Gideon's Trumpet

In the tradition of his earlier work in Grapes of Wrath and Twelve Angry Men, Henry Fonda played another social-protest role in the Hallmark Hall of Fame TV presentation Gideon's Trumpet. Clarence Earl Gideon (Fonda) is a poor, ill-tempered Florida handyman who is arrested for petty larceny in 1961. ...more

Gideon's Trumpet is among the few films to treat the law as a serious subject. The real-life history behind this case is perhaps even more amazing than the film: occasional handy man and convicted petty thief Clarence Gideon sent a handwritten petition to the U.S. Supreme Court that forced a major, long-overdue change in the law. Unlike docudramas that present a simplistic view of their subjects, Gideon's Trumpet does not falsely make its protagonist into a likable hero, and Henry Fonda's ...more