The Great Movies III

In Kramer's film, Darrow becomes Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy), Bryan is Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March), Mencken is E. K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly), and Scopes is Bertram T. Cates (Dick York). Another major player is the gravel-voiced Harry Morgan, as the judge. So obviously were the characters based on their historical sources that the back of the DVD simply refers to them as "Bryan" and "Darrow," as if their names had not been changed.

Seen forty-six years after its release but only a few months after Darwin was once again on trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, Inherit the Wind is a film that rebukes the past when it might also have feared the future. Beliefs that seemed like ancient history to Kramer have had a surprising resiliency; two recent polls show that 38 percent of American teenagers believe "God created humans pretty much in their present form within the last io,ooo years or so," and 54 percent of American adults doubt that man evolved from earlier species. There is hardly a politician in the land with courage enough to state that they are wrong.

Certainly most of the citizens in the movie's fictional town of Hillsboro, Tennessee, believe in the literal truth of Genesis. "There's only one man in this town who thinks at all," Drummond roars, "and he's injail."The movie casts the battle as a struggle between the followers of a fundamentalist preacher (Claude Akins) and the snowy-haired agnostic Drummond, who believes Darwinism is as "incontrovertible as geometry," as indeed it seems to well over 99 percent of the world's scientists. The preacher's followers descend on the town with tents, a Ferris wheel, and a sideshow in which a monkey smokes a cigarette while a barker asks if men came from monkeys. There is a fraught romantic subplot: the defendant York is engaged to Rachel (Donna Anderson), the preacher's daughter. At one point denouncing his daughter as a creature of the devil, the preacher froths so easily that he lacks credibility.

Early scenes in the film are broadly drawn; a parade welcomes Brady to town as the band plays "That Old Time Religion," and the Baltimore journalist speaks as if he is reading his own copy ("I'm admired for my detestability"). But once the film centers on the courtroom battle between the two old men, it finds a ferocity that is awesome; Brady and Drummond essentially engage in a debate between fundamentalism and the possibility that if God did create the world, he did so in more than six twenty-fourhour days. What is astonishing in this 196o film is the gutsy way it engages in ideas, pulls no punches in its language, and allows the characters long and impassioned speeches. There are a lot of words here, well written and spoken, and not condescending to the audience. Both Tracy and March vent an anger and passion through their characters that ventures beyond acting into holy zeal.

I wonder if a film made today would have the nerve to question fundamentalism as bluntly as the Tracy character does. The beliefs he argues against have crept back into view as "creationist science," and it was the notion that this should be offered as an alternative to Darwinism that inspired the zoos Pennsylvania case. In the movie and in the actual Scopes trial, Bryan was a persuasive orator who proudly defended fundamentalism; his zoos counterparts carefully distanced themselves from religious advocacy and tried to make their case on the basis of "creationist science." Their presentation was so unpersuasive that Judge John E. Jones III (a Republican appointed by George W. Bush) not only ruled against them but added that they exhibited "striking ignorance" and "breathtaking inanity" and "lied outright under oath."

Central to the case for "alternative" theories is a misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is, and isn't. One thing it cannot do is depend on supernatural elements. That is the role of religious belief. By asking that creationism be given a place beside the theory of evolution, its supporters are asking that their beliefs be given equal standing with the scientific method. That violates the separation of church and state, as Judge Jones ruled; in claiming their science was not faith-based, he said, they lied.

What is surprising, as I watch Inherit the Wind, is how clearly Tracy's Drummond/Darrow character defines the same argument and persuasively wins it. After his six expert scientific witnesses are not allowed to testify, he boldly calls Brady/Bryan onto the stand as a defense witness.' he bombastic Brady is unable to refuse a chance to show off, and Drummond quizzes him on biblical details, more or less destroying his credibility in the process; Brady is finally reduced to agreeing with Bishop Usher that God created the Earth at exactly 9 a.m. on October 23, 4004 BC. One might assume that calling Brady to the stand was a Hollywood gimmick, but no: Darrow really did bring Bryan to the stand and methodically ground him down.