Gideon's Trumpet (1980 TV Movie) User Reviews

excellent historical drama

[sfdphd · 8/10 · 18 October 2014]

I consider myself well-educated but had never heard of this story until now. I had no idea that the right to have an attorney even if you cannot afford one was established so recently in 1963.

I had heard of the attorney Abe Fortas, but didn't know his role in this story. The name that should be more well-known is Clarence Gideon, the man to thank for pursuing his right to a court-appointed attorney.

The film simplifies the events that took place over more than two years, but it really holds your attention and shows the injustice of trials where the defendant could not afford an attorney and was often convicted without proper pursuit of the truth.

In The Right Circumstances

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 18 June 2010]

The story of Clarence Earl Gideon illustrates the fact that even the humblest and least noble of people in the right circumstances can influence things far beyond their grasp. Gideon was certainly in humble circumstances and was not a noble character by any means.

But what he was entitled to is to be represented by counsel when he was arrested for a robbery of a pool hall in a small town in Florida. Gideon was no stranger to the criminal justice system, he'd served time for numerous minor offenses before. But his efforts to defend himself without an attorney resulted in his conviction.

What Gideon did was appeal directly to the US Supreme Court and they took his case and Gideon won the right to be retried with a court appointed lawyer. It was also a 9-0 decision, not something arrived at every day in important cases.

Henry Fonda plays Gideon and the Seventies were not a good decade for him on screen. He sold the value of his box office name for the money and appeared in a lot of junk quite frankly. Until his final Oscar on the big screen for On Golden Pond, this Hallmark Hall of Fame television drama was probably Fonda's best work in the Seventies and might have been his epitaph, but for that. You can see this man clearly as someone who forty years earlier might well have been Tom Joad.

Abe Fortas who represented Fonda at the Supreme Court is played by Jose Ferrer and Ferrer even looks like Fortas who was the consummate Washington insider. His later downfall doesn't change the fact that his was one of the most brilliant legal minds of the last century. On the local level Fonda as Gideon is represented finally in court by Lane Smith who plays his attorney in the folksy Ben Matlock style popularized by Andy Griffith.

The Supreme Court who is nameless has such folks as Sam Jaffe and Dean Jagger on the bench and the Chief Justice is John Houseman. Of course the Chief Justice was Earl Warren and Houseman plays it more like his law professor Kingsley in The Paper Chase. Earl Warren was a far more down to earth individual than Houseman ever was on screen and in real life.

Making her farewell appearance as Fonda's landlady is Fay Wray, she of the big ape. She gives testimony at his new trial she wasn't allowed to give at the first travesty.

The right to counsel is a sacred one and the Supreme Court has made it so by the humble pleadings of one of the Creator/Deity's lesser creations in Clarence Earl Gideon. Greatness can and does exist in some strange places.

No Time For Tragedy

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 20 November 2012]

Found sitting in a bar drinking a beer with a ton of loose change in his pocket, the dour Henry Fonda is arrested and charged with a robbery in another bar where a pinball machine and pool table were emptied of its cash. He is not given an attorney and as a result, defends himself, quickly bringing in a guilty verdict. Incarcerated, Fonda spends every waking moment in the prison library studying the law, and every prisoner watches and waits as he handwrites a letter to the state supreme court to have the verdict overturned. What happens then is the turn around of laws, showing that on occasion, a man in a loosing situation can be the winner.

Just a year before his spectacular Oscar Winning performance in "On Golden Pond", Fonda gave another bravura performance, showing that like many other great actors throughout history, giving a great performance can look extremely easy. While this television film looks liked a filmed stage play, it is certainly never stagey, and that is because you really are interested in seeing how justice is done, even if you are never sure of his guilt or innocence. Fonda is surrounded by a brilliant cast, including Jose Ferrer, Fay Wray, Dolph Sweet, Dolph Sweet, Sam Jaffe and Dean Jagger. Like other great trial dramas (most notably, Fonda's 1956 classic "The Wrong Man"), this is not about finding the guilty party, but simply seeing justice done as the American constitution has promised it would be.

Interesting.

[andy-227 · 18 September 1999]

I wouldn't define this movie as being great. It was good, but not great. It was interesting though. I had to watch this for my criminal justice class, and I was riveted to it. I learned a lot about how our courts worked and how reforms in them were made so people who couldn't afford an attorney still had the right to have one. Based on a true story, Clarence Gideon was convicted of a crime he did not commit. But the movie centers around how he was deprived of his right to an attorney, and how he fought in prison to make clear that he did not have a fair trial. I thought it was well done, and Henry Fonda was very good in the role of Clarence Gideon. Only drawback, this should have been released in theaters. The camerawork of the courtroom and the long shots of Clarence Gideon confessing his history are great. The opening shot is the best scene of the film, which is seen in it's entireity later. Henry Fonda looks right into the camera, right at you, and as Clarence Gideon, he gives you his background. Ingenious. I wish there could be more movies with scenes as subtle and as profound as this. The other scene I liked was when Gideon is retried with an experienced lawyer, and when the first witness falsely claims Clarence Gideon is the culprit, the lawyer cuts him down with words and facts. This movie is good, but it's not a monumental achievement. I would highly recommend it to you though. It's got the qualities a good film should have: a good story and good acting. And lawyers or people involved in law alike will find it very interesting.

Good law, little drama

[hitchcockkelly · 6/10 · 29 January 2023]

Your enjoyment of this picture will depend entirely on your interest in the law and civil rights. Not your interest in courtroom dramas, but the law itself. Clarence Earl Gideon's story is important, but it's also very slow, dry and academic. Anyone expecting "Inherit the Wind" or "Reversal of Fortune" or even an episode of "Law and Order" will be disappointed. Henry Fonda engages in no melodramatics. He portrays Gideon as I'm sure he was, as a stoic, scarred man who kept his thoughts and emotions close. He's as methodical and forceful as a glacier. Fonda plays him brilliantly, but that doesn't make Gideon exciting to watch. I think this is another one of those movies that every high school student should see, but as a drama it just, well, isn't.

The very best of the post-1970's "Hallmark Hall of Fame" productions

[critic-2 · 10/10 · 27 February 2004]

In another review, I stated that the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" series was never as good during the last twenty years or so as it had been during its glorious days in the 1950's and '60's. There was one brilliant exception, however, and this is it. "Gideon's Trumpet" can stand up proudly alongside all the other "Hall of Fame" episodes of the past as one of the finest made-for TV films ever made.

It tells the true story of Clarence Earl Gideon, an ex-convict who, in the early 1960's, was accused of breaking into and robbing a convenience store in Florida. Claiming innocence, he was forced to serve as his own lawyer because states' laws at that time did not require an accused person to be automatically given a lawyer. Failing miserably at his own defense, he was sent to prison, where, as a model prisoner, he studied up on law and petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to be granted a lawyer.

This phrase has already become a cliché from overuse, but Henry Fonda, in one of his last performances, does not play Clarence Gideon--he IS Clarence Gideon. He inhabits the role so completely that we never believe we are watching Henry Fonda; we believe we are seeing a poor, inarticulate, awkward, somewhat cranky, but basically kind man named Clarence Gideon. Fonda utterly lives the role in a way that he seldom does in his other films (although he was an excellent actor).

The other actor who gives a memorable performance is José Ferrer, as Abe Fortas, who pleads Fonda's petition before the Supreme Court. As Fortas, Ferrer gets to do one of the things he does best, and which he had not done to my knowledge since playing "Cyrano de Bergerac"--deliver a long, impressive speech. I don't know how much of the speech was actually taken from the Court hearing and how much was written by the excellent screenwriters, but there are few things as satisfying as an actor who not only gives a great performance, but also delivers a long speech beautifully. The thrill of hearing Ferrer's rich, beautiful voice argue a case before the Supreme Court is enough reason for me to tune in to this film every time it is shown on TV.

There is also a cameo from Fay Wray, as Fonda's longtime landlady, and the other Justices of the Court, all of whom are also excellent, consist of such familiar faces as John Houseman, Sam Jaffe, Dean Jagger, and other familiar character actors from television.

This great production might strike some viewers brought up only on action films as boring--there is no action at all in it; it's like watching a filmed play--but, believe me, there is not a single boring moment in it, if you appreciate well-written characters and dialogue. And this film avoids all of the drippy sentiment that has plagued "Hallmark Hall of Fame" over the last six years or so. If only this anthology series had stayed on the level of "Gideon's Trumpet".

Nicely Done

[rmax304823 · 9/10 · 20 November 2002]

Watching this flick I kept mulling over how many actors had played lawyers in other movies. Let's see. Lane Smith, of course, in "My Cousin Vinnie" (and "Nixon," I guess), John Houseman in "The Paper Trail," Dean Jagger in "Twelve O'Clock High," Jose Ferrer in "The Caine Mutiny" and "Blood and Orchids," and probably others that I've missed. I kept waiting for E. G. Marshall and John Williams to pop up. Henry Fonda, certainly, brought resonance to his role as well. He was the unjustly convicted Manny Balistrero in "The Wrong Man." And he, too, was a lawyer in "Young Mr. Lincoln."

This is pretty well done, both technically and thematically. It's an important story and is refreshingly free of stereotypes. The Florida court that convicts Fonda of burglary is a just one and operates under the law, as it then existed. And Fonda is no rabble rousing spokesman for the little man either. He's been in prison 5 times before, for crimes such as burglary and "possession of government property." (I'd like to hear more about that.) He's not doing this so that "all men will be free" or any of that bunkum. He's doing it because he's angry at having been denied a lawyer simply because he couldn't afford one.

As he labors over the law books in the prison library, he shows concern only over the fate of one other inmate, a black guy. This is one of those instances in which the story looks a little corny. Here, and where the writers give Clarence Earl Gideon the charisma of Cool Hand Luke with the other prisoners, an increasing number of them, following him back and forth to the mailbox and the warden's office and cheering loudly when the Supreme Court agrees to his request. (I don't believe they cheered for another man's success; I don't believe the writers ever met an inmate or saw the inside of a penitentiary.)

The production had a bit of a problem with the focus puller too. But, that aside, this is really pretty instructive. The Supreme Court evidently agreed to review his case not because they felt sorry for him but because they felt ready for a change in the existing rules about due process. Gideon was the right man in the right place. Luck had a lot to do with his success. Equally interesting is Fonda's performance. He was never a ham and was always minimally expressive. It works here because Gideon is played as a grouchy, angry, taciturn loner who minds his own business. A lesser script would have made him bombastic and articulate but this Gideon stumbles over words while reading aloud. The scene in which Fonda chokes up when he receives the news from Abe Fortas about the Court agreeing to review his case is as moving as it is because Fonda underplays it.

Dare I suggest that in this film, playing a skinny, tattooed, unfriendly convict, he does a better job than he did in his convict's role in Hitchcock's movie? Or even that this is one of his best performances, period? The photography and locations are pretty good too. The stale, almost empty courtroom during Fonda's trial, the silence and boredom of all involved, rather match the almost sensible heat of the Florida summer and the interiors baking under the sun.

Lane Smith, as Fonda's counselor in his retrial, is simply great -- sneaky and dark, almost villainous in the glee with which he attacks the prosecution's witnesses and frees Fonda. What a contrast to his performance as the affable prosecutor in "My Cousin Vinnie." Hallmark Productions are often soporific or -- let me say -- family oriented, but this one makes a few demands on a viewer, all for the good. Watch it if you have the chance. It doesn't seem to be on very often.

A most improbable true story.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 18 November 2021]

"Gideon's Trumpet" is an exceptional made for TV movie. Part of it is the actors involved...with Henry Fonda, John Houseman and Jose Ferrer (all Oscar winners) appearing in the movie. It's also because I had never heard of this case and it's about one of the most important convictions the Supreme Court ever overturned.

In the early 1960s, Clarence Earl Gideon was arrested for a petty theft. At his trial, he was not represented by a lawyer, as he could not afford one and, amazingly, the state of Florida would not give him one! Apparently, at that time, states could decide whether or not and on a case by case basis to appoint counsel in any case! It's hard to imagine, but Gideon was forced to represent himself and, not being a lawyer, he was convicted.

Once in prison, Gideon became a 'jailhouse lawyer'. In other words, he read up on criminal law and actually petitioned the US Supreme Court to have his conviction overturned since he was not given legal counsel...even though he requested it. And, surprisingly, without a lawyer, he was able to get the Court to hear his case!! What happens next? See the film.

Overall, this is a fascinating movie...well acted, well written and important to see since it established a now recognized right for every American. Well worth seeing.

Perfect Fare for Social Studies Classes

[inspectors71 · 5/10 · 24 March 2016]

It's the power of Henry Fonda's performance that turns Gideon's Trumpet, the true story of how the right to counsel for all criminal suspects was guaranteed by the United States Supreme Court, into something a bit more than a cheapjack made-for-TV movie.

Fonda has enough sense to make Clarence Gideon something less than a hero. Gideon is an intelligent ne'er-do-well, and the viewer grows to dislike him despite his importance in our judicial history. We want him to win, but we certainly don't want him in our house.

I don't know if columnist Anthony Lewis' book of the same name has Gideon as, well, as ucky as in the movie, but Fonda, toward the end of his life, seemed unhappy and defeated, and it made his portrayal of Clarence Earl Gideon totally acceptable and believable.

The rest of Gideon's Trumpet is ordinary for TV, thrown-together and dumbed-down. John Houseman's misplaced weight behind the production--and his awful miscasting of himself as Earl Warren-- leave the movie feeling washed out and ready for a high school civics class.

Except for Fonda, and Mel Ferrer's portrayal as Abe Fortas, we never really buy into the movie. Like the justices themselves, we are nothing much more than intellectual observers.

A shame.

Not shown in actor's filmography

[Deusvolt · 18 May 2011]

Unfortunately, many will miss knowing about this if they just check on the actor's filmography on this site. It is not explicitly listed. You will have to look for it under Hallmark Hall of Fame.

It is one of Fonda's finest performances reminiscing and rivaling his portrayal of an innocent accused in The Wrong Man. Here, at age 75 he portrays Clarence Gideon who was actually only 53 at the time of the trial in 1963. Obviously, not in health when this was filmed, Henry Fonda's age and frailty adds authenticity and pathos to the character's situation.

It is a landmark movie (for TV) that celebrates a landmark Supreme Court decision that added protection to the rights of the accused by ensuring that they are provided proper legal counsel.

slow moving but a crucial case

[barbosa-vicki · 8/10 · 16 February 2022]

This movie is slow moving but fascinating. The scenes with the Supreme Court held my attention, as their deliberations are something we seldom see. Henry Fonda is a pleasure to watch, in his portrayal of Clarence Gideon who petitioned the Supreme Court to allow indigent defendants to have a court-appointed attorney. It was a landmark case which is too little known. Mr. Fonda manages to make his role sympathetic while remaining a touch irascible, uncommunicative, and focused on his self-appointed task.

This is a movie which should be seen by more Americans.

Loved the history

[jewelch · 8/10 · 28 August 2021]

The historic value of this movie is awesome. Yes I recommend it. James Welch Henderson Arkansas 8/26/21.

Clarence Earl Gideon made his erratic behavior a blessing for those hadn't a fair trial before and after on America!!

[elo-equipamentos · 8/10 · 18 October 2023]

The real story of Clarence Earl Gideon was published in part on the famous The New Yorker Magazine and later into a book wrote by Anthony Lewis, the case had enormous impact in the media in 1963 due he got his case be overhauled over a hand-written letter sent to US Supreme Court, his petition is about he was sentenced to five years jail for a small felony without a council on courthouse in Florida which he could afford, after exhaustive studies on many Book's law Gideon finds out the answer for his case on US constitution according every person has a right to be a fair trial, under this premise US Supreme Court by unanimous granted to Gideon another trial with council on Courthouse, this was a hallmark for all case hereinafter.

Clarence Earl Gideon had a hard times with his parents on tender age, the egocentric boy was sent to reformatory on teenager years, aftermaths committed a small robbery of clothes, being arrested for first time, along these years just one time more on small burglary and even larceny were carried out by the troublesome Clarence, after his three marriages whereof he had children, he went to straight having a normal life when he was appointed by a witness of robbery of bottle of wine and broken a jukebox machine coins quarter at pool hall and beer bar, on Courthouse without any council he was sentenced in five years prison, anyway as above stays clear Clarence Earl Gideon wasn't a righteous citizen whatsoever, although he deserves a proper support from the state anyhow.

The heavyweight casting is another highlight as Henry Fonda playing a deep in thought Clarence, José Ferrer in very convincing acting, what a voice, John Houseman, William Prince, Sam Jaffe, Dean Jagger, Ford Rainey as Supreme Court members, the still young Lane Smith as defense attorney and the unforgettable Fay Wray on last appearance on a movie as landlady of Clarence Earl Gideon, rare movie to find out, just free in Youtube no subtitled at all.

Thanks for reading

Resume:

First watch: 1984 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 8.

An eye opener

[ocgiii · 17 November 2001]

Just saw this this morning. It was well done, but I think dumbed down for general consumption. It was painful to hear so many distinguished jurists referring to attorneys or counsel as 'lawyers', as if the public wouldn't know to what they were referring. At least in the high court, they did use the proper nomenclature. Fonda did a good job of playing Gideon, although I believe the actual man was only about 50 at the time. He also made him out to be at the same time sympathetic and the unpleasant indignant multiple felon he likely was in reality.