The movie that taught many about the historic 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” in which a Tennessee schoolteacher was charged with the crime of teaching evolution. The attorneys, played by Spencer Tracy and Frederic March, are renamed versions of attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. The film is adapted from a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee and is a fictionalized account of the famous trial. Though the characters’ names are changed, the courtroom testimony is mostly authentic, taken from the trial transcript.

Trivia: The scene in which Tracy delivers his final summation to the jury was filmed in a single take to heighten tension.

See our August 2018 cover story: “The 25 Greatest Legal Movies.”