Edison, the Man (1940)

Director:

Clarence Brown

Writers:

Hugo Butler (story)
Bradbury Foote (writer)

Release Date:

10 May 1940 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama

Plot:

In flashback, fifty years after inventing the light bulb, an 82-year-old Edison tells his story starting...

Plot Keywords:

Newspaper Story | Fictional Biography | Workshop | Umbrella | Time

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Spencer Tracy	...	Thomas A. Edison
Rita Johnson	...	Mary Stillwell
Lynne Overman	...	James J. Cavatt
Charles Coburn	...	General Powell
Gene Lockhart	...	Mr. Taggart
Henry Travers	...	Ben Els
Felix Bressart	...	Michael Simon
Peter Godfrey	...	Bob Ashton
Guy D'Ennery	...	Lundstrom
Byron Foulger	...	Edwin Hall
Milton Parsons	...	Acid Graham
Arthur Aylesworth	...	Jack Bigelow
Gene Reynolds	...	Jimmy Price
Addison Richards	...	Johnson
Grant Mitchell	...	Shade

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Australia:G | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

The World Premiere for this film in Edison's hometown of West Orange, New Jersey, serves as the backdrop for the mystery novel, ‘Dead at the Box Office’ by John Dandola. The novel explains in great detail how M.G.M. went about planning and carrying out the festivities.

Quotes:

Mr. Taggart: We've no guarantee that these theories of yours are workable.
Thomas A. Edison: Well, most electricity is theory yet.
Mr. Taggart: That's the trouble. Beyond a point what good is electricity anyway?
Thomas A. Edison: What good is a newborn baby?

Movie Connections:

Featured in Servant of Mankind (1940)

The stock ticker, the electric light, the power grid, the phonograph, the motion picture camera...

Spencer Tracy rarely played real people. He played a character based on Arnold Rothstein in an early film for Fox, and Henry Morton Stanley in STANLEY AND LIVINGSTON, and Rogers of Rogers' Rangers in NORTHWEST PASSAGE, and Clarence Darrow (Henry Drummond) in INHERIT THE WIND, and the Captain of the Mayflower in PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE. It seems like a large number of films, but it is really less than three percent of his movies. He also appeared in this film as the great inventor (over 1,000 patents) Thomas Alva Edison (1847 - 1931).

In 1940 Edison was a national hero. Nobody was quite like him, although Alexander Graham Bell (soon to be subject of a film starring Don Ameche) was a figure of great interest too. So was Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, and Eli Whitney, inventor of the Cotton Gin. However no films were made about them. There was a film with Fred MacMurray and Alice Faye about Robert Fulton and his steamboat, but none about the Wright brothers.

Because of the period of history it was made in, film biography rarely was totally dispassionate. All Americans heroes were flawless, so all questions about Edison's stealing credit from assistants or other inventors was pushed aside (his involvement in the patent battles about the telephone is not mentioned). Nor were his flop inventions: pre-fabricated houses made of cement (actually a good idea, but ahead of it's time), the attempt to be the biggest gold ore refiner in the East (using huge machines to grind the ore out of rocks), the electric car motor. His bigoted feelings towards foreigners (Jews, rival inventors like Nicola Tesla) were not mentioned, nor was his rejection of the offer of a joint 1911 Nobel Prize for Physics (for the accidental discovery of the Edison Affect of carbonization in electricity) because he had to have it with Tesla for discovering alternating current. None of this is mentioned...only the string of great inventions he had a major hand in from 1868 to 1894. As a surface study of his career it is passable, and Tracy and the cast (in particular Gene Lockhart as his critic and nemesis Taggart) are splendid. You'll be entertained, but read A STREAK OF LUCK by Robert Conot for the true story.