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[This review was originally published at Amazon.com on Wednesday, May 18, 2005]
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INHERIT THE WIND
starring Spencer Tracy
1960
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I recently rented INHERIT THE WIND to see for myself if it was really as bad as I'd heard. It was. I am astounded to find how many reviewers have excused its massive deviation from fact under the banner of "entertainment." Has our capacity to evaluate information diminished to the point that we are no longer able to differentiate between simple entertainment and pure propaganda? When a movie presents a supposedly intellectual argument, and paints EVERY SINGLE MEMBER on one side of that argument as a buffoon maroon, but shows the other side as thoughtful, open-minded and humanitarian, you can bet the farm that you're being propagandized!
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Some reviewers have equated the movie with an indictment of the horrors of "McCarthyism". These folks have been twice-bamboozled! Obviously they don't do any independent research, but just ingest whatever gets fed to them. Click HERE if you want to learn the truth about Joseph McCarthy and "McCarthyism".
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INHERIT THE WIND pretends to portray the famous 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" with a little dramatic license. This movie strays SO FAR from the facts that even saying it is "based on" the actual event renders that term so elastic as to be meaningless!
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John Scopes is renamed Bert Cates (Dick York), Clarence Darrow becomes Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy), William Jennings Bryan becomes Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) and Dayton, Tennessee, becomes Hillsboro, Tennessee. The playwrights, Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, did not alter the names because they thought they could improve on them, but so they could legally reinvent history. The idea was to twist the truth and present it as entertainment "based on" a true story, knowing that over time, the drama will become accepted as factual by the masses. And it worked! Look how many of us grew up thinking that INHERIT THE WIND was an essentially accurate account of the "Monkey Trial."
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All of the Christians (believing in "Creationism") in the movie are portrayed as emotionally-overwrought, brain-dead bigots. Paint any other group with such a broad brush and you'll be in court for the rest of your life, but here in Amerika, it's always "open season" on Christians. Hardly sympathetic to both views, in reality, Darrow called Christianity, Bryan's "fool religion".
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Contrary to some opinions, the acting does NOT make INHERIT THE WIND worthy of your time. Fredric March and Claude Akins are mere caricatures, but they're not to be blamed as Brady and Reverend Brown were written as cartoon blowhards. Tracy's naturalistic performance is enjoyable, as usual, but Tracy was ALWAYS Tracy from film to film -- there's nothing new here. Gene Kelly was fine as the cynical, MENSA-Donkey newspaper reporter, but it was a simple part to play. The best, most sympathetic performance was actually turned in by Florence Eldridge as Mrs. Sarah Brady. Now her I believed.
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If you're interested in comparing the events portrayed in the movie INHERIT THE WIND with the REALITY of the 1925 "Monkey Trial", to see just how far the playwrights deviated from truth, click HERE and go to my guide titled "WOULD YOU LIKE TO... STOP FALLING FOR SPENCER TRACY'S MONKEY BUSINESS?" You'll be surprised -- no, SHOCKED at how seriously the movie distorted the facts in order to condition people to the dogma of Darwinism!
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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[This guide was originally published at Amazon.com in March of 2005, and it was largely based on a chapter in the 1999 book TORNADO IN A JUNKYARD: The Relentless Myth Of Darwinism by James Perloff. I give the book my highest recommendation.]
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THE PROBABILITY OF HIGHER LIFE FORMS EMERGING BY CHANCE ARE COMPARABLE TO THE ODDS THAT "A TORNADO SWEEPING THROUGH A JUNKYARD MIGHT ASSEMBLE A BOEING 747 FROM THE MATERIALS THEREIN."
~ eminent astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, 1981
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"AN HONEST MAN, ARMED WITH ALL THE KNOWLEDGE AVAILABLE TO US NOW, COULD ONLY STATE THAT IN SOME SENSE, THE ORIGIN OF LIFE APPEARS AT THE MOMENT TO BE ALMOST A MIRACLE, SO MANY ARE THE CONDITIONS WHICH WOULD HAVE HAD TO HAVE BEEN SATISFIED TO GET IT GOING."
~ Nobel Prize-winning, DNA co-discoverer, Dr. Francis Crick, 1981
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The movie INHERIT THE WIND (1960) pretends to portray the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial with a "little" dramatic license. John Scopes is renamed Bert Cates (Dick York), defense attorney Clarence Darrow becomes Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy), prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan becomes Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) and Dayton, Tennessee, becomes Hillsboro, Tennessee.
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The playwrights did not alter the names because they thought they could improve on them, but so they could slander without fear of a libel lawsuit. The idea was to distort the truth and present it as "entertainment", knowing that over time, the drama will become accepted as factual by the masses.
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All of the Christians ("Creationists") in the movie are portrayed as emotionally-overwrought, brain-dead bigots. Paint any other group with such a broad brush and you'll be in court for the rest of your life, but here in Amerika, it's always open season on Christians.
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Let's compare INHERIT THE WIND (ITW) with REALITY and see if we can't detect some deliberate dishonesty...
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INHERIT THE WIND (ITW): Cates is arrested by the town fathers while teaching Darwin's Evolution in class and is jailed. Later an angry Christian mob threatens to lynch him, and he is injured when a zealot throws a rock through his jail cell window.
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REALITY: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) placed several advertisements in Tennessee, offering to pay all expenses for the person who would help them challenge the Butler Act (State law forbidding the teaching of Evolution in public schools). Scopes was recruited. He was not jailed at any point because it was only a finable offense. Scopes confessed in his autobiography that as a substitute Science teacher, he couldn't even recall actually teaching Evolution. (Incidentally, the ACLU was founded by Roger Baldwin who served as its executive director for 30 years and who wrote in his Harvard reunion book that "Communism" was his "goal". See the book: THE ACLU VS. AMERICA: Exposing The Agenda To Redefine Moral Values by Alan Sears & Craig Osten.)
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ITW: Drummond is given a rude welcome by the narrow-minded Christian townspeople. He is portrayed as a brave underdog fighting an unjust system.
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REALITY: A friendly crowd greeted Darrow at the train station and the town held a banquet in his honor. Darrow was not a lone warrior fighting against a stacked deck; the ACLU imported a team of lawyers and "experts."
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ITW: Brady bellows, "The people of this State have made it very clear that they do not want this zoological hogwash slobbered around the schoolrooms!" And he says, "The way of Scientism is the way of darkness."
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REALITY: Bryan was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At the trial he said, "Give Science a fact and it is not only invincible, but of incalculable service to man."
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ITW: Brady illustrates his narrow-mindedness by stating that he has never read Darwin's 'The Origin Of Species' and that he "never will."
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REALITY: Bryan quoted extensively from Darwin's writings in the Dayton courtroom.
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ITW: The judge refuses to allow Darwin's texts to be admitted as evidence in the case.
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REALITY: Bryan himself offered Darwin's 'The Origin Of Species' as evidence into the trial.
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ITW: Brady is portrayed as an obnoxious boor with a penchant for delivering long windy speeches.
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REALITY: Bryan didn't even speak in court until the 4th day of the trial, by which time Darrow had engaged in considerable oratory, including a 2-hour speech on religion and bigotry.
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ITW: Drummond is refused the right to put Evolution "experts" on the stand to testify.
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REALITY: Darrow declined to put his experts on the stand for fear of Bryan's cross-examination. Instead, he had them submit affidavits. (Ironically, most of the Evolutionary "evidence" Darrow's experts discussed -- Piltdown Man, useless vestigial organs, embryonic recapitulation -- are now discredited ideas.)
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ITW: Brady betrays the trust of Cates' fiancee by putting her on the stand and forcing her to testify to things about Cates that she revealed confidentially to Brady the night before. Later, she sobs to Brady's wife, "If he could do such an evil thing, he must be an evil man. And everything he stands for must be evil too!"
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REALITY: Scopes had no girlfriend and no women were ever called to testify in the case.
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ITW: The jury finds Cates guilty and he is fined $100. Outraged by the small fine, Brady delivers an irrational, impassioned speech, suffers a heart attack and dies in the courtroom.
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REALITY: After putting Bryan on the stand and trying to make him look foolish, Darrow changes the plea of Scopes to guilty, ending the trial. Darrow did this in order to prevent Bryan from questioning HIM on the witness stand, and to keep Bryan (who died 5 days after the trial) from making a closing argument. Darrow admitted in his autobiography that he had intended to employ this tactic from the beginning of the trial. The ACLU's purpose for the trial had been merely to disseminate Darwinism and publicly assail Christian fundamentalism.
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I have only scratched the surface of the discrepancies between INHERIT THE WIND and REALITY in this guide. If TRUTH matters to you at all, pick up a copy of TORNADO IN A JUNKYARD: The Relentless Myth Of Darwinism by James Perloff. Most of the material for this guide was borrowed from chapter 17 of that outstanding book for laymen.
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All these decades after the release of "WINDY", in the "genuine" SCIENTIFIC community, Darwinism is as dead as Darwin, and Microbiology and Physics are well on their way to circumstantially proving that a Supremely Intelligent Designer is responsible for life as we know it. Chapter 7 alone ("Vegas Odds On Life") of TORNADO IN A JUNKYARD will put Darwinism to rest for anybody with half an ounce of grey matter in their skull and honesty in their heart!
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As for you RADICAL ATHEISTS lining up to post your negative comments against this guide, keep this in mind: They will NOT...
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1) Alter the Truth one whit.
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2) Affect me in the least.
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3) Convince me that YOU exist!
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Now go have a really nice day!
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
(2005, March)
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