Inherit the Wind **** (1960, Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Dick York, Florence Eldridge) – Classic Movie Review 6414

Producer-director Stanley Kramer’s classy 1960 courtroom drama, based on a famous real-life case of 1925, finds Spencer Tracy and Fredric March on splendid form as rival lawyers arguing over Darwinian theory, with solid support from Dick York as the teacher and Gene Kelly as the reporter E K Hornbeck. It was nominated for four Oscars.

A science schoolteacher in America’s Deep South is arrested and forced to stand trial after being accused of teaching Darwin’s theories instead of the Biblical version of the Creation. The celebrated lawyer Henry Drummond (in real life Clarence Darrow) is called in to defend the rights of the teacher Bertram T Cates, and fundamentalist politician Matthew Harrison Brady (really William Jennings Bryan) prosecutes.

Based on a true story (the 1925 Monkey Trial), and adapted by screen-writers Nathan E Douglas and Harold Jacob Smith from the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E Leestage play version, this is gripping and thoughtful liberal-minded story-telling.

The tale is slightly fictionalised and the characters names are altered from those of the real-life participants. Although a thinly disguised rendition of the 1925 trial, the debates between the lawyers are largely taken from the transcripts of the Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan court confrontation.

Also in the cast are Florence Eldridge, Donna Anderson, Harry Morgan as Judge Mel Coffey, Elliott Reid, Claude Akins, Phillip Coolidge, Jimmy Boyd, Noah Beery Jr, Gordon Polk, Ray Teal, Norman Fell, Hope Summers and Renée Godfrey.

It is shot in black and white by Ernest Laszlo, scored by Ernest Gold and released by United Artists at 127 minutes.

It was remade by David Greene in 1988 for TV starring Kirk Douglas, Jason Robards, Jean Simmons and Darren McGavin.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6414

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