Landmark American Trials: The Scopes Monkey Trial | World Almanac

Landmark American Trials: The Scopes Monkey Trial | World Almanac | A fair and balanced documentary on the Scopes "Monkey" Trial

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	Landmark American Trials: The Scopes Monkey Trial World Almanac Choices, Inc., 2000 average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Great Great Movie.

We watched this movie in my AP US History Class last year. I can honestly say, I learned more about human nature from watching this movie than in my entire high school career. This is a great movie based on a land mark trial that was decided on in 1925. The long and short of it is that a teacher is taken to trial for teaching evolution in the class room. Ed Asner potrays William Jennins Bryant brilliantly and Charles Durning plays defense attorney Clarence Darrow with great passion. The greatest scene in the movie is when Darrow has Bryant on the stand, this scene might make some of you change your stance on the whole science vs. creationism ordeal. The movie convey's the absolute chaos that surrounded the trial. My advice: watch it, you might learn something.

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A fair and balanced documentary on the Scopes "Monkey" Trial

In early 1925 the state legislature of Tennessee passed the Butler Act, which made it illegal for any teacher in a state-sponsored school to teach the theory that human beings evolved from a lower order of animals instead of teaching the story of divine creation set forth in the Bible. The American Civil Liberties Union put notices in Tennessee newspapers for a test case to challenge the constitutionality of the Butler Act and a group of businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee decided this was their chance to put their small town on the map. John T. Scopes, the young football coach at the Rhea County High School, agreed to stand as a defendant. During a blistering July, the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes would become a media circus and one of the trials of the century. As such, it is the subject of this documentary, "Landmark American Trials: The Scopes 'Monkey Trial' 1925."

I did my dissertation on this trial and I still get a thrill every time I see film footage from inside the courtroom (and like to take out my copy of the trial transcript to see if I can match up what I am seeing with what I know is being said). This documentary is narrated by actor James Naughton (although I also saw it first on television with Richard Beltzer of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" substituted as the narrator), and combines still photograph from the trial, with actual film footage, along with contemporary film of the Rhea County Courthouse and the collected talking heads.

The strengths of this 45-minute documentary is that is covers the personal and social contexts of the trial, the district legal stages for the proceedings, and the legacy of the trial. In public perception that trial comes down to the titanic confrontation between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, but this documentary explains how the lives of these two famous men put them on a collision course in Dayton. William E. Brown, President of Bryan College in Dayton, explains how Bryan was concerned with the evils of Social Darwinism, while Darrow biographer Kevin Tierney was equally concerned with religious fundamentalist and Biblical literalism. But in terms of the legal issues of the trial, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds explains it was really prosecuting attorney Tom Stewart and ACLU lawyer Arthur Garfield Hays who were the chief architects of what happened.

The talking heads assembled for this documentary are quite good. Edward J. Larson, the University of Georgia professor of history and law who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book on the Scopes Trial, "Summer of the Gods," focuses on the rhetorical aspects of the trial, in which the greatest speakers in the country were sounding forth on the subject of evolution and academic freedom. The Reverend Jerry Falwell speaks about the idea of God as the "great designer," while Dr. Randy Moore, a biology professor at the University of Louisville, details the practical look at evolution in Hunter's "Civic Biology," which was used in the Rhea County High School. There is also John Seigenthaler of Vanderbilt University's First Amendment Center to talk about that legal issue and Arthur Miller, Harvard Law professor, who underscores the idea this was a case that decided nothing from a legal standpoint, but had profound society impacts.

The person who stands out the most is Eloise Reed, a resident of Dayton, who knew John Scopes but who was not allowed to go upstairs to the second floor of the courthouse to hear the trial. However, when Judge Raulston moved the celebrated cross-examination of Bryan by Darrow to a stand in front of the courthouse, Reed was there and her perspective is rather unique in my experience. She thought Bryan was embarrassed by what Darrow was doing, getting in the Great Commoner's face and jabbing his finger (while playing with his red suspenders). Reed allows that how you read the cross-examination "depends on who's looking." Given the bashing that Bryan has taken from the dramatization of the trial in "Inherit the Wind," it is rather refreshing to have an eyewitness take the other stand. A couple of the talking heads reinforce the idea that Bryan was not as eviscerated by Darrow's questions as movies and history books have suggested (read the exchange in the trial transcript and you will see that Bryan's main response was "I don't know," ironically the mainstay of Darrow's agnosticism).

The document does an excellent job of covering the key stages and memorable events of the Scopes trial, although there is at least one key omission. It is only alluded to in a rather roundabout way by Reynolds that in all actuality Scopes never taught evolution: he was substituting for the regular biology teacher, so he had the class work on football plays (I know Scopes was not guilty of the crime his name is associated with, so I was able to pick up the allusion). But even those who know little about the Scopes trial beyond that which everybody knows (and which is decidedly skewed), will be able to appreciate how putting Bryan on the witness stand was the result of a series of legal twists and turns that speak more to the issues involved than the bombastic Q&A exchange that has fascinated history.

"The Scopes 'Monkey Trial' - 1925" (I prefer the Scopes "Monkey" Trial myself) is part of The Landmark American Trials series made in association with COURT TV (other titles look at the trials of Sacco & Vanzetti in 1921, the Scottsboro Boys in 1931, and Julius & Ethel Rosenberg in 1951). For educators there are guidebooks available with supplemental information including sections on the Trial and the Times, the Issues, Timeline, Important People, Vocabulary, Things to Think About, Internet Resources, Other Resources and Dateline, and more. It goes without saying that I think the trial is worth reconsidering today in a nation of red states and blue states, and this videotape provides a fair and balanced background on the trial and its controversial subject matter.

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This is a documentary, not a drama...

This is a documentary originally produced for Court TV's "Greatest Trials of All Time" series... then was re-cut as part of their "Crime Stories" documentary series when they brought in "Law and Order's" Richard Belzer to host. The Greatest Trials series were all excellent and are a perfect length for classroom use (about 45-50 minutes)

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