This 1960 movie is a roman a clef – a fancy way of saying that while the story it tells basically is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Or, at least, to prevent lawsuits, or claims for payment. Basically, though, the story told here is of public school teacher B.T. Cates, who is put on trial in the 1920s for teaching evolution. The attorneys are Matthew Brady for the prosecution, and Henry Drummond for the defense. Brady is played, with bluster and brimstone, by Fredric March, and Drummond, with laid-back homespun charm, by Spencer Tracy. (Think of him as the original Matlock.) In real life, the legal adversaries faced off in Tennessee in 1925, defending a substitute teacher named John T. Scopes, and using him as a test case to battle, in court, the appropriateness of scientific fact vs. faith-based beliefs in the school curriculum. The prosecuting attorney was Williams Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate who was a strict fundamentalist arguing against the teaching of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory. The defense attorney was the famed Clarence Darrow. The arguments and the passions, and especially the discussions about what constitutes a “fact” that can be accepted by both sides, couldn’t be more resonant today. And they’re just as complicated: Bryan, the anti-science fundamentalist, was a Democrat, and the media circus then, even though radio was in its infancy, was astoundingly similar to today’s frenetic atmosphere. Oh, and just for fun, the young science teacher at the center of the trial in this 1960 film? He’s played by Dick York, the original Darren on TV’s Bewitched.