Gideon's Trumpet

Watch Movie

Gideon's Trumpet

1980

1h 44m

6.0(11 votes)

Drama

Crime

History

TV Movie

Overview

True story of Clarence Gideon's fight to be appointed counsel at the expense of the state. This landmark case led to the Supreme Court's decision which extended this right to all criminal defendants.

Links & Resources

IMDbView

Social & External

IMDb

Production Companies

Cast & Crew

40 members

Acting

Henry Fonda

Clarence Earl Gideon

Acting

José Ferrer

Abe Fortas

Acting

John Houseman

Chief Justice / Offscreen Narrator

Acting

Fay Wray

Edna Curtis

Acting

Dean Jagger

6th Supreme Court Justice

Acting

Sam Jaffe

1st Supreme Court Justice

Acting

Nicholas Pryor

Jacob

Acting

William Prince

5th Supreme Court Justice

Acting

Lane Smith

Fred Turner

Acting

Richard McKenzie

Judge Robert McCrary

Acting

Dolph Sweet

Charlie

Acting

Ford Rainey

2nd Supreme Court Justice

Acting

David Sheiner

Abe Krash

Acting

J. Patrick McNamara

Harris

Acting

Les Lannom

Bobby Earle

Acting

Malcolm Groome

John Ely

No Image

Acting

Allan Rich

Tobias Simon

Acting

Richard Lineback

Lester Wade

Acting

David Clennon

James Fitzpatrick

Acting

Michael Cavanaugh

Stocker

Acting

Paul Benjamin

Artis

Acting

Clifford A. Pellow

Justin Pike

No Image

Acting

Jerry Hardin

Sheriff Mel Cobb

Acting

Fredric Cook

Leo Stafford

No Image

Writing

Steven Peterman

Arthur Vitale

No Image

Acting

James O'Connell

Warden

Acting

Jon Locke

Supervisor

No Image

Acting

Gary Grubbs

Deputy Hamilton

Acting

Seamon Glass

Prison Guard

Acting

Gwen Van Dam

Mrs. Lawrence

Acting

James Brodhead

Court Crier

No Image

Writing

Edmund H. North

Supreme Court Justice

Writing

Emmet Lavery

Supreme Court Justice

No Image

Writing

Liam O'Brien

Supreme Court Justice

No Image

Acting

Don Draper

Bailiff

No Image

Acting

Henry Proach

Guard

No Image

Writing

Anthony Lewis

The Reporter

No Image

Acting

Timothy Scott

Toby

Acting

Blake Clark

Jail Librarian (uncredited)

Acting

Luther Fear

Convict with Gideon (uncredited)

No Image

Similar Movies

1957

Inn of the Floating Weeds

Young gangster wannabe is framed for a murder and sent to prison.

Movie

7.2

2008

Hunger

The story of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who led the 1981 hunger strike during The Troubles in which Irish Republican prisoners tried to win political status.

Movie

7.5

1992

My Cousin Vinny

Two carefree pals from Brooklyn traveling through rural Alabama on their way back to college are mistakenly arrested, and charged with murder. Fortunately, one of them has a cousin who's a lawyer - Vincent Gambini, a former auto mechanic from Brooklyn who just passed his bar exam after his sixth try. When he arrives with his leather-clad girlfriend, to try his first case, it's a real shock - for him and the Deep South!

Movie

6.5

1999

The Limey

The Limey follows Wilson, a tough English ex-con who travels to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter's death. Upon arrival, Wilson goes to task battling Valentine and an army of L.A.'s toughest criminals, hoping to find clues and piece together what happened. After surviving a near-death beating, getting thrown from a building and being chased down a dangerous mountain road, the Englishman decides to dole out some bodily harm of his own.

Movie

6.4

2000

Gangster No. 1

An old gangster is advised that Freddie Mays would leave jail after thirty years in prison. His mood changes and he recalls when he was a young punk and who joined Freddie's gang—a man he both envied and ultimately betrayed.

Movie

7.4

1999

The Hurricane

The story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a boxer wrongly imprisoned for murder, and the people who aided in his fight to prove his innocence.

Movie

6.7

2005

The Longest Yard

Disgraced pro football quarterback Paul Crewe lands in a Texas federal penitentiary, where manipulative Warden Hazen recruits him to advise the institution's football team of prison guards. Crewe suggests a tune-up game which lands him quarterbacking a crew of inmates in a game against the guards. Aided by incarcerated ex-NFL coach and player Nate Scarborough, Crewe and his team must overcome not only the bloodthirstiness of the opposition, but also the corrupt warden trying to fix the game against them.

Movie

6.1

1997

Money Talks

Sought by police and criminals, a small-time huckster makes a deal with a TV newsman for protection.

Movie

7.1

1998

Buffalo '66

Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry.

Movie

6.7

1998

He Got Game

A basketball player's father must try to convince him to go to a college so he can get a shorter prison sentence.

Movie

6.8

2000

Chopper

The true and infamous story of Australia's notorious criminal Mark 'Chopper' Read and his years of crime, interest in violence, drugs and prostitutes.

Movie

5.6

2005

Animal

His name: infamous. His reputation: ruthless. But when James "Animal"Allen is locked up in a maximum security prison, he meets a revolutionary who changes his life. Now a reformed man, James is released only to find that his own son has assumed a life of crime and violence. Can a father haunted by his past redeem his family from the very streets he created, or will he be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice?

Movie

6.3

1994

No Escape

In the year 2022, a ruthless prison warden has created the ultimate solution for his most troublesome and violent inmates: Absolom, a secret jungle island where prisoners are abandoned and left to die. But Marine Captain John Robbins, convicted of murdering a commanding officer, is determined to escape the island in order to reveal the truth behind his murderous actions and clear his name.

Movie

7.8

1982

The King of Comedy

Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin attempts to achieve success in show business by stalking his idol, a late night talk-show host who craves his own privacy.

Movie

8.7

1994

The Shawshank Redemption

Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.

Movie

7.5

1999

Bang, Boom, Bang

Bank robber Kalle Grabowski escapes from prison while his unemployed smalltime crook buddy is sitting around doing nothing after he just lost all their money. A fast paced comedy from German director Peter Thorwarth.

Movie

6.4

2022

Project Wolf Hunting

While under heavily armed guard, the dangerous convicts aboard a cargo ship unite in a coordinated escape attempt that soon escalates into a bloody, all-out riot. But as the fugitives continue their brutal campaign of terror, they soon discover that not even the most vicious among them is safe from the horror they unknowingly unleashed from the darkness below deck.

Movie

7.5

2005

Walk the Line

A chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

Movie

8.3

1998

American History X

Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.

Movie

6.7

1982

48 Hrs.

A hard-nosed cop reluctantly teams up with a wise-cracking criminal temporarily paroled to him, in order to track down a killer.

Movie

Recommended Movies

7.6

1957

A Face in the Crowd

The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.

Movie

5.9

1987

Wanted: Dead or Alive

Nick Randall is a Los Angeles-based bounty hunter and an ex-CIA operative who is asked by a former co-worker to help track down terrorist Malak Al Rahim. However, Malak Al Rahim is also looking for Randall, forcing a showdown on the waterfront.

Movie

6.8

1973

The Paper Chase

A first-year law student struggles with balancing his coursework and his relationship with the daughter of a stern professor.

Movie

4.0

1981

The Greatest Man in the World

This version of James Thurber's tale tells the story of a young amateur pilot who beats Charles Lindbergh's feat of nonstop flying around the world--with his own unique ways of conserving fuel and energy.

Movie

8.5

1990

GoodFellas

The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.

Movie

6.4

1989

Weekend at Bernie's

Two young insurance corporation employees try to pretend that their murdered employer is alive by puppeteering his dead body, leading a hitman to attempt to track him down to finish him off.

Movie

7.5

1955

Rebel Without a Cause

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

Movie

7.0

2019

Us

Husband and wife Gabe and Adelaide Wilson take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.

Movie

7.9

1997

Titanic

101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.

Movie

7.3

1979

Nosferatu the Vampyre

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar.

Movie

8.1

1988

My Neighbor Totoro

Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.

Movie

6.6

2024

Longlegs

FBI Agent Lee Harker is a gifted new recruit assigned to the unsolved case of an elusive serial killer. As the case takes complex turns, unearthing evidence of the occult, Harker discovers a personal connection to the merciless killer and must race against time to stop him before he claims the lives of another innocent family.

Movie

6.7

2024

Gladiator II

Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.

Movie

7.0

2024

The Brutalist

When a visionary architect and his wife flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern United States, their lives are changed forever by a mysterious, wealthy client.

Movie

5.8

2020

Mama Weed

A translator working for the police gets involved in the other side of drug dealing.

Movie

7.1

2024

The Substance

A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Movie

7.6

2009

Avatar

In the 22nd century, a paraplegic Marine is dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission, but becomes torn between following orders and protecting an alien civilization.

Movie

8.0

2024

The Count of Monte Cristo

Edmond Dantes becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After 14 years in the island prison of Château d’If, he manages a daring escape. Now rich beyond his dreams, he assumes the identity of the Count of Monte-Cristo and exacts his revenge on the three men who betrayed him.

Movie

8.0

2019

Jojo Rabbit

A World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.

Movie

8.2

2022

Top Gun: Maverick

After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell finds himself training a detachment of TOP GUN graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen.

Movie