Inherit The Wind Exposes Dangers Of Blind Faith

Inherit the Wind is a 1960 Hollywood film based on a play of the same name by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. Both the play and the film present fictionalized accounts of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial which resulted in John T. Scopes conviction for teaching Charles Darwin theory of evolution to a high school science class. This was against the Tennessee state law which prohibited the teaching of anything besides creationism.

The central plot of Inherit the Wind revolves around the imprisonment and trail of Bertram Cates who is modeled after John Scopes. Cates is arrested and thrown into jail after he teaches Darwins theory of evolution in a high school biology class. His colleague Rachel comes to meet him in the jail and asks him to admit that he was wrong but Cates refuses. The counsel for prosecution is led by Matthew Harrison Brady for whom the town throws a celebration. The counsel for the defense is represented by Henry Drummond, an agnostic.

The later part of Inherit the Wind is taken up with the presentation of the trial proceedings in which two oratorical giants of the era battle it out. The film differs from the play in toning down the unidimensionality of the characters. In the movie version, Cates eventually leaves the town of Hillsboro. The film, in fact, incorporates more of the actual trial proceedings as for instance, when Clarence Darrow is cited for contempt of court.

In another sequence of the film version, the town mob harasses Cates in his cell and even threatens Drummond in his hotel. After a conversation with Hornbeck that same night, Drummond gets a brainwave of calling Brady as a witness in order to expose the contradictions from a too-literal interpretation of the Bible. Inherit the Wind was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and received a host of other nominations from the Academy Awards and the Bafta Awards.

The main cast of the film version of Inherit the Wind included Spenser Tracy as Drummond, Fredric March as Brady, Gene Kelly as Hornbeck, Dick York as Cates and Donna Anderson as Rachel Brown. For his portrayal of Brady, March received the Silver Bear Award for the Best Actor in the Berlin Film Festival. The film was adapted by Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith and was directed by Stanley Kramer.

The Broadway version of play opened in 1955 and was again revived in 1996. In March 2007, the play was produced in a limited Broadway engagement and went on to receive four Tony Award nominations. Despite several similarities between the historical Scopes trial and the play/film, Inherit the Wind is not intended as a documentary drama but a warning against the dangers of McCarthyism as evident by the dangers posed to intellectual freedom, by the anti-communist hysteria. Wikipedia

Inherit The Wind Exposes Dangers Of Blind Faith