a man's life, it gets the treatment it deserves. T. J. Rigg is a famous criminal lawyer and a trustee of Wellspring Methodist Church in Zenith. He had been a solitary in college, generous but fastidious, jarred by his classmates belching and sudden laughter. Like Carol Kennicott, he suffers a betrayal by books, for his reasoning had been turned from an examination of men as mammals to the mystic theories of souls and their salvation. The attendants give her their money, she leaves after a short period of time, and then the attendants are no better off and short on money. Additionally, this positive representation of the necessity of revivals to faltering churches is soured by the probability that Falconers revivals take advantage of the lower class. Af After he had become a celebrity, Lewis usually managed to avoid controversy over his books by being out of the United States when they appeared. In the following essay excerpt, Lundquist suggests that Lewis portrays religion as stifling, as a manifestation of the pioneer mentality that characterized the old American and has become a threat to the new American. He is a born salesman well versed with the bible. The movie is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Minnesotas own Nobel Prizewinning author, Sinclair Lewis. A satire can be aimed at an individual or a group. WebIf he is not completely redeemed at the film's end, he indicates that his love for the ill-fated Sharon Falconer is real and not mere lust.The character of Sister Falconer, as played by Paperback June 3, 2014. He says both. Most distressing of all, says Frank, the sermons of the preachers are agonizingly dull. So Frank leaves the church temporarily to enter the army where he learns to be common with common men; he schools himself further with Ethan Frome, Pre Goriot, Tono-Bungay, and Renans Jesus. There is a definite give and take between Gantry and Falconer and the congregants in Elmer Gantry. At Mizpah Theological Seminary, Elmer and his fellow students all smoke in their dormitory, even though smoking is practically forbidden. The evangelist Sharon Falconer, although she is not attached to any particular church, is no exception to the anti-religion theme. After Sharon dismisses him in favor of Elmer, Cecil tries to conduct a rescue mission in Buffalo. Photographer Nancy Musinguzis recent photos captured the over 7,000 people []. Elmer, like other Lewis protagonists, fears marriage. How would you describe his demeanor? Elmer loves to preach against immorality but feels no need to be moral himself. Gantry, too. I am really and truly sanctified! Can there ever have lived a clergyman with Elmers astonishing range of vices: his chronic insincerity, his hypocrisy, his lust, his overweening ambition, his cynicism, his appalling behavior to his family? (540) 7.7 2 h 26 min 1960 13+. Elmer is, obviously enough, an example of the latter. Dr. Bruno Zechlin is Professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Old Testament Exegesis at Mizpah Theological Seminary. It begins as a satire of revivalism: Elmer is thrown out of a Baptist seminary, becomes a farm implement salesman, and then finds his nicheor pedestalas a Billy Sunday partnered with an Aimee Semple McPherson. Dinner at the Governors Ball with Eddie Fisher. As Elmer turns an attractive and charming preacher with a large audience . Burt Lancaster is bold and provocative as the title character who is preaching to you one moment and drunk and surly the other. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. He is soon invited to preach at one of her meetings. , Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, McGraw Hill, 1961, pp. Jones is too frothy, but when she appears halfway through, she adds bubbles to a long movie that was starting to go flat. Co-stars Jean Simmons and Shirley Jones. She dresses in exotic outfits such as Grecian robes, and uses a gold and white pyramidal altar. The debate between fundamentalists and liberals is conducted amongst the students at Mizpah. He was saturated with itthe sermons, hymns, Bible stories, funerals, weddings, Sunday schools. During the service one man begins speaking in tongues. One Sunday, he is surprised to see Lulu in church, and the next day he begins an affair with her. Tough pla takes the ease of use of regular pla and steps it up. Here, they are the sinister forces of righteousness. And even these emotions were represented in the House of the Lord, in the way of tacks in pew-cushions, Missionary Suppers with chicken pie and angels-food cake, soporific sermons, and the proximity of flexible little girls in thin muslin. Evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort". She is a widow who owns a millinery and dressmaking shop. Fired from the ministry after going drinking rather than contacting his new church, he works for two years as a traveling salesman. She cries out, Oh, dont! Protestant fundamentalism was in part a reaction in the early twentieth century to the development of the higher criticism in Biblical scholarship. It was on the steamer home that he met and became intimate with J. E. North, the renowned vice-slayer, executive secretary of the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Pressaffectionately known through all the evangelical world as the Napap. Mr. North was not a clergyman (though he was a warm Presbyterian layman), but no clergyman in the country had more furiously pursued wickedness, more craftily forced congressmen, through threats in their home districts, to see legislation in the same reasonable manner as himself. He is a worldly man and gives Elmer some shrewd advice about how to build up the church. Their satisfaction comes from functioning healthily, from physical and mental exercise, whether it be playing tennis or tackling an astronomical problem. While this notion of religious rites on the tennis court is rather curious, Lewis seems nevertheless to acknowledge a religious impulse, even if he would eliminate God and organized churches. In his ever lustful sights is a voluptuous female preacher. A popular singer with a voice like French silk pie, Page is most famous for her hit song Tennessee Waltz. When she first appears onscreen, shes got such presence you might think she was the main heroine. Mrs. Evans Riddle is the proprietor of the Victory Thought Power Headquarters in New York. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? Though it makes its position on for-profit religious functions clear from the very beginning of the film, it attempts its critique in a fair manner. That night he has doubts, but he is persuaded to speak the following night at the Y.M.C.A. Elmer is subjected to a kind of collective emotional manipulation. It looks like we don't have any synopsis for this title yet. Nevertheless, it is soon apparent that he has gone too far; to him, Christianity is not only untrue, but inconceivable. Elmer is the great man steadily making his way upward in the worldthe man of immoderate personal ambitionand the great man hasnt time for scruples. Elmer Gantry and his roommate, Jim Lefferts, have traveled from their college in Kansas to Cato, Missouri, to see their girlfriends. On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. His ambition knows no bounds. I'm talkin' about divine love - not carnal love. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago who espouses a very liberal theology. The merit of this argument is undermined because it is given by Babbitt, not out of caring for the citizens of Zenith, but rather because he stands to gain the most financially from the revival. Elmer pulls the burning jacket off her, and beats out the flames. He befriends local reporters in hopes of getting his name in the papers, and eventually he leads a raid on Zeniths red-light district. After his wedding to Cleo, he gasps to himself, Oh, good God, Ive gone and tied myself up, and I never can have any fun again! His treatment of her on the wedding night is reminiscent of Eddie Schwirtzs treatment of Una Golden. The psychological factor that works against Elmer is the mechanics of the conversion experience. Lewis, C.S. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Originally a London soul band called Five Proud Walkers, they threw their lot in with [5], However, the book was a commercial success. eNotes.com, Inc. The two make a successful onstage pair, and their chemistry extends to romance. But what did he know of the forces which cause wars, personal or class or national; what of drugs, passion, criminal desire; of capitalism, banking, labor, wages, taxes; international struggles for trade, munition trusts, ambitious soldiers? As he gains experience, Elmer attempts to broaden his mind. WebMemorable Moments. Lulu later meets Elmer again many years later in Zenith, where they resume their clandestine affair. It is clear that the revivals rely on the approval and demand of the public and that the revivals certainly could not survive without the support of a large number of congregants; however, there are several points in the film in which it appears the congregants are being taken advantage of by town and religious leaders. Where she is quiet and gentle with her manner of preaching, he is all fire and brimstone, literally throwing himself about the audience and inflaming them into repentance. Lewis said, flatly enough, that religion in the United States has become stifling; that, like the pioneer economy and the pioneer mentality of which it is a manifestation, it has become a threat instead of a benefit. They were intended to feed the American dream, but instead fashioned the nightmareout of books! Simmons is too wispy, and her plummy accent slips through and jars this very American story. Like Matthew Arnold, whose thinking Lewis often paralleled, Lewis maintained that Hebraism has too much prevailed over Hellenism and that what is needed is more sweetness and light (Elmer, with his black hair and black eyes, is, of course, the enemy of light). Everyone congratulates him on his conversion. Higher criticism was a method of Biblical criticism that originated in Germany. He goes to live with his niece and dies within two years. We are all bored by tired old men explaining the Bible through their noses! He is immediately taken with Sister Sharon Falconer, a lay preacher whose hellfire-and-damnation revivalism has attracted quite a following. At times he is almost satanic, a compendium of all the vices; they are too many and too flagrant for him to be real. Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. As a sojourner on this earth, she goes on, trying to explain how in these months she has kept her sanity and her faith, I dont feel terribly entitled. Lewiss personal life was troubled, and he and his second wife were divorced in 1942. They were outside of respectable societylike Kingsand I am not sure but that this was better for their art and their happiness than to be classed as lecturers, tax-payers, tennis-players, suburban householders, and lovers of dogs.' Watching it today, it is hard to be surprised by any such suggestion since my cynical generation is much more accepting that nothing is what it seems and everyone has an agenda. We see Gantry the narcissistic conman, Gantry the philanthropist, Gantry the flamboyant showman. I can kiss you like this Quickly she touches his cheek, Yes, or passionately, terribly passionately, and it would only symbolize my complete union with Jesus! This site built with Project Largo from INN and proudly powered by WordPress. In another service a couple comes forward to ask that Falconer cure the husbands deafness. I'm not talking about what happens just before the end, but Elmer Gantry is a picaresque novel. Bishop Wesley R. Toomis is a bishop in the Methodist Church who has a great reputation as an orator and thinker. WebC The Imitation Game told the story of this Englishman who designed an early from ENGL 1101 at Georgia State University Weave will make its debut on Jan. 12 at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts, a co-commissioner in [], It was kind of a whimsical artistic impulse, recalled Antonio Duke, as he reminisced on this past spring when Ashawnti Sakina Ford drove him home each night after their rehearsals for a production of Imaginary Invalid, a play by 17th-century French actor and playwright, Molire. Gantrys fame continues to grow, and he is soon preaching at churches across America. He really shines as a tarnished, immoral salesman who spends Christmas at a bar and leaves with one of the ladies during the Great Depression in the heartland. . Chester Brown is a prominent Methodist preacher in Zenith and one of Elmers rivals. WebIn the 1920s, Elmer Gantry entertains a group of fellow salesmen in a speakeasy with his ribald jokes and easy charm. Afterward, he must resign himself to helplessness for the rest of his life. Welcome to the blog of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. Gantry becomes her lover, but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle. Many of the people attending the revivals would then be working-class individuals. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. The fundamentalists also have to deal with outright skeptics, like Jim Lefferts, and covert atheists like Dr. Zechlin. On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. Fired from the Seminary, he is hired as a traveling salesman of farm implements. 2023 . Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. If "Elmer Gantry" worked better than most was largely due to Brooks ability to tell a rattling good yarn at a cracking pace and to the performances of a superb cast. WebHow does the novel Elmer Gantry end? According to such people: A proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called Fundamentalists., Christian beliefs about the proper observance of Sundays also comes under heavy satirical fire in this passage: [T]he Maker of a universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.. He also thinks that Baptist leaders are word-splitting, text-twisting, applause-hungry, job-hunting, medieval-minded second-raters . Horace Carp hates the Baptists and wants to switch to the more upscale Episcopalians as soon as possible because this will give him a better social position in which he will be able to marry a nice rich girl. Brother Karkis only wants his divinity degree so he can get a better paying job. He looks stern and Elmer is afraid of him. ." Elmer tries to seduce her, but once she has become devoted to him he gets bored with her and treats her cruelly. Wallace Umstead is a student Mizpah Theological Seminary who becomes the secretary of the Zenith Y.M.C.A. WebDaily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state and national news along with advertising. He is tested by temptation and almost capitulates, but is then wrongly accused by the jilted temptress. Eddie spreads the word that Elmer, who has never shown any zeal for religion, has been converted. He denounces other churches for their laxity in condemning sin. Shirley Jones won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the preachers daughter turned prostitute. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. A serious obstacle to her goal is Gantry, but more so is the cautionary and caustic pen of Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who questions the personal and financial motives of her entourage. Phrozen Sonic Mini 3D Printer: Buy or Lease at Top3DShop 4.3 out of 5 stars 53. According to Brooks, He [Lewis] confessed that he really loved Elmer, the big bum, and hated only what he stood for; but half-way through the novel he had been carried away, and turned on his character and demolished him.. He thereby makes a defiant gesture, nonetheless, somewhat apart from his customary preoccupation with quixotic heroes whom he could admire for their protests, rebellion, and search for freedom. He spends a year there, and three years in Vulcan, where Cleo gives birth to two children. Schorer discusses Lewiss research for the novel, including the clergyman he met in Kansas City. His widowed mother was owned by the church, we are told, and the fact that the boy was fatherless is less important than that the church could not provide Elmer with principles. Later, in the middle of a church service, Gantry realizes that he misses Hettie but quickly spots a new choir member whom he hopes to get to know better. WebFull IPTV List channels worldwide With 20000 channels + 40000 Movie and series. British guitarist and vocalist. But though this satire is perhaps the best part of the book, revivalism is not the only target. Gantry introduces savvy business practices to Sharons ministry and manipulative psychology to the services themselves, and Sharon becomes wealthy as a result. WebWhen hedonistic but charming con man Elmer Gantry meets the beautiful Sister Sharon Falconer, a roadside revivalist, he feigns piousness to join her act as a passionate preacher. Some found it repugnant and accused Lewis of grossly distorting his subject matter. But he is caught stealing from the collection and is fired. WebDownload scientific diagram | 7 Vibro compaction employing wooden gantry, 1939. One of the first scenes with Sister Sharon Falconer involves her asking for donations from these people. But it's Elmer's past, which catches up with him in Zenith, that may be his, and by association Sister Sharon's, downfall. Thanks to Stacia Kissick Jones and her movie review blog She Blogged By Night for the above, noted here: http://shebloggedbynight.com/2012/the-laughing-devil-in-his-sneer-brother-loves-travelling-salvation-show. Lynnell Mickelsen: Why all the conspiracy theories and pearl-clutching in this years school board race. British actress Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon, the evangelist Elmer falls for is similarly too airy. Liking the idea of having power over an audience, Elmer convinces himself he has been called to the ministry. Over the next few years, he is appointed to larger and larger parishes, eventually to a church in Zenith. Dr. Howard Bancock Binch is a prominent Baptist who defends the literal interpretation of the Bible in his writings. With the characterization and strong personalities of these two characters, it is easy to assume a one-sided relationship between Gantry and Falconer and their congregants, but this is not the case. For all his wisdom, he speaks in platitudes, although Lewis does give him one searing moment of insight. The Trylon features 50 deluxe rocker seats, a 20-foot screen, and a pair of Century Model SA 35mm projectors. Why does Lewis include him in the book? Religion was a force in politics, yes, but a force capable of bringing down buildings? Elmer Gantry shows the necessity and sincerity involved in these functions, as well as the dangers of falling into the trap of hypocrisy and greed, through its highly humanized leads, Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon Falconer. "Elmer Gantry" United Artists Simon received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance as a runaway housewife in "The Happy Ending" (1969), manhattan cruise terminal schedule; did mayim bialik work as a neuroscientist; holden one tonner for sale sa; romans 12:2 passion translation; go bus galway to shannon airport; lili thomas buffett child; Nach Kategorien. In The Master, Joaquin Phoenix plays an alcoholic failure who falls in thrall to cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). You're all sinners! Gantrys descendants stretch from Neil Diamonds 1969 song Brother Loves Travelling Salvation Show to the 2012 film The Master, by Paul Thomas Anderson (who also made Magnolia). Nothing reveals Lewiss isolation from an overview of life more clearly than the way he dismisses religion. He welcomes Elmer into the Methodist church. One thing he is aware of is that professing belief serves his purposes very well, and for all he knows, every word of Baptist or Methodist dogma might be true. plus-circle Add Review. Amoral and relentlessly ambitious, Elmer builds a statewide and national reputation as a fiery preacher who never tires of denouncing vice, while at the same time feeling no need to curb his own vices, particularly adultery. WebA second-division British psychedelic band with a tangled history, Elmer Gantry & the Velvet Opera recorded a couple of albums in the Pink Floyd/Soft Machine/Tomorrow/Nice mold in the late '60s without coming close to establishing a solid identity of their own. A typical picaresque narrative chronicles the exploits of a rogue, an immoral but not criminal character who lives by his wits. Gantry is portrayed as a smooth talking but frustrated salesman, struggling to make a living. (film) Elmer Gantry is a 1960 film about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small town America. She turns to healing the sick not because she has a gift or a calling for it but because it is more profitable than mere evangelizing: the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three or four times. [4] One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. It was the best-selling work of fiction in America for the year 1927, according to Publishers Weekly.[6]. Taken from the classic Sinclair Lewis novel of the same name, director Richard Brooks garnered an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his adaptation, and Burt Lancaster won his sole Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Elmer Gantry. The church filled him with awe, frightened him, became the center of all his emotions. GENRE: Fiction, nonfiction Later, he is kidnapped and beaten nearly to death, an episode that leaves him blinded. 5 Mar. Later judgments have also been mixed. because Joness Lulu is a silly, air-spun girl. He possesses none of the cardinal virtues and many of the cardinal sins. Stidger introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them the Reverend Leon Milton Birkhead, a Unitarian and an agnostic. The congregation slowly begins to join back in and Gantry begins to solo with the The film is basically how Hollywood, in the late 1950s, viewed tent religion in the early part of the twentieth century. WebElmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a slick traveling salesman who is a boozer and a dog hound. It might seem that the last thing in the world Lewis wanted was sympathy for Elmer Gantry, whom he regarded, he told Allen Austin years later, as a hypocrite through and through. Yet he wrote in the Nation in 1928, Actually, I like the Babbitts, the Dr. Pickerbaughs, the Will Kennicotts, and even the Elmer Gantrys rather better than anyone else on earth. Furthermore, he told Betty Stevens that the Babbitts were my children and I wanted to reform them.