Would Have Been A Better Movie If It Hadn't Been Weighted Against - Inherit the Wind (1960) Discussion

I'm an agnostic myself, but this was not a fair battle; Spencer Tracy against a buffoon.

I was raised in a fundamentalist Xian household, and the portrayals of Brady, et. al., are pretty consistent with the way those people appear in my memories. I don't necessarily agree that the characters are buffoons - that's your word, but I also don't agree that the movie is purposely biased one way or the other.

Full disclosure: I am an atheist.

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[–] joeparkson 9 years ago

I have no problem with the townspeople portrayed as anti-science semi buffoons. I have a problem with the simplistic view that Brady/Bryan was this way as well.

I think the character should have been written and portrayed as someone who was once magnificent but wrong. Someone who's eloquence could almost sway you. March had no eloquence.

An example of this, is in the movie "Other People's Money", where elderly industrialist Gregory Peck is fighting a hostile takeover from raider Danny DeVito.

Peck makes a fine eloquent speech to the stockholders and you think, 'that's it, he's won'. Then DeVito gets up and makes an even better speech.

Soy 'un hijo de la playa'

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[–] BrokenBadly 9 years ago

I didn't quite see what you were getting at in your OP, but I get it now. You're right - WJB wasn't quite the buffoon that the movie makes him out to be.

Do you think that was March's fault, or was it the writing?

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[–] joeparkson 9 years ago

I think it was a bit of both. I think both the writers and March looked down (with good reason) on anti-evolution townspeople and decided to make the Brady character one of these people. In real life, William Jennings Bryan was a populist who was troubled by the imperialist fervor (exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt) across the country and Clarence Darrow himself supported Bryan. Bryan was a complex figure, difficult to pigeonhole, as was Roosevelt. It is possible to be an intelligent, populist liberal who is anti-imperialist and still be a devout, born again christian. In similar fashion, The imperialist, avid big game hunter Theodore Roosevelt was also the first President who was an intense environmentalist.

Here is a quote from the real Bryan:

"The nation is of age and it can do what it pleases; it can spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights."

The man who said that was far more impressive than character played by Frederic March.

Soy 'un hijo de la playa'

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[–] mcfaddensflats 9 years ago

Yes. All very true. Bryan was a significant anti imperialist, standing against the white man's burden jingoism in a lot of the national mood at the turn of the 19th century. He was troubled especially by wars, such as the US campaign against the nationalist Aguinaldo insurgency in the Philippines after the ousting of Spain in '98, and later by the growing clamour in favour of US involvement in WW1.

I don't think Bryan was particularly intelligent. He was certainly a great orator, especially effective when speaking to his "own people"; a tireless campaigner; a sincere, compassionate man. I think he would have made a bad president, worse than Taft, his rival in '08, who usually isn't rated very highly. Maybe I've picked up too much anti Bryan bias by reading books written by "forward thinkers" who can't forgive him for being the "Yahoo's cheerleader" of Dayton, Tennessee!

As you say, WJB and TR were complex figures and we should beware of simplistic political pigeon holing. Warmongering, Panama annexing, imperialistic, Nobel peace prize winning Teddy was the hard shooting national parks president who called Altgeld a dangerous anarchist and stood for president on the ultra radical Progressive party platform in 1912.

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[–] AutoexecBatman 8 years ago

I have no problem with the townspeople portrayed as anti-science semi buffoons.

Except that's not the way it was at all. The townspeople actually loved Scopes and treated him very well, in his memoirs, Scopes praised the people of Dayton, Tennessee for their kindness and hospitality during his trial.

In fact, the people of Dayton were largely indifferent to the trial, and the issues surrounding it, they just like the media attention and saw the trial as a way to cash in.

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[–] kevin-bergin 7 years ago

... Darrow closed the case for the defense without a final summation. Under Tennessee law, when the defense waived its right to make a closing speech, the prosecution was also barred from summing up its case.(Scopes 1967: pp. 59–60)

Borrowing from real life there would have been both a salute W. J. Bryan AND a glimpse in to the wheeling-and-dealing that does on at the defense table.

"It's the system, Lara. People will be different after the Revolution."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

This was rather the set-up two years later in "To Kill A Mockingbird" with Peck's saintly lawyer pitted against a town full of bigots...from the animalistic to the hypocritical.

With both movies, it does seem to me that the "Hollywood approach" -- rather rigged with saintly heroes versus detestable and ignorant villains -- led to overly simplistic movies. You could be on "the good guys side" and still come out of the movie a bit upset that things weren't more balanced in some way. (You could never remove the evil and dumb racist villain Tom Ewell in Mockingbird from the story -- but you could have surrounded him with more white allies for Peck, for instance.)

Inherit the Wind was a different bit of business - -race was not a part of the story, but religion was -- and still, there is a feeling in the movie(various versions were made, some for TV) that the Tracy character is "shooting fish in a barrel" and that the March character is ..nuts.

I suppose Inherit the Wind was a daring movie in 1960(it didn't make money, mainly said one wag, because "it was two hours of two old men yelling at each other") , but I don't think Hollywood was a particularly religious town at any time. Too much sex, drinking and drugs got in the way. So a movie like "Inherit the Wind" was pretty easy for Hollywood to make and champion, even in the more religious American year of 1960.

That said, a smallish few movie stars of today have alluded to God guiding their careers. Plus the Scientology thing....

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