Some movies are subtle. Inherit the Wind is not one of those movies.
Inherit the Wind covers a fictionalized version of the Scopes Monkey Trial.1 In the film, high school teacher Bertram Cates (Dick York) is arrested for teaching evolution. This backdrop is used take aim at McCarthyism, and the themes of the movie are communicated through two hours of scenery-chewing speechifying from lawyers Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) and Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March).2 Meanwhile, levity is provided through the big-city Baltimore aphorisms of snarky reporter E. K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly).3 These characters are all based on historical figures who were around Dayton, Tennessee during the Scopes trial.
Unlike the buttoned-up Anatomy of a Murder, this film is all about the drama. The trial has a carnival atmosphere, Drummond calls Brady to testify on the stand, and Brady straight-up dies at the end. But you know what? I like drama. The movie loses points because of a daffy subplot between Cates’ fiancée and her reverend father, but otherwise, this is a surprisingly fun movie, even if you had to watch it in high school.
Rating: 8/10. The title of the film is from Proverbs 11:29: “If you inherit the wind, you should totally build a bunch of turbines.”
Cast and Crew
We last saw Fredric March in this column in an awful adaptation of Death of a Salesman, while this is the fourth time we’re seeing Spencer Tracy.4 In this film, both actors play to their strengths: Tracy is the moral curmudgeon, March the blustering but pitiable fallen giant. Tracy’s got two more nominations coming up, but this is March’s last appearance (well, until we go back and cover the first two decades of the Oscars).5
Though Fred Astaire Gene Kelly delivers a heat-check performance as the fast-talking H. L. Mencken stand-in, he’s better known as a singer and hoofer who brought dancing to the common man. Kelly got his big break on Broadway, starring in “The Time of Your Life,”6 and eventually scored a Best Actor nomination for Anchors Aweigh (1945), probably for dancing with a cartoon mouse.
Kelly starred in Anchors Aweigh (the mouse flick) with Frank Sinatra; the two would team up for two more films, On the Town7 and Take Me Out to the Ball Game (both 1949).8
Kelly’s first film role was dancing with Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal (1942), and they reunited in The Pirate9 (1948) and Summer Stock (1950).
But what do you really need to know about Gene Kelly? These movies: Best Picture winner An American in Paris (1951), maybe-most-famous-sing-and-dance-film-ever Singin’ in the Rain (1952), and the Lerner and Loewe adaptation Brigadoon (1954). Fred Astaire never had a run like that.
His final film role was in the incomprehensible Olivia Newton-John spectacle Xanadu (1980); you can watch Kelly roller skate here.
But let’s clear it up: was Gene Kelly Fred Astaire? Nah. Fred Astaire was the better dancer but Kelly was the good-looking one. Astaire was often dressed to the nines while Kelly acted more working-class. Astaire’s peak also hit over a decade before Kelly’s. But you don’t have to choose—you can have both.
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee were the authors of the play “Inherit the Wind.” They’re also known for the stage adaptation of Patrick Dennis’ novel “Auntie Mame.” When it hit Broadway, it starred Rosalind Russell as the quirky title aunt, and when it was turned into a film in 1958, Russell reprised the role and was nominated for an Oscar.
The Trivia
Let’s talk about the “Great Commoner,”10 Nebraska Representative William Jennings Bryan, a towering figure in the history of U.S. populism. Known as the “Boy Orator,” he was the youngest major-party presidential nominee ever when he was the standard-bearer for the Democrats in 1896 at age 36. His famed “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention argued for an inflationary policy and bimetallic standard.11
He lost in 1896, mostly because he couldn’t get non-farmers to vote for him (people without debt don’t like inflation). Then he lost again, in 1900, because he was fiercely anti-imperialist at a time the U.S. was its most successfully imperialistic. Then he lost again, in 1908, when Taft painted him as a socialist (that tactic still works today). Bryan would be selected as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1915, but he resigned his post after the Lusitania incident, worried that Wilson’s response might lead to war with Germany.
In Inherit the Wind, Drummond keeps alluding to Brady’s time in a chautauqua tent. The Chautauqua Movement provided adult education-slash-entertainment popular around the turn of the century in rural America.12 Bryan gave a 1909 chautauqua lecture, “The Prince of Peace,” where he warned that the theory of evolution could (foreshadowing!) undermine the foundations of morality. Chautauqua was considered “wholesome family entertainment,” especially compared to the “vulgar” vaudeville. One reason suggested for the fall of chautauqua was the rise of evangelicalism, which chautauqua’s “bland non-denominationalism” was ill-suited to compete against.
Odds and Ends
This is the second directorial effort of producer-director Stanley Kramer that we’ve watched (after The Defiant Ones)…the jailer asserts that “the safest place in the world is a jail,” which is obviously not true…Drummond alludes to his “galluses”; that word is Scottish for “suspenders”…the movie includes voir dire, the process by which attorneys select jurors from the pool of veniremen…Harry Morgan, who played Col. Potter on “M*A*S*H,” played the trial judge…the two Darwin works Cates taught were 1859’s “On the Origin of Species” and 1871’s “The Descent of Man”…Adjournment sine die (literally, “without a day”) is the conclusion of a meeting without setting a day to reconvene…in 1658, Anglican Bishop James Ussher claimed God created the world on October 23rd, 4004 BCE13…besides John Scopes, Clarence Darrow also defended Leopold and Loeb, saving them from the death penalty.
One last thing: in the film, it’s argued that “A schoolteacher's a public servant. He should do what the law and the school board want him to.” Drummond’s response to this—a strong defense of freedom of thought—is still relevant in today’s political climate.
Can’t you understand that if you take a law like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in public schools, tomorrow you could make it a crime to teach it in private schools, and tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it? And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one you can do the other, because fanaticism and ignorance are forever busy and need feeding. And soon, Your Honour, with banners flying and with drums beating, we'll be marching backward.
Not sayin’, just sayin’.
Technically called The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes.
I’ve watched enough LegalEagle to know a trial isn’t just lawyers making speeches, but I gotta tell you, I don’t care.
My favorite is “it’s the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
We also saw him in Father of the Bride, Bad Day at Black Rock, and The Old Man and the Sea.
March’s late-career film roles included playing the president in Seven Days in May (1964) and bar owner Harry Hope in The Iceman Cometh (1973).
“The Time of Your Life” was written by William Saroyan, who also wrote “The Human Comedy.” Here’s a big statue of him in Yerevan. If you’re ever putting together a trivia of people connected to Armenia, fit Saroyan alongside Kim Kardashian, Serj Tankian, Aram Khachaturian, and Cher.
On the Town was also Kelly’s first directorial effort. He’d later direct Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Hello, Dolly! (1969), among other films.
Kelly also originated the title role in Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey.” Sinatra brought that play to the screen in 1957 and starred alongside Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth. Incidentally, Kelly and Hayworth had danced together in 1944’s Cover Girl.
The Pirate, directed by Vincente Minnelli, featured the Nicholas Brothers, a famed duo of Black “flash dancers.” Their routine in Stormy Weather (1943) is worth knowing.
One of many probably-not-that-common people to get the nickname “The Great Commoner.”
Who wants inflation? People who have debt. Who regularly has debt that also has political power? Farmers. Farmers buy on credit and pay back upon harvest so, in real terms, inflation reduces their debt.
The Chautauqua Movement got its name from a western New York lake where the Chautauqua Institution was set up. The Chautauqua Movement and it “traveling chautauquas” were only informally associated with the Chautauqua Institution.
Ah, so the world is a Scorpio. I see.