In which the burly and boisterous Elmer Gantry, famed football captain and a man of loud voice and swelling ambition, alternates between restless college life and evenings spent in smoky saloons with his steadfast companion Jim Lefferts, juggling intellectual scepticism and raw emotion. The pair’s escapades lead them beyond the sedate, pious routines of Terwillinger College into the rough-and-tumble, spirited exchanges of small-town street meetings and the tangled affections of girls in nearby Cato.