Inherit the Wind

My thoughts on this remake of Inherit The Wind and the slant that it was given arise from one thing only, the possibility in early 1988 that Pat Robertson would be a presidential candidate. The main difference between the classic 1960 version and this television one is that Matthew Harrison Brady is considering yet a fourth run for the presidency. To bring the country back to God, or at least his version of God. Listening to Kirk Douglas as Brady and remembering the times that this television film was made, the context is essential to understand what was going on.

In real life of course William Jennings Bryan was thoroughly cured of the presidential bug by 1925. He was still very much an influence in the party, especially in rural areas such as Eastern Tennessee where the Scopes Trial took place. In real life Bryan would have been 68 in 1928 had he lived and I'm willing to bet he'd have fought mightily against the nomination of the Roman Catholic Alfred E. Smith.

In this version a lot of business is eliminated including the contempt citation that defense lawyer Henry Drummond is given and a favorite scene of mine where Brady is holding court for the press in the hotel restaurant, enjoying heaping helpfuls of roast beef and mashed potatoes while Drummond sits in the foreground with a tuna sandwich and a glass or milk.

The confrontation climax with Brady and Drummond is still basically the same with the added dialog about Brady maybe running for president again to bring the USA back to God. Again written for the 1988 television audience.

Jason Robards, Jr. is far closer to the truth of Clarence Darrow in his Henry Drummond than Spencer Tracy. Darrow was not as noble a creature as Tracy makes him out, but his performance did get him an Academy Award nomination. Robards is a lot more sneaky, still for me the best interpretation of Clarence Darrow is Orson Welles as Jonathan Wilk in Compulsion.

Kirk Douglas gets reunited with his Spartacus co-star Jean Simmons playing Mrs. Brady. By all accounts the real Mrs. Bryan was a very wise woman capable of a brake on her high flying husband when needed.

When I wrote a review for the 1960 Inherit the Wind which I did see in theaters back in the day, I said that the film was done from a quaint nostalgia point of view about what silly things we believed and fought over and how America had grown up in the interim. In 1960 who would have believed that fundamentalist Christianity would have a stranglehold on one of our major parties. This version of Inherit The Wind sadly takes that into account.

Weakest of the three versions of the story of the Scopes Trial this version suffers from shortening, rewriting and worst of all commercials.

This isn't to say its bad, its not. The problem is that compared to the original Spencer Tracy film this film comes off as a good summer stock to the originals Broadway show case.

The cast is game. Kirk Douglas is perhaps a bit odd at first as the William Jennings Bryan character, but after a few minutes he slips into the groove and all is fine. Jason Robards' is excellent, unfortunately there is something about the way this was put together for TV that kills his momentum in the home stretch.

Seeing this with out commercials doesn't help since the pauses still are there.

If its on try it, but if you must see some version of this go for one of the other two.

I consider this the most entertaining of the three versions. Though I am a bigger fan of George C. Scott than of Kirk Douglas, I think that Douglas, supported consummately by Jason Robards, makes a far better Matthew Brady. I do like the original play, but I find that fidelity to an old original in many cases does not work well in making an entertaining movie. Now I hope someone will make a movie of the Intelligent-Design case in Pennsylvania recently. Inherit the Wind is based only very loosely on the actual Scopes Trial, which was "set up" as a test case by the ACLU (to which I gladly belong, nonetheless); the Pennsylvania case appears to have been a genuine spontaneous phenomenon, complete with elements of deceit, comedy, and sex!

Inherit the Wind (1988)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

The second of three remakes of the 1960 Spencer Tracy/Frederic March film once again takes a look at the infamous Scopes trial. The film centers on a teacher who is arrested for teaching the theory of evolution. A religious prosecutor (Kirk Douglas) takes on the defender (Jason Robards) in a case about the right to think. I personally think that the 1960 film is one of the greatest movies ever made and it contains some of the most powerful actor of any movie ever made. It would be rather silly to go into the remake expecting anything as powerful but this film actually comes pretty close. The film has been slightly rewritten and it takes a look at the case from a different side but the movie remains quite powerful and contains some very good acting. The only real problem here is that the movie only runs around 96-minutes, which means we lose some character development. The actual real case has pretty much been proved as a fraud but it certainly makes for an interesting debate, which carries over very well to film. I think, like the original film, this one is a bit too one sided and shows the religious aspect unfairly but while saying this there's no doubt that the original trial showed evolution in an unfair way. As I said earlier, I think both Tracy and March delivered two of the most powerful performances in the history of film but Robards and Douglas do great work here. Douglas really gets into his character so much that you feel as if you're watching the real guy and not Douglas giving a performance. His speech in the church early on is among some of the best preaching I've seen from any actor or any real preacher. Robards was an excellent choice to go up against Douglas and he too delivers a strong performance and the two men together, during the final courtrooms scene, contain enough fireworks to really get your blood pumping. Darren McGavin, John Harkins, Megan Follows and Gene Simmons all add great supporting in their performances. In the end, this film is far from the 1960 version but it's still a very good little gem with great performances and an always interesting story.

This 1988 version of INHERIT THE WIND tried a slightly different approach to the story than the film or the 1965 versions. Apparently there was a deeper delving into the historical material (and - unlike the period of the film and the first dramatic version on television - the resurgence of anti - evolutionary voters in the country) to make the story fairer.

Jason Robards played Drummond/Darrow very well - in the tradition of Muni, Tracy, and Melvyn Douglas. But it was the performance of Kirk Douglas as Brady/Bryan that was unique. As I have mentioned elsewhere in these reviews, Bryan did have valid reasons to dislike Darwinism aside from religious feelings. The issue of Social Darwinism, created by an English elitist snob named Herbert Spencer, had been grabbed by various people in power positions in big business and politics that suggested that the best people were the top of the evolutionary tree - and that big business had the right to destroy small competitors due to "survival of the fittest". Bryan hated this idea, as opposite to Jeffersonian Democracy. He actually intended, after his own humiliation on the witness stand by Darrow to put Darrow on the stand to explain his acceptance of Social Darwinism. Judge Raulston, the trial judge, refused to allow this.

If that had been brought out in this production, it would have set it apart and given a more balanced view of the two parties who clashed in Dayton. Instead, Douglas played Brady like a revivalist (similar to Begley, without Begley's physical resemblance to Bryan). But he also kept trying to keep up the friendly feelings that Darrow and Bryan had when both were fighting on the same side on political issues from 1893 to 1908. While all the productions include those moments of nostalgia between them, this attempted to suggest that Douglas/Brady hoped to "save" the soul of Robards/Drummond. It was a curious idea, but it just did not seem realistic (given their diametrically opposite views on evolution and the Tennessee law). I give this a 7 for the production but the approach was a misfire.