Gideon's Trumpet
September 2007 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Gideon’s Trumpet first aired in 1980 in the CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame series. It tells the simple but gripping story of Clarence Earl Gideon and his contest with our judicial system. Arrested for breaking into and entering a pool hall in Panama City, Florida, in the early hours one day in 1961, Gideon went to trial. He was too poor to afford a lawyer, so he requested one from the judge. Because Florida then appointed lawyers only for capital cases or intellectual impairment, he was left to defend himself and did a poor job of it. He was convicted and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. That is where the story really begins. Gideon is convinced that because the Constitution gives him the right to a fair trial, he had the right to representation, didn’t get it, and therefore did not experience justice. With understated determination, the unassuming, frail Gideon spends his hours in the penitentiary library researching his rights.

Henry Fonda was an old and ailing man himself when he played this role. After a lifetime in movies, he is simply brilliant here. Bent and frail, he embodies the character of Clarence Earl Gideon -- simple, unassuming, down on his luck, but quietly determined. Gideon writes an appeal in longhand to the Supreme Court. Justice Abe Fortas, played by José Ferrer, and Chief Justice Earl Warren, played by John Houseman, take up his case. Gideon is re-tried -- with a court-appointed lawyer -- and acquitted. What Bobby Kennedy wrote of the case becomes the final quote of the film:

If an obscure Florida convict named Clarence Earl Gideon had not sat down in prison with a pencil and paper to write a letter to the Supreme Court; and if the Supreme Court had not taken the trouble to look at the merits in that one crude petition among all the bundles of mail it must receive every day, the vast machinery of American law would have gone on functioning undisturbed. But Gideon did write that letter... And the whole course of legal history has been changed.

We see so much courtroom drama on television, but most of it is about prosecuting sensational or sleazy crimes. This film is a stark, straightforward retelling of a landmark decision, a step forward in American justice that was initiated by an ordinary man. The directing and the acting are brilliantly restrained. An aged Fay Wray plays Gideon’s compassionate landlady, the only person in his corner. It was her final film. For a made-for-television, small-budget movie, the number of famous, experienced actors in the cast is a fine surprise.

The DVD has a soft, blurry focus, and the audio is simply mono. Acorn probably did the best they could with it. There was nothing flashy in the original production either: plain sets, no special camerawork, small-town streets, no scenes of the nation’s capital. The power of this presentation lies in its simple storytelling and superb acting. The only features are cast filmographies and a very interesting insert with production notes by Anthony Lewis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who wrote the original book. It is a highly collectible DVD that has been re-released at a time in our national history when once again the constitutional guarantee of legal representation is under debate.

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