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| - The true story behind the most important legal case in American history!
- Originally a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, then filmed in 1960 (and adapted for television three times between 1965 and 1999), Inherit The Wind is a very (very) fictionalized account of the "Scopes Monkey Trial," a 1925 Tennessee court case which revolved around the teaching of Evolution in public schools. The whole thing was actually a publicity stunt by the backwater town of Dayton, TN, leading to the trial being sensationalized beyond belief. It kind of went Off the Rails from there, bringing many (at the time) 'incontrovertible' tenets of American thought, such as a literal interpretation of The Bible, to question.
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| abstract
| - Originally a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, then filmed in 1960 (and adapted for television three times between 1965 and 1999), Inherit The Wind is a very (very) fictionalized account of the "Scopes Monkey Trial," a 1925 Tennessee court case which revolved around the teaching of Evolution in public schools. The whole thing was actually a publicity stunt by the backwater town of Dayton, TN, leading to the trial being sensationalized beyond belief. It kind of went Off the Rails from there, bringing many (at the time) 'incontrovertible' tenets of American thought, such as a literal interpretation of The Bible, to question. The play revolves primarily around Bert Cates, a schoolteacher in the small, "simple" town of Hillsboro. Bert is arrested for teaching the theory of evolution in his class in violation of a state law, and the film opens with him being hauled bodily out of his classroom by the police. The town's mayor initially wants to keep the whole affair quiet, and many of the more prominent members of the community urge him to drop the matter entirely. It was all going to happen that way until Matthew Harrison Brady-- the analogue of William Jennings Bryan-- announces that he's coming to Hillsboro to assist the prosecution. Cates writes to a newspaper in Baltimore for assistance, and is presented with Henry Drummond (in the part of Clarence Darrow) as his defense attorney, and E. K. Hornbeck (playing H. L. Mencken) as a chronicler. The film version was well received, with Spencer Tracy as Drummond, Fredric March as Brady, Dick York as Cates, Harry Morgan as the judge, and (surprisingly) Gene Kelly as the all-snarking, never-dancing Hornbeck. It takes a few more liberties from the real trial than the play does, but also incorporates more of the trial transcript; today, most people thinking of the real trial instead remember details from the film. The film also has the distinction of being the first in-flight movie, according to The Other Wiki. Speaking of what the other wiki says, the play was intended as a criticism of of the anti-Communist hysteria of The Fifties. However, with the newly-reborn debate on evolution versus creationism, the film is often shown at face value without the McCarthyism subtext being considered. And it still works beautifully.
- The true story behind the most important legal case in American history!
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