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Jonathan Hafetz

Hi, I'm Jonathan Hafetz and welcome to Law and Film, a podcast that explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films. A film, in turn, tells us a lot about the law. In each episode, we'll examine a film that's noteworthy from a legal perspective. What legal issues does the film explore? What does it get right about the law and what does it get wrong?

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Jonathan Hafetz

How is law important to understanding the film? And what does the film teach us about the law and about the larger social and cultural context in which it operates? Our film this episode is Inherit the Wind, a 1960 film that's a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, where a local teacher is put on trial for teaching about human evolution in public school in violation of Tennessee state law.

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Jonathan Hafetz

The film was directed by Stanley Kramer and based on a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. It stars Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond, patterned after a celebrated defense attorney, Clarence Darrow. Fredric March as the prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady, based on the famous three time presidential candidate, former Secretary of State and renowned fundamentalist Christian spokesperson William Jennings Bryan.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Dick York is Bertram Cates, who is patterned after the high school teacher John Scopes and Gene Kelly plays reporter Ike Hornbeck, who's based on the journalist H.L. Mencken. For fans of the TV show Mash. You'll enjoy seeing Harry Morgan as the trial judge. The film not only provides a glimpse into the role of religion and public life in America in the 1920s.

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Jonathan Hafetz

It also conveys important messages about conformism and freedom of thought directed at the McCarthyism of its own era. Messages that continue to reverberate today. My guests to talk about Inherit the Wind is Nell Minow. Now has been a professional movie critic since 1995, with many articles and some books, and is now a contributing editor at Roger ebert.com and online and on the radio every week as the movie mom.

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Jonathan Hafetz

She's also worked for the past 30 years on behalf of institutional shareholders on corporate governance issues, with dozens of articles and several books on this subject. As a movie critic and lover of law and film and the two together, it's wonderful to have now on the podcast. So welcome now.

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Nell Minow

Thank you very much. This is one of my favorite movies, and I'm very, very happy to be here to talk about it. I wanted to begin by saying something about sort of my own connection to some of the issues that are in the movie. When I was in fourth grade, my family moved and I went from a one public school to another and another jurisdiction.

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Nell Minow

And in the new public school that I went to. We prayed in school every morning, and that was very disturbing to me. As a Jewish child, I have to say Christian prayers in school. But I was the new kid in school. I didn't want to say anything to anybody. And by the time I get to fifth grade, the Supreme Court, which was just a few blocks down the street from my school, had a rule that I didn't have to do that anymore.

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Nell Minow

And that was part of what got me interested in the law to begin with. Aside from the fact that a lot of lawyers and my family was understanding that I could have a problem that I never mentioned to anybody, and that it could be resolved in such a satisfying way by a legal challenge. So I've been very, very interested in that as an issue.

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Nell Minow

And of course, it's often attributed to Mark Twain. He didn't really say it. That history doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes, but not only did the 1960s era rhyme with the era of the Scopes Trial, but we seem to be rhyming with it again now. We're still having big fights about what goes on in school. And one of my favorites was that recently in Idaho, the state legislature considered changing the state constitution, which prohibits tax dollars going to religious schools.

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Nell Minow

And it got stalled when the Satanic Temple showed up and said, we think this is a great idea because we're planning a school and we're going to have critical race theory in it, and we're going to have all kinds of wonderful work stuff in it. So hand us the money and it got it shut down completely. So these issues remain as vital now as they were in the scopes era and the Stanley Kramer era.

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Nell Minow

And in our era.

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Jonathan Hafetz

You know, that's so true. And it's interesting, had that personal connection to it. And right. And that's around the time and we'll talk about the scopes trial where the Supreme Court finally, I think it's 1968, in Epperson versus Arkansas, where they declare unconstitutional the Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution in schools as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

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Jonathan Hafetz

But as you said, these issues continue today. And I think one of the fascinating things that we can talk about is kind of what's changed, which I think is a lot, and also what hasn't changed from the 1920s era when the Scopes trial took place. So can you take us back to 1925, the social cultural context, which is the backdrop for the trial monkey trial and the film?

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Nell Minow

It's easy to look back on almost any era and say it was an era of upheaval. But certainly the 1920s and the Tens and 20s were an era of upheaval, and we tend to see a rise in fundamentalism at the same time that there are a lot of technical changes. And again, we're seeing that now. So when people feel that everything is changing all around them, they tend to clamp down on something that they feel that they can control and that feels safe to them.

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Nell Minow

And that was what was going on here. And I'm going to say something on behalf of William Jennings Bryan, because he wasn't only the prosecutor in this trial. He was the promoter of the law. He was defending a law that he promoted, that he drafted. And this was hugely important to him, not because and this is one of the ways in which I think the movie is unfair to him, not because he was a Bible thumping, put my fingers in my ears.

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Nell Minow

I don't want to know about it. Person. He had read Darwin's book. He had debated the issues before, but he wasn't wrong in saying that I'm afraid of these ideas. Get pervasive in our society. It will lead to some very bad things, like perhaps eugenics, which is a fair point. I don't think the answer to that point is trying to keep it away from people.

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Nell Minow

One of my favorite points in the movie is when the student, Mr. Cates, is on the stand and Spencer Tracy is Clarence Darrow. Slash. Henry Drummond asks him, what do you think about that? And he says, I have to think about it. And he says, well, that's it. That's why we're here. We're here because the more ideas are in front of you, the better your judgment about it will be.

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Nell Minow

And that's also the idea of the law, too, whether we're in the courtroom or whether we're in the legislature. We believe in the marketplace of ideas. And I was once on September 17th, 1979, so it was the 100th anniversary of the Constitution. I was asked to speak to a group of young schoolchild, learn about the Constitution, and I decided the one thing I was going to say to them is we're not afraid of ideas.

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Nell Minow

That's why we have the First Amendment. I spent the whole time talking about that. To me, that is the bedrock of this country. We're not afraid of ideas. We're always healthier by hearing the good ideas and the bad ideas and figuring out what's right. And of course, that's what happens in a courtroom with limits. And we're going to talk about some of the evidentiary rulings.

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Nell Minow

But I think that is what is going on. So to answer your question, what was it like? This was an era of prohibition. It was an era where the women had just gotten the right to vote. It was an era of changes in technology, and it was an era of fundamentalism. And interestingly, the church really split between what they called the modernists, who were not literal believers in the inerrancy of the Bible and the fundamentalists and the fundamentalist really clamped down and thought a good way for them to promote their ideas was to pursue legislation like this.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. And as you said, William Jennings Bryan also had a lot of what would today people would say, well, they and were at the time very progressive ideas. So he kind of comes off a biblical literalist, right? He was a little more nuanced.

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Nell Minow

So I don't think about what I don't think about. And his challenge. Well, do you ever think about what you do think about, which I think is, you know, one of the great questions of all time that's wonderful about that character. That is not the real William Jennings Bryan.

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Jonathan Hafetz

The film starts with Kate's with. But it's right. You got to toggle back and forth.

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Nell Minow

The three names. And by the way, for fans of classic television, of course you've got Dick York from Bewitched as Kate's.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Exactly, exactly. So Dick York, the Dick, your character Kate's, which is clearly John Scopes. It starts off with this sort of ominous scene where these people, from the town to the background music of old time religion, come in and interrupt his class. They come in, he's teaching his high school class and they arrest him. He's detained pending trial.

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Jonathan Hafetz

You know, that's sort of the way it plays out in the film. In real life. It a little bit different, right? It was a test case that was organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had just sort of started out. They financed it. They pursued Clarence Darrow. And this was an effort to try to tee up a challenge.

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Jonathan Hafetz

The real.

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Nell Minow

Advertised. They advertised in the newspaper looking for somebody. There's nothing wrong with that. Rosa Parks was also in that position where they said, we want to test this law. Would you like to be the test case? So there's nothing wrong with that, but it's certainly not the way it's portrayed. Furthermore, there's no evidence that he actually didn't teach evolution.

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Nell Minow

He agreed to say that he did and got students to say that he did. There's a reason the drama is called drama. If we try to portray it, that way in the movie, it wouldn't be that interesting. So yeah, they do come right into the classroom. They do also, though, at that same time in the movie, have a group of businessmen sitting around talking and saying, well, you know, I believe that we have to move with the times.

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Nell Minow

But, you know, of course, I'm a I believe in the Bible, but, you know, they're much more moderate then the song and the breaking into the classroom would have you believe.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. The businessmen, I think, saw it as a opportunity for the town to get some attention. I think that the sort of spectacle that it became was viewed positively. If I'm not incorrect by some of the businessmen in the town.

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Nell Minow

There's no question the evidence is that the businessmen wanted it to happen and correctly predicted that it would turn into what today we would call a media circus.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Exactly. I think about that media circus, and we come back to that later. I mean, I don't know if you've seen the ace in the whole film. I just felt like.

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Nell Minow

Yeah, of course.

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Jonathan Hafetz

The Billy Wilder movie, they really captured that idea of like the media circus. That's what jumps out. It does a good job of it. Yeah. Also, it's interesting if I'm not correct, they didn't put Cates on the stand or scopes on the stand in the trial because of exactly what you said. They were worried that because he may not have actually thought.

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Nell Minow

He was a substitute teacher, he was not even a full time teacher.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So, anyway, me, I mean, it's still an important case in life as important case in the movie, but it was a case so important at the time. Why was the ACLU and others looking to bring this challenge in 1925?

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Nell Minow

Well, as you pointed out, the ACLU is a brand new organization. Back then, they really started during World War One, to pursue free speech. They were very interested in all elements of the First Amendment as they continued to be, including the Establishment Clause. And they were young, they were feisty, and they were interested in doing some high profile work.

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Nell Minow

And nothing could be more profile than having two of the most famous people in the country who knew each other, liked each other, had debated each other in the past. But we don't get any of that in the movie. We do get a sense when Henry Drummond, I'm just going to call Clarence Darrow when Clarence Darrow says he's a great man, you do get a sense of that.

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Nell Minow

They're not, you know, horribly hostile to each other. That would be of tremendous value in establishing what today we would call their brand.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Was there any beyond sort of the ACLU asserting itself? Was there another reason that this case needed to be brought?

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Nell Minow

Tennessee was not the only state. There were 22 states. William Jennings Bryan was making this as full time job. He was promoting these laws throughout the country. And so I think they were afraid, you know, to say, well, Tennessee's not doing anything with it. That was not enough. They were afraid that it was going to, as today, we would say, go viral.

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Jonathan Hafetz

And the film the judge, John Ralston, was the state court judge. And in the film, it's not Tennessee, it's Hillsborough. So it's a fictionalized location, and that's Harry Morgan from that, I think, more avuncular than he was in real life. But in any event, he refuses to allow the defense to introduce scientific evidence to support human evolution. And there's arguments back and forth.

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Inherit the Wind Dialogue

We should proceed with the case for the defense. I like to call Doctor Amos Keller, or the head of the Department of Zoology at the University of Chicago. Objection. On what grounds? I wish to inquire what possible relevance the testimony of a zoology professor can have in his trial. Quite as ever, irrelevant. My client is on trial for teaching evolution.

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Inherit the Wind Dialogue

Certainly, any testimony relating to his so-called infringement of the law must be admitted. Irrelevant. Immaterial. Inadmissible. But why? If Bertram case were on trial for murder, would it be irrelevant to call in witnesses to examine the weapon? Well, to rule out testimony that the so-called murder weapon was incapable of firing a bullet. I feel the grass. The learned counsel's meaning.

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Inherit the Wind Dialogue

Your honor, the defense wishes to place Doctor Keller on the stand so that he can explain to the gentlemen of the jury, the exact meaning of the theory of evolution. How can they pass judgment if they don't know what it's all about? I call it the very law we're here to enforce. Exclude such testimony. The people of this state made it very clear that they do not want this zoological hogwash slob around the school rooms, and I refuse to allow these agnostics, scientists to employ this courtroom as a sounding board, as a platform from which they can shout their heresies into the headlines, the bench rumors that zoology is irrelevant to the case.

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Inherit the Wind Dialogue

Does Your Honor deny in one breath the existence of zoology, geology and archeology? We do not deny the existence of these sciences, but they do not relate to this point. Of all.

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Jonathan Hafetz

In your article about the movie, you talk about the film being a battle between empiricism and faith. Can you talk a little bit of more about that, and also about the ruling on excluding the expert testimony?

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Nell Minow

There's a lot of stuff that happens in that trial that should have been excluded. And in fact, in the real trial, the jury was not present for a lot of that extraneous stuff. So there was some understanding of what the trial was supposed to be about. So if I can just bring in a movie from last year that was also based on a true case.

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Nell Minow

The movie The Burial with Jamie Fox is a movie about a trial where so much evidence comes in that has nothing to do with the basis of the case, and clearly the case is decided by the jury on the basis of this highly prejudicial, irrelevant, in legal terms, material. So this is again a very big issue. But in theory, in law school theory, the idea of the trial was about one thing.

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Nell Minow

Did he violate the law? So let's assume for the moment that he did. At one point in his brief stint as a substitute teacher, mentioned evolution. So let's assume that factually he did do that. But that is the basis of that case. Factually, did he violate the law? The place where you challenged the validity of the law is not the trial court.

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Nell Minow

And so to present the evidence, as much as we might love to hear it, because we tend to be empiricists, the evidence about the importance or validity of science, the scientific approach really is not relevant to that issue. It's not really relevant to the issue of whether the law should be invalidated or not. The only thing that is relevant and is the basis of that later Supreme Court decision that you mentioned is does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution to impose on a public school curriculum.

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Nell Minow

One particular religions view, one subset of one religion's particular view of the facts. And that I think obviously is correctly decided. But in terms of putting on a play or making a movie, was that colorful and did it help tell the story that they wanted to tell? Sure. In terms of what the ruling should have been, yeah. Harry Morgan is correct that that was not relevant to the issue that was before the court and to be decided by the jury.

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Jonathan Hafetz

It seemed like, as you said, I mean, the issue was, did he teach evolution in school in violation of the Butler Act, which was the Tennessee law at the time? The Hillsborough law was called? The movie answers. Yes. I mean, assuming there was a factual predicate and all these issues and the legal challenges were superfluous, it's there for the drama, and you needed to underscore the underlying battle of ideas.

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Jonathan Hafetz

But all those legal challenges which they made, I think they made an Establishment Clause challenge. They made a freedom of speech to challenge. I think there was a challenge to the vagueness that the law was too vague comes up. How do you define evolution? All those legal challenge, which were kind of the bread and butter of the effort to overturn the law, were not relevant.

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Jonathan Hafetz

It's kind of interesting. You get this ruling skewed in the evidence, and then Clarence Darrow or Tommy Drummond in the film as it fit, attacks a judge. And he's actually thinking time.

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Nell Minow

Yeah, he has. And again, this part is not true. The local farmer, Noah Berry, who you might know from The Rockford Files.

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Jonathan Hafetz

I tried I was kind of place him in that.

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Nell Minow

Is Noah Berry. The non-believing farmer puts up his farm as security, and none of that really happened. And as far as I can tell, none of that part about who gets to be called a colonel happen either. So I do think the evidentiary ruling is correct. And just, you know, again, to talk about what's happening, take the notorious say on gay rule law has been thrown out and the Florida government has agreed to a settlement that invalidates about 95%, 98% of the that law.

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Nell Minow

And that, again, was about what can be taught in the schools based on a very minority view, religious, I would say a very minority religious view. And I hope I'm a little nervous about this, particularly Supreme Court. But I hope that their understanding of the Supreme Court is that you have the freedom to practice your religion. You do not want to impose that on anybody else.

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Nell Minow

And unfortunately, I think some of their rulings have blurred that line.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, it's definitely a different, very different court than the court that decided the case is the parent school case. And that person is striking down the.

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Nell Minow

Yeah, but I want to mention the Kitzmiller case because that was a Reagan judge who gave what I think is the very best ruling, the best decision ever written on this exact issue. And what happened was that understanding that teaching the inerrancy of the Bible was not going to work in science class, the people who didn't want to give up on that created a theory called intelligent design, which they said was science and should be taught alongside of evolution as a sort of both sides ism, alternate interpretation, and that was a very clever approach on their part.

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Nell Minow

But this judge in the Kik similar case said, I'm sorry, it's not science. You can teach French in school, but you can't teach French in science class. And if you're going to call it science, it has to meet the criteria that science applies to itself, which is that it allows for proofs, it allows for empiricism, allows for tests, etc..

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Nell Minow

And so I think that case is just as important as the Supreme Court case.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Absolutely. And I mean, that is kind of the pivot. Or we see that starting especially in the 1960s. Right. Maybe with creation science is saying you can't teach evolution. You teach both side by side. And they try to justify, you know, that this is science. There's a scientific explanation. And to kind of bring it out, they bring the Bible out of the realm of faith and religion into the realm of science.

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Nell Minow

You know, when I was in sixth grade tonight for my fourth grade, when I was in sixth grade, a student actually raised his hand in science class and said, how do you square what you're telling us with the Bible? And my teacher gave what I think was a very good answer, although I don't know that it would be allowed today, he said, what do you think?

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Nell Minow

God waved a magic wand. Don't you want to know how he did it? I thought that was a pretty good answer.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, it's a very good answer, especially in the setting of, school class. You know, the question about how the biblical literalism is challenged in probably the most climactic moments of the film, which is the cross examination. I Drummond, Clarence Darrow, Brady Williams, Jane Bryan, where's the way the film recounts it is after Darrow is denied the opportunity to put on all of his expert testimony.

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Jonathan Hafetz

He calls Brady as his expert witness witness on the Bible. And, Brady takes the bait and gets on the stand. And then Clarence Darrow does this very deft cross-examination of Brady.

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Inherit the Wind Dialogue

Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one faculty a man with raises him above the other creatures of the earth, the power of his brain to reason? What other merit? Heaven. The elephant is larger, the horse is swifter and stronger. The butterfly is far more beautiful. The mosquito is more prolific. Even the simple sponge is more durable. What does a sponge think?

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Inherit the Wind Dialogue

I don't know, I am a man, not a sponge. You think a sponge thinks if the Lord wishes a sponge, does he? It takes. You think a man should have the same privileges, a sponge? Of course. This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think.

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Jonathan Hafetz

What was achieved through the cross examination? What was your take on it?

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Nell Minow

Well, first of all, that is one part that is directly taken from the transcript. So that is the most authentic part of the movie. And it's actually one of my favorite scenes of any movie ever, because it is about the issue of how we know what we know, he says. Does the sponge think, well, I don't know if God wants you to think.

00;22;10;17 - 00;22;33;12

Nell Minow

He thinks, well, don't you want to exercise the same ability that God gave a sponge? And it seems to me that when Brian says, I don't think about what I don't think about, he loses it right there. Even though let's be clear, that cultural lost the case, which was overturned on a technicality and then never enforced. But the question before the court was, did scopes teach evolution?

00;22;33;12 - 00;22;51;08

Nell Minow

And the court found that he had he had violated the law. But the movie, again, very much dramatizes that this almost physically broke Bryan's heart. And he did die just a few days after the trial. And by the way, I do want to point out that Fredric March, his real life wife, played his wife in the film, and she was a great theater actress.

00;22;51;08 - 00;23;10;25

Nell Minow

She didn't make many films, and so it's very moving to me to see them together. So I think that that really is not the crux of the case, because the case is about whether he violated the law and we're all admitting that he did. But about what we are as human beings. Are we here to float through our days, or are we here to think?

00;23;10;25 - 00;23;26;17

Nell Minow

And if you are going to be literal about the Bible, not in terms of the years and all that, but if you're going to take the Bible seriously, one of the core principles of the Bible is that we're made in God's image. And if God gave us a heart and a brain, presumably he wants us to use them both.

00;23;26;20 - 00;23;44;02

Nell Minow

As you know, in my law review article, I compared this movie to one that in most ways is very dissimilar, which is miracle on 34th Street. But in a way they're really the same question, which is do we believe in faith or do we believe what we can prove? And the question of Is Santa Clause real? That is a vague answer.

00;23;44;02 - 00;24;03;07

Nell Minow

And yet how does the court go? They finally say, well, the mail is coming to them and the US government thinks he's Santa Claus is good enough for me. So there's still some element of proof there. There's some element of expertise anyway, of an expert witness, the federal government and in both cases, in both movies, the prosecutors put on the witness stand.

00;24;03;07 - 00;24;10;09

Nell Minow

And also and most important, in both cases, the judge ultimately rules on the basis of his political advisers.

00;24;10;11 - 00;24;31;14

Jonathan Hafetz

Now it's fascinating, right? The miracle on 34th Street. The adviser to the judge says you're not going to get elected again here. There's a warning to the judge Harry Morgan character like go easy. And so basically there's kind of a nominal find that he hands out no imprisonment, which Brady in the movie objected to. Although, as I understand it, in real life, William Jennings Bryan did not push for imprisonment and.

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Nell Minow

Was willing to pay his.

00;24;32;10 - 00;24;32;21

Jonathan Hafetz

High.

00;24;32;24 - 00;24;54;21

Nell Minow

Exactly. So yeah, look, Lawrence only said this is not history. They say that in their intro to the play. It's not history. It's inspired by. And, you know, of course, any movie that is made, any play that is written is as much about its own time as it is about the time it's depicting. And it's not a coincidence that The Crucible is coming out at the same time, too, which ostensibly is about the Salem witch trials.

00;24;54;21 - 00;25;21;20

Nell Minow

But like this was very much a response to the McCarthy era. I mean, people tend to think about the 50s as being a very idyllic period, but in addition to the Cold War and the bomb and upheavals of the 60s, which were all sparked by that, you know, in response to the pendulum swing. So you had the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the anti-war movement, all of that was in response to the 50s.

00;25;21;20 - 00;25;23;26

Nell Minow

So there was a lot of unhappiness there.

00;25;23;28 - 00;25;34;06

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. I mean, and to your point, one of the playwrights, Jerome Lawrence, says we use the teaching of evolution as a parable, a metaphor for any kind of mind control. It's not science versus religion. It's about the right to think.

00;25;34;11 - 00;25;44;07

Nell Minow

That's why I love this movie, because it's about the right to think. It's about going back to that witness, the student. I have to think about it. Yes, that's the right answer. You think about it.

00;25;44;09 - 00;26;12;09

Inherit the Wind Dialogue

Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution and the descent of man. Yes, that's right. That's the variable you read. View in your classroom. Now, Tom, do you think there's anything wrong in that? Well, I don't know. Objection. Your honor, the defense is asking that a 15 year old boy handed down an opinion on a question of morality. I am trying to establish that Howard or Colonel Brady or Charles Darwin or anyone sitting in this courtroom.

00;26;12;13 - 00;26;15;01

Inherit the Wind Dialogue

You, sir, has the right to think that's it.

00;26;15;01 - 00;26;39;00

Jonathan Hafetz

The verdict, as you mentioned, right. Scopes is convicted. Even if he loses the larger war, Brian wins the battle or the prosecution wins the battle. The verdict overturned on a technicality, which I looked up. Interestingly, it's because the technicality was in the state Supreme Court. They set aside the conviction because the fine was over $50, that only the jury had the authority impose the fine and not the judge.

00;26;39;00 - 00;26;40;07

Nell Minow

So that was I.

00;26;40;07 - 00;26;46;09

Jonathan Hafetz

Think that's the technicality some made a fascinating matter of Tennessee law circuit. I yeah.

00;26;46;09 - 00;27;05;09

Nell Minow

I have a feeling that that the political advisors may have played a role there too, but it's not a spoiler at this point to say that you know, Stanley Kramer's view on the whole matter really comes out with the two books that Drummond carries out of the courtroom, which are the Darwin Book and the Bible.

00;27;05;14 - 00;27;17;13

Jonathan Hafetz

Right. And that is in that last scene when he's talking to the H.L. Mencken character. They break. Darrow and Mencken break at the end of the trial, because I think he's just too cynical. And you've got to have both. And there's a way to reconcile.

00;27;17;15 - 00;27;34;19

Nell Minow

He would fit an ace in the hole. I mean, he's about as cynical as you could possibly get played by Gene Kelly. It's only the fact that he's played by Gene Kelly. We don't realize he's really just a rotten. But. But Gene Kelly is always so appealing. You know, it's easy to overlook that. But he is awful. He doesn't like anybody.

00;27;34;22 - 00;27;56;29

Nell Minow

He's a real sourpuss. You know, he literally offers an apple to that nice young girl and then says, I'm not the serpent. And of course, that is also about thinking, isn't it? It's about thinking. It's about, do we want to be living in a perpetual bliss of the Garden of Eden, or do we want to struggle and take on the challenges of life anyway?

00;27;56;29 - 00;28;09;10

Nell Minow

So that's the H.L. Mencken character. And you asked in an email to me about why he's sitting at the defense table, which I never thought about before, but I have to think it's because his paper was paying Drummond. So in a way, he was the client.

00;28;09;17 - 00;28;12;27

Jonathan Hafetz

You're right. That may be the basis. They may have done it for dramatic purposes.

00;28;12;27 - 00;28;38;25

Nell Minow

Absolutely. Speaking of dramatic purposes, we have to mention that there are two completely made up characters, the preacher and his daughter, who is supposed to be the girlfriend of scopes, skates and that I consider fully excusable as a kind of a shorthand for conveying what it was that you had to create. You know, any time that you've got any story that you're telling dramatically, it's always like a boy band.

00;28;38;25 - 00;28;49;21

Nell Minow

You got to have somebody who's the cute one and someone who's the rebel and somebody's assistant. You know, you had to have some character there who is going to represent one point of view in the movie, and that's what they're doing there.

00;28;49;24 - 00;29;08;05

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. No, I agree completely. It was fictionalized, but I don't think it detracted from the message or even distorted history in any meaningful way. And the verdict right to the verdict is imposed and then it's over satisfied on appeal because it's just on the technicality. They don't get to the constitutional issues. It never goes to the Supreme Court.

00;29;08;05 - 00;29;28;09

Jonathan Hafetz

And then the law itself, or the law of a different state teaching evolution school does got addressed by the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, until 60 years later. So what happens after the trial? You know, because of the way the movie depicts it, is the prosecution wins. But the in terms of the press and the larger way that people view it, they're kind of ridiculed.

00;29;28;15 - 00;29;41;17

Jonathan Hafetz

Hillsborough and the teaching creation is or barring evolution, teaching evolution is kind of ridiculed. And it looks like sort of a victory for the forces of free thought and individual freedom. What's your take on what happened after?

00;29;41;19 - 00;29;58;12

Nell Minow

Well, a number of states adopted the law following the case. Otherwise you wouldn't have ended up in the Supreme Court so many years later. And it continues to this day. We've had more school board fights in the last three years than in any time of my life that I can remember, and we're going to continue to fight about that.

00;29;58;15 - 00;30;10;10

Jonathan Hafetz

I mean, it seems like fundamentalism doesn't retreat into the background after the trial, which is a little bit of the impression you get from the film. And maybe seeing the film in 1960.

00;30;10;10 - 00;30;33;04

Nell Minow

I want to tell you something that happened in thinking about talking to you today, I was doing a little research on the scopes trial, and among the sources that I found online were two that came from entities whose name sounded very reliable. One was the Bill of Rights Institute, and the other was something about the Constitution. I said, okay, great.

00;30;33;04 - 00;30;52;19

Nell Minow

And so I'm reading what they have to say. And that one happened to be it was a resource for AP history teachers. So it had questions. It had a very long discussion of the case, but there was something about the description that kind of seemed off to me. For one thing, it referred to the teaching of science as being privileged over other kinds of approaches.

00;30;52;21 - 00;31;19;09

Nell Minow

And so I did a little extra research based on the kind of work I do in my other life. And both of those entities are funded by the Koch brothers. So that's where it's going on now. It's not just fights in the school board. It's not just no say on gay legislation. There are a lot of resources out there that purport to be objective of purport to be legitimate, do not disclose what their funding is and are still quite slanted.

00;31;19;11 - 00;31;35;12

Jonathan Hafetz

And that seems to have changed so much since 1925 and even 1960, when they're depicting the events of 1925. And the trial is the power and the money that's in the religious right to shape public opinion. Right. And that seems night and day.

00;31;35;14 - 00;31;58;16

Nell Minow

Well, and also the vocabulary has changed very dramatically as we talk about trying to use words like creation science and intelligent design to make it look like it is on an equal basis with evolution. And I think that everything has become so politicized that that has permeated this as well. I think in the era that we're talking about in the movie, they are depicted in the movie, the 1920s.

00;31;58;18 - 00;32;26;12

Nell Minow

It was very clear where your ideas were coming from. All you had to say was, I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. You didn't have to explain that in any way. You didn't have to justify it in any way. Everybody knew what you're talking about now. It's sort of permeated. It's subtle. It's communicated in a lot of different ways, including a teacher resource, you know, some AP teacher who's just, oh, great, there's this resource I can use for question, answer as I prep my kids for their test and might not look and see where it's coming from.

00;32;26;15 - 00;32;30;03

Jonathan Hafetz

Yes, the battles continue and just not on more granular level.

00;32;30;05 - 00;32;32;07

Nell Minow

Yeah, more subtle level. Yeah.

00;32;32;13 - 00;32;51;27

Jonathan Hafetz

We've talked about some other critiques of the film. One critique of the film, one critique was by Andrew Sarris. Bigotry in Reverse objected to its sanctimonious tone. We talked about the portrayal of William Jennings Bryan, but just overall, the way they depicted the town, a bunch of yokels. Did the film go too far? What did you think of these critiques in terms of setting up the company?

00;32;51;27 - 00;33;11;19

Nell Minow

I know you, Sarah's fan. I don't agree with that at all. I think, in fact, when I went back and watched it again, I had that very much in mind. You know, I remember that began with give Me That old time Religion and was concerned that it would be representing the town as a bunch of bigoted Luddites, but I don't think it did.

00;33;11;19 - 00;33;31;08

Nell Minow

I thought there was a lot of subtlety there. You had Rachel, the preacher's daughter, who I think represented a full character, who was who. She was sympathetic to her father, but she was a wanted to think for herself. And you had Noah Beery and you had the business people who were you could say that they were cynically presented because they wanted to make money, but that's what they're there for.

00;33;31;08 - 00;33;40;12

Nell Minow

So I actually felt that there was a variety. The person who is depicted the worst is certainly the reporter, and I don't think he's anybody's idea of the hero of the movie.

00;33;40;15 - 00;33;56;26

Jonathan Hafetz

I agree, I think there was some exaggeration, perhaps in the film they stretched it. But, you know, you're right. There was sort of some complexity in the community. I mean, I don't think the sort of hanging of cage or Darrow in effigy that did not happen. That was, I think, probably out there. But they did recognize that there were different layers of opinion in the town.

00;33;56;28 - 00;34;22;14

Nell Minow

They definitely did. And I had that early scene where people would get all the signs, and it does have very much of a circus atmosphere. But even there you had the guy selling hot dogs, you know, you had a variety of ways of thinking about it and furthermore, and you may say that Andrew Sarris, you may say that I'm bigoted, but I think that it's fair to predict people who don't want to think about what they're thinking about as people who don't want to think about what they're thinking about.

00;34;22;16 - 00;34;26;03

Jonathan Hafetz

What impact did the film have at the time. But it came out well.

00;34;26;03 - 00;34;50;01

Nell Minow

It was a very popular play, and that's why it became a movie. So it was certainly part of that whole era of Stanley Kramer, what they called issue movies. You know, we've got guests coming to dinner and gentleman's Agreement, and that was that era of people like Dorie Sherry making movies. He was a very, very progressive guy who became the head of MGM and he himself wrote things.

00;34;50;01 - 00;35;15;23

Nell Minow

He wrote sunrise a Campobello, which was a very a very nice play. But FDR really looked at him as a great leader. And so there was a lot of that coming out of Hollywood at that time. And people often ask me about corporate governance, movies and my practices in corporate governance. And one from that era is Executive Suite, which also echoes the fights we're having about what's called ESG today, because it's about who is going to run the company next.

00;35;15;23 - 00;35;34;24

Nell Minow

Is it going to be the warm hearted sort of ESG woke guy, William Holden, or is it going to be the CFO who only looks at the numbers, I think is our friend Fredric March from this movie? And I think, you know, where it's going, where Barbara Stanwyck is going to cast her majority shares in favor of the person that she picks.

00;35;34;28 - 00;35;40;07

Nell Minow

So, yeah, that was an era where movies engaged with issues a lot more than I think you see today.

00;35;40;14 - 00;35;59;29

Jonathan Hafetz

Speaking of its continuing relevance, it's a small scene in the movie, and I probably just piqued my interest more than anything else, where we see the reporter planning to broadcast the jury's verdict via radio, the new technology and radio cover this. It was covered all over the world. Huge attention. And he hasn't exchanged a reporter as an exchange with Brady Williams.

00;35;59;29 - 00;36;11;18

Jonathan Hafetz

Jennings Bryan saying that this will this technology will shout out to a million people. But because of Brady's lungs and his oratorical power, he won't have any use for that. Okay, I don't know.

00;36;11;21 - 00;36;22;18

Inherit the Wind Dialogue

Here's a little toy you'll never have any useful. I'm not with you alongside the radio, you're whispering to let me shouts at a million people through loudspeakers.

00;36;22;20 - 00;36;37;25

Jonathan Hafetz

He's got amused, but I just found that so ironic in a rich way, because of the way in which radio, as a means of communication, has been adopted in used by the religious right today. It's sort of struck me as probably not intentional, but it reverberated.

00;36;37;28 - 00;36;54;06

Nell Minow

Definitely. And of course, you know, there's also some irony in that he's saying that in a movie which is also going to reach a million people. But yes, it is true. William Jennings Bryan was used to that sort of tent culture where he would go from ten to 10 to 10 and address adoring crowds, and that was wonderful.

00;36;54;06 - 00;37;00;23

Nell Minow

But radio did change everything, and as did then television and movies and the internet.

00;37;00;25 - 00;37;13;18

Jonathan Hafetz

We've talked about the film's relevance as time it was made and even today. Are there other things about why this or how this film speaks to us today, and why audiences might want to see it and grapple with its themes?

00;37;13;20 - 00;37;46;14

Nell Minow

I think it's even more important today than it was when it came out, and that the issues were during the Scopes trial, because we have so many different sources of information. When this movie came out, there were three television networks, and everybody watched Walter Cronkite every night. And we had very limited number of very respected news sources. Now, everybody gets information from different places and tends to live in an echo chamber or a silo.

00;37;46;20 - 00;38;00;11

Nell Minow

And so I think it's even more important that a movie like this reminds us of the absolutely essential responsibility we have to consider all points of view as we form our own.

00;38;00;14 - 00;38;16;29

Jonathan Hafetz

That's very well played, and the dramatization of the trial, and just reengaging with the issues that were raised in the trial. I think it's a film that's really worth viewing. It's a great film. Well, now I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your thoughts and wisdom about the movie and about film.

00;38;16;29 - 00;38;18;20

Jonathan Hafetz

It's great to have you on.

00;38;18;22 - 00;38;21;01

Nell Minow

Thank you. It's been a real pleasure.

00;38;21;03 - 00;39;00;09

Jonathan Hafetz

Hi again. It's time to answer a question that we received about a prior episode. This question comes from Molly in California, and it's about episode 25, comparing The Caine Mutiny from 1954 and the 2023 remake The Cane Mutiny court martial Molly asks about what led to the two very different depictions of people of color and women in the two films, as my guest Jean Vidal noted during the show, one major difference between the two movies was the absence of people of color and women in positions in the armed services from the 1954 film, compared with the important roles they played in the 2023 remake, which featured a black man as a presiding judge played by

00;39;00;09 - 00;39;42;10

Jonathan Hafetz

Lance Reddick, and a woman as the lead prosecutor played by Monica Raymond. Like the armed forces, the Judge Advocate General score for JAG, the military justice branch of the US Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps and Navy, have been transformed in the nearly 70 years from The Caine Mutiny film to the 2003 remake. While changes have occurred over time, two key points that set this important and dramatic transformation in motion occurred around the time of the first film, both during the Truman Administration Executive Order 981 from 1948, which desegregated the armed forces, and the Women's Armed Service Integration Act from the same year, which allowed for the first time women to serve as regular members

00;39;42;10 - 00;40;05;15

Jonathan Hafetz

of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. While there's been an emphasis on further increasing diversity in the Jaggerrsw, especially among Black Americans, the film shows how much progress has been made in the military in this area, as in other public and civic institutions in American life. And just a reminder, if you have a question about a prior episode, please go ahead and email me at Jonathan Heifetz at gmail.com.

00;40;05;15 - 00;40;12;16

Jonathan Hafetz

That's Jonathan, he fits my full name at gmail.com. Or just DM me on Twitter or X. Thanks again.