SIX DEGREES FROM SCOPES

During the holiday season, many of us who are normally out of touch suddenly are reminded that we are connected to a larger world. With that in mind....


#1 The name of my blog, of course, takes its name from the famous Scopes 'Monkey Trial' of 1925 that forever altered the landscape of science education in the United States, mostly for ill. In this trial, perennial Presidential candidate (and creationist) William Jennings Bryan went head-to-head with noted attorney (and evolutionist) Clarence Darrow in defending the case of John Scopes, a substitute teacher who deliberately provoked Tennessee's law against the teaching of evolution as a publicity stunt on behalf of the ACLU....



#2 This, in turn, inspired Lawrence and Lee's Broadway play Inherit the Wind, which used a fictionalized version of the Bryan/Darrow courtroom duel to explore the implications of public witch hunts in the McCarthy era....




#3 In the original film adaptation of this play, Spencer Tracy is an idealized liberal version of Darrow ("Henry Drummond") and Fredric March is Bryan's succedaneum ("Matthew Brady"). Dick York (shown at right) plays the Scopes stand-in, but as in real life, his character is convicted and draws a modest fine....



#4 Dick York later went on to star for five seasons in one of those weird fantasy sitcoms that were so popular in the 1960's, Bewitched, along with the gorgeous Elizabeth Montgomery. Both co-stars smoked heavily, and York would eventually die from emphysema and lung cancer, while Montgomery succumbed to colon cancer....



#5 Montgomery married her long-time beau, actor Robert Foxworth, while fighting the cancer that claimed her life. Foxworth had a particularly distinguished acting career himself, and narrated a National Geographic special on volcanos entitled 'Ring of Fire' in 1991.....


#6 A later entry in National Geographic's series of videos which covers volcanoes is 2004's 'Forces of Nature', with narration by.......Kevin Bacon....

And so the circle is complete!