Given that he was the kind of larger-than-life historical figure that normally fascinates Americans, the name of medical charlatan John R. Brinkley has remained strangely obscure. Documentarian Penny Lane aims to change that with her new feature Nuts!, which chronicles the astonishing rise and fall of Brinkley’s one-man empire in the 1920s and ’30s. Through a combination of animation, archival footage, and interviews, Lane and writer Thom Stylinski craft what initially appears to be a straightforward, this-then-that historical doc—but is revealed as a winking morsel of flim-flam in its own right.
Based in part on Brinkley’s vanity biography, Nuts! documents the good doctor’s purported ascent from humble origins, propelled by a massively popular miracle cure for impotence. This treatment—in which goat testicle tissue was grafted into male patients—was the foundation for a chain of quack hospitals and a pioneering Kansas radio station. Discerning the untapped power of the airwaves, Brinkley created the format of modern radio almost by accident, filling his broadcast hours with music, stories, and sales pitches. He also ran for governor—and lost only due to voter fraud. Reviled by the political and medical establishment, Brinkley had his own Javert in the form of physician Morris Fishbein, who was obsessed with exposing the man’s hucksterism.
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Director Lane only gradually pulls back the curtain on Brinkley’s tale, exposing the almost laughably crude con behind his populist entreaties and Howard Hughes-style mythology. Although the animation in Nuts! is unfortunately stiff and slipshod, it admittedly creates a fitting mood of folksy unreality. Like many documentaries about lost chapters of American history, Nuts! thrives less on its cinematic characteristics than on the stranger-than-fiction appeal of its subject. However, Lane’s film exhibits just enough tart mischievousness to make it stand out, and to counterbalance its skeptical, pessimistic assessment of history.
Nuts! will screen nightly at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 9 through Sunday, September 11 at the Webster University Film Series in the Winifred Moore Auditorium. Admission is $6 (cash only).
