Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [456]
In opening it up, Kramer turned to Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith, the screenwriting team behind The Defiant Ones. Young and Smith went back to the original transcripts of the trial, studying the way the playwrights had given majesty to the words and ideas originally spoken in court. A full year of development went into the screenplay, which they were still trying to “improve and sharpen” as Kramer established a production office on the moribund lot at Universal City.
“Inherit the Wind,” said Kramer, “became more and more topical as it spun around inside my head … The picture had so many basic things in it in which I believe. Darrow telling [H. L.] Mencken that the trouble with William Jennings Bryan was that he looked for God too high up and too far away, that there is more power in a single child’s imagination than in all the shouted amens and hosannas in church. These were things that hit home with me and excited my imagination. I thought I could reach a mass audience with the ideas embodied in that picture.”
Rehearsals for the principal members of the cast began on October 12, 1959, Kramer intent on staging the film in lengthy takes, giving his two stars the freedom to go at each other without fear of interruption. The supporting cast was comprised of Gene Kelly, Florence Eldridge, Dick York (as Cates, the high school biology teacher at the center of the storm), Donna Anderson, Elliott Reid, and Harry Morgan. The first two days of shooting were given over to nighttime scenes in the empty courtroom, York and Anderson establishing their relationship, he the heretic schoolteacher, she the earnest preacher’s daughter. Kelly entered the scene as the Menckenesque reporter Hornbeck, chomping an apple and lending a big-city perspective to the backward antics of the rural South.
Tracy and March took their places on the third day of production, the set now crowded with extras—reporters, photographers, jurymen, farmers, wives, kids, policemen. While March was anticipating considerable time in the makeup chair—skullcap, hairpiece, greasepaint, body padding—Tracy, as usual, required nothing other than a light dusting of powder.1 A genuine reporter, Thomas McDonald of the New York Times, was on hand to witness the filming of their preliminaries, Kramer intent on starting in the courtroom proper and continuing in sequence until all the court interiors had been completed. “The actors’ first exchange before the cameras was the opening courtroom sequence in which Mr. March asked permission to remove their coats because of the heat. Mr. Tracy then took off his coat and sarcastically explained that the colorful suspenders he was wearing were purchased in Mr. March’s hometown in Nebraska. When Mr. Kramer finally said, ‘cut,’ the courtroom, full of extras and the crew, broke into spontaneous applause, an unusual occurrence on a Hollywood set.”
Kramer told McDonald that he considered Inherit the Wind the third point in a three-pronged attempt to provide “provocative” film fare. “In The Defiant Ones we dealt with the problem of race. On the Beach, which will be released in December, concerns the big question, the Bomb. And now I’m dealing with what I consider the third major problem today, freedom of speech and, more important, freedom of thought. From the standpoint of box office, I think people want thought-provoking material on the movie screen—something they can’t get on their home screen.”
On the set of Inherit the Wind. Left to right: Gene Kelly, Donna Anderson, Dick York, director Stanley Kramer, and Tracy. (PATRICIA MAHON COLLECTION)
Said one crew member proudly,