Bert admits that he taught evolution, and that is what the law forbids. This black-and-white morality play could not be starker: all intelligence and goodness are on the side of Drummond and Cates, all folly and malice belong to Brady and Brown.Īlthough the defense is pure in mind and heart, it has an impossible legal position. If the deck in Hillsboro is stacked heavily against Drummond, the deck in Hollywood is stacked just as heavily in his favor. His every witticism strikes home, just as every feeble attempt by Brady to score a point backfires.
#Bible discovery stuns trial
As the trial begins we see him trying to counter the religious prejudice of the community and the court.
#Bible discovery stuns movie
Drummond is another familiar movie character: the fearless advocate who fights for justice against seemingly hopeless odds. The Brady welcoming banquet is interrupted by the news that the famous Henry Drummond is coming to be the defense lawyer. Brady treacherously intends to use these against Bert in court, and even to call Rachel as a prosecution witness against her future husband. After meeting the Reverend Brown and learning that Rachel Brown is friendly with Bert Cates, he induces the gullible Rachel to confide in him about ideas Bert has shared with her in confidence. The townspeople provide him with many opportunities to exercise his wit, as they display their ignorance and vulgarity while mindlessly singing choruses of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion.”īrady eventually arrives, makes a phony-sounding speech, eats picnic food like the glutton he is, and generally shows himself to be a pompous old fool. Hornbeck is a familiar movie character: the hard-boiled reporter who makes sarcastic comments about events on stage, a bit like the chorus in an ancient Greek drama. As the town of Hillsboro is preparing to give Brady a hero’s welcome, journalist E.K.
Brady, a former presidential candidate, has become an antievolution crusader in his declining years. The trial of Bert Cates becomes America’s first media circus when Matthew Harrison Brady volunteers to be the prosecutor. Rachel herself is a conformist although she adores Bert, she continually urges him to stop making trouble for himself by speaking out against the community’s religious prejudices. Reverend Brown is a vicious bigot with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, whose practice of Christian ministry seems to be limited to cursing people like Bert and threatening them with damnation. Bert is in love with Rachel Brown, also a teacher and the daughter of the Reverend Jeremiah Brown, the most powerful of the local ministers. The play did not create the stereotype, but it presented it in the form of a powerful story that sticks in the minds of journalists, scientists and intellectuals generally… The Story of the PlayĪ handsome young science teacher named Bert Cates, dedicated to his students and his teaching, is jailed for violating a state law against the teaching of evolution. Inherit the Wind is a masterpiece of propaganda, promoting a stereotype of the public debate about creation and evolution that gives all virtue and intelligence to the Darwinists. You can rent the movie at any video store with a “classics” section, and I urge you to do so and watch it carefully… The play is a fictionalized treatment of the “Scopes Trial” of 1925, the legendary courtroom confrontation in Tennessee over the teaching of evolution. Lee play called Inherit the Wind, which was made into a movie in 1960 starring Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly and Frederic March. Why is it so hard for reasoned criticism of biased teaching to get a hearing? The answer to that question begins with a Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. The newspapers report that “creationists” are once again trying to censor science education because it offends their religious beliefs. Their specific points are brushed aside, and they are dismissed out of hand as religious fanatics. People who only want unbiased, honest science education that sticks to the evidence are bewildered by the reception they get when they try to make their case. Share Facebook Twitter Print arroba Emailįact, Myth, and the Scopes Monkey Trial Phillip E.
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