Movie Monkeys Around with the Truth about Scopes Trial
I had long wanted to visit Dayton, Tenn., the town that tried schoolteacher John Scopes. I knew the story mostly from Stanley Kramer's 1960 movie "Inherit the Wind." My son knew of it because his high-school science teacher showed it in class. It is the American way: Hollywood is our history teacher.
In "Inherit the Wind," Dayton is fictionalized as "Hillsboro." The town's small-minded leaders arrest a startled science teacher in his classroom for serving up Darwin's theory of evolution. The teacher's attorney, played by Spencer Tracy, heroically defends his freedom to teach science. The fundamentalist prosecutor, played by Fredric March, is reduced to a babbling fool, and at movie's end drops down dead as if struck by a disappointed God.
How would a town remember a story like that?
I visited Dayton this summer on a family road trip. It is a quiet town with five stoplights, a Laz-E-Boy plant, a pantyhose plant and an annual Scopes Trial Festival. As we drove through the old brick downtown to the courthouse where Scopes was made famous, I could see a statue under the broadleaf trees.
Was it Scopes? Or Clarence Darrow, his real-life defense attorney? Or was it prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, who argued that Scopes was teaching falsehoods (and who died five days after the trial's end)?
It was Bryan. His likeness was erected in 2005 by friends of the local institution of higher education — Bryan College. A plaque says of the famous Democrat, "Presidential nominee, Secretary of State, Congressman, Christian Statesman, Author and Orator."
At the Scopes Trial Museum in Dayton, the man on duty grimaced at a mention of "Inherit the Wind." The movie was wrong. In real life, the museum man said, the Scopes case was a setup. Attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York wanted to challenge Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the U.S. Supreme Court. To do that, they advertised in Tennessee newspapers for a teacher willing to be arrested.
Dayton's leaders saw an opportunity to put their town in a spotlight, he continued. They recruited Scopes, a bachelor one year out of college who was willing to teach some kids and be arrested for it. It was understood he would lose; for the ACLU's purposes he needed to lose. That was all right. It was only a misdemeanor, and the fine would be taken care of.
The museum man was promoting Marvin Olasky and John Perry's book, "Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial" (2005).
We show our biases in the books we read. A man at the museum was a retired Nazarene pastor promoting an anti-evolutionist book. I disappointed him by buying Edward Larson's "Summer of the Gods" (1997) instead. I also bought a Bryan College DVD, "Inherit the Truth," a trial re-enactment that makes Bryan look more intelligent than does "Inherit the Wind."
The book and DVD both showed that my guide had been right about the inaccuracies of the movie. It had been based on a 1955 Broadway play by Jerome Roberts and Robert E. Lee. Like Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible," "Inherit the Wind" had been written to make a point about the early 1950s communist hunts. It wasn't intended to be an accurate retelling.
It is hazardous to learn history from movies. At least "Inherit the Wind" is not wrong in all respects. There was an issue of academic freedom at Dayton in 1925. There was also the issue of to what extent the public, which pays for the schools, can say what was taught in them. Most famously, the case raised the question of human origins — whether the fundamentalist Bryan was more believable or whether the infidel Darrow was.
My sympathies remain with Darrow, but I have to admit that "Inherit the Wind" stacks the deck. It is a fun movie, but it appalls me that my son saw it in a science class.
Read entire article at Seattle Times
In "Inherit the Wind," Dayton is fictionalized as "Hillsboro." The town's small-minded leaders arrest a startled science teacher in his classroom for serving up Darwin's theory of evolution. The teacher's attorney, played by Spencer Tracy, heroically defends his freedom to teach science. The fundamentalist prosecutor, played by Fredric March, is reduced to a babbling fool, and at movie's end drops down dead as if struck by a disappointed God.
How would a town remember a story like that?
I visited Dayton this summer on a family road trip. It is a quiet town with five stoplights, a Laz-E-Boy plant, a pantyhose plant and an annual Scopes Trial Festival. As we drove through the old brick downtown to the courthouse where Scopes was made famous, I could see a statue under the broadleaf trees.
Was it Scopes? Or Clarence Darrow, his real-life defense attorney? Or was it prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, who argued that Scopes was teaching falsehoods (and who died five days after the trial's end)?
It was Bryan. His likeness was erected in 2005 by friends of the local institution of higher education — Bryan College. A plaque says of the famous Democrat, "Presidential nominee, Secretary of State, Congressman, Christian Statesman, Author and Orator."
At the Scopes Trial Museum in Dayton, the man on duty grimaced at a mention of "Inherit the Wind." The movie was wrong. In real life, the museum man said, the Scopes case was a setup. Attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York wanted to challenge Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the U.S. Supreme Court. To do that, they advertised in Tennessee newspapers for a teacher willing to be arrested.
Dayton's leaders saw an opportunity to put their town in a spotlight, he continued. They recruited Scopes, a bachelor one year out of college who was willing to teach some kids and be arrested for it. It was understood he would lose; for the ACLU's purposes he needed to lose. That was all right. It was only a misdemeanor, and the fine would be taken care of.
The museum man was promoting Marvin Olasky and John Perry's book, "Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial" (2005).
We show our biases in the books we read. A man at the museum was a retired Nazarene pastor promoting an anti-evolutionist book. I disappointed him by buying Edward Larson's "Summer of the Gods" (1997) instead. I also bought a Bryan College DVD, "Inherit the Truth," a trial re-enactment that makes Bryan look more intelligent than does "Inherit the Wind."
The book and DVD both showed that my guide had been right about the inaccuracies of the movie. It had been based on a 1955 Broadway play by Jerome Roberts and Robert E. Lee. Like Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible," "Inherit the Wind" had been written to make a point about the early 1950s communist hunts. It wasn't intended to be an accurate retelling.
It is hazardous to learn history from movies. At least "Inherit the Wind" is not wrong in all respects. There was an issue of academic freedom at Dayton in 1925. There was also the issue of to what extent the public, which pays for the schools, can say what was taught in them. Most famously, the case raised the question of human origins — whether the fundamentalist Bryan was more believable or whether the infidel Darrow was.
My sympathies remain with Darrow, but I have to admit that "Inherit the Wind" stacks the deck. It is a fun movie, but it appalls me that my son saw it in a science class.