TCM ran it a week or so ago and I re-watched it. It's a feather in Spencer Tracy's cap and yes, pretty well describes today's Tennessee.

Go down to the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton one weekday and visit the Scopes Museum on the basement floor. You can also see the courtroom and lawn where it all transpired. Then buy a copy of Summer of the Gods, the best nonfiction account of how the whole thing got set up to bring revenue to Dayton.

Edit: It's only open during business hours Mon.-Fri., same as the offices.

Saw it on TCM too. What a great movie. It sent me to the internets and I found an interesting fact: the Butler Law, that made the teaching of evolution illegal, was not repealed in TN until 1967! Thank reason, the federal govt. passed a law that allowed text books to stress evolution in 1958, thus I was able to learn about evolution as a young tyke in the 60s.

Of course, with the new super majority in the TN legislature, our young ones might not be so lucky!

Oh my, you'd never seen this movie? That's serious, dude.

I watch it every time it's on, mostly for the pleasure of watching Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly (I'm sure you know that Spencer's character was really Clarence Darrow but do you know that Kelly's was H.L. Mencken?)

Great movie,

I once saw Henry Fonda do a one man show as Clarence Darrow that included passages from the Scopes trial. Very moving.

To me it is a fine example of how movingly stated a completely false argument can be:

(link...)

The movie is a dramatization. The real trial was absolutely fascinating. Most people don't know it was a Chamber of Commerce stunt.

(link...)

The problem with the movie (I don't know if it's in the play, which I've never read or seen), is the unnecessary interweaving of the romance b/w the Cates (Scopes) character and the preacher's daughter. It's so effin' Hollywood and it really detracts from the film's power. It didn't need "humanizing" with relationship tension. Faith and individual belief or nonbelief is about as personal and human as it gets, and that's what the story should stick with.

Again recommend Summer for the Gods (for, not of, as I misstated above) as a great treatment of the subject, and a smart book about this part of Tennessee state history. Won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize.

An 88 year old case and a 53 year old movie.

Yet here America is; (link...)

Marginally better than Turkey, far behind the rest of the world. The more uneducated and religious an area, the less the acceptance of evolution. Which sets Tennessee even further back against a world that is becoming more global in its personal and commercial interaction.

And with the Republican super-majority, we ain't seen nothing yet.

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind:
and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart

The "heart" isn't what worries me. What this legislature is planning on putting in the "heads" of our youth is what keeps me up at night. Invisible and fleeting - the "wind" indeed.