Lawdy, Lawdy, last night, I watched Inherit the Wind, starring Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott, and it was pure cinematic genius.
It was a made-for-television (1999) dramatized version of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925—my gosh, 100 years ago—when a high school teacher (Scopes) was arrested for violating the Butler Act by teaching evolution in a public school.
Watching Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott, those two veteran actors, go at each other had me on the edge of my seat. I was afraid one of them would burst a blood vessel.
This version used fictitious names for the real attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, who were the attorneys in the actual 1925 Scopes trial.
When I was 21, I attended the play "Inherit the Wind," performed by the Thespians of Linfield College in Oregon. The actor who played Defense Attorney Clearance Darrel should have gone on to the New York stage. I came from a Protestant background, and when the Darrell character slammed the two books, the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species, together, stuck them under his arm, and walked off stage, I felt I had been hit by an anvil.
I went on to major in Biology in college, where evolution was considered a fact. Hey, young Darwin was just a field researcher who went to the Galapagos Islands, observed the animals he found there, and took notes. But when he published his findings, it stirred up a hornet's nest.
In school, if you wanted to debate the Creationists, they said to take it to the Theology department. Two professors did have a go at it, but they didn't have the skill of Lemmon or Scott.
Years later, I watched the 1960 version of the movie Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy and was unimpressed. (I still had the college play ringing in my ears and thought it couldn't be beat—until last night.)
Over the years, I didn't understand why the debate between Creationism and Evolution was such a big deal. I don't know how the Universe began or how life originated on Earth. It is an ongoing study. God is God; he doesn't need humans to defend him. Some people must think God doesn't know what a Quark is. Does He know how to smash an atom? Does He need constant admiration? Would you if you were God?
Some fundamentalists are so insulted they get blood in their eye if anyone says they came from animals. They should be so lucky. They are lucky to have life, no matter how it came about.
It's still a mystery.
This rendition of the play was apparently meant to be a parable against the McCarthy era, where beliefs were fanned to white hot intensity to believe there was a communist hiding under every rock.
I was encouraged last night at the end of Inherit the Wind to see that a great throng of people can champion a belief system; they can write laws to defend it. They can threaten opponents, and fight for their side. They can spread lies, propaganda, innuendos, and fear. Yet out of the morass will come an individual who will rise from the crowd and defend the right to think.
Inherit the Wind:
"He who brings trouble on his house will inherit the wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise of heart."
Proverbs 11:29