Edison, the Man

Edison, the Man is a 1940 biographical drama from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It opens in 1929, as the world marks fifty years since the invention of the light bulb. Thomas Edison, then 82 and celebrated everywhere, looks back on his life. The story he tells begins in 1869, when he arrives in New York at 22, poor and unknown, and struggles to interest anyone in his ideas. He finds work connected to the telegraph business, and his improvements to a device for reporting gold and stock prices bring him a large sum of money and the backing of a company president, opening the way to the career that made him famous. Spencer Tracy plays Edison, with Charles Coburn, Lynne Overman, Rita Johnson, Gene Lockhart and Henry Travers among the credited cast of 83.

Clarence Brown directed, working from a screenplay by Talbot Jennings and Bradbury Foote. The film followed a run of his 1930s pictures that included Anna Christie, Anna Karenina and Conquest, and preceded later ones such as National Velvet. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 2,000 votes, while on TMDB its rating is 6.8 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes. The two broadly agree, placing the film as a reasonably well regarded studio production of its era.