Any documentary that opens on an animated sequence of two goats having sex and prompting a man to muse, “Too bad I don’t have billy goat nuts…” is a special one, indeed. Nuts! director Penny Lane wholeheartedly embraces the ridiculousness of her subject, Kansas doctor J. R. Brinkley, who became famous for his goat gland transplants, and she plays up the cartoonish nature of industrial-age American hucksterism at every turn. Blending said animated sequences/reenactments, archival materials and the very occasional historian interview, Nuts! is a relentlessly funny documentary about a very unfortunate tale of Depression-era exploitation and hubris.
Brinkley’s initial backstory plays up the populist rags-to-riches story, which was certainly a cornerstone of his success, beginning with his life on a Kansas farm with dreams of becoming a doctor. Nuts!, we’re told, is based on an authorized biography of Brinkley, and the documentary’s numerous “chapters” are taken directly from the source. After pioneering his unique “cure” for impotence in 1917, Brinkley’s surgery was touted for its results with many a baby being hoisted in support of Brinkley nine months after treatment. Celebrity clients Rudolph Valentino and even Woodrow Wilson supposedly sought out the Colonel Sanders lookalike. But grafting goat testicles onto men wasn’t enough for Brinkley.
Ever the entrepreneurial marketer, Brinkley expanded into the relatively new world of radio and would, perhaps unintentionally, be at the forefront of its early technological and commercial advances. Radio does, after all, provide the perfect platform for Brinkley to advertise his medical treatments. Brinkley’s KFKB would be the fourth largest radio station in the nation, broadcasting Brinkley’s own “Medical Question Box” as well as a then-rare mix of country music and hillbilly-themed comedy programs. But it was with his medical advice that Brinkley managed to amass his incredible fortune. The segment was nothing more than a glorified advertisement for his various salves and cures (everything from Mayan and Incan vision cream to cancer-fighting toothpaste), with Brinkley going so far as to strike a deal with pharmacies for a cut on their profits from the floods of people following his advice. But not only does KFKB rake in money, it widens Brinkley’s audience to the point where he is known—and liked—around the country.
The recognition and (albeit misplaced) respect and trust would lead Brinkley to run for Governor of Kansas in 1930, a race he lost purely for the fact that his detractors invalidated thousands of misspelled write-in votes. Overwhelming opposition from the American Medical Association (chief among them Morris Fishbein, who called out Brinkley’s treatments as “quackery”) and the Federal Radio Commission forced Brinkley to shut down his radio tower on U.S. soil, but he simply built a newer, bigger tower just across the border in Mexico whose transmitter was, at the time, the most powerful in the world. Lane presents the information in such a way as to suggest that the main catalyst for Brinkley’s downfall was his pride and hubris in the face of Fishbein’s “libel.” A lawsuit against him only resulted in Brinkley’s medicine-show past being paraded around in a courtroom and his medical practice proven to be a total fraud. Chief among his false cures was the alternative to his transplant surgery, Formula 1020 (which has even less credence than Stephen Colbert’s Formula 402, aka man-root essence). The liquid formula turned out to be nothing more than water and blue dye.
The overriding tone of Nuts! is resoundingly tongue-in-cheek, as if Lane and screenwriter Thom Stylinski can hardly believe the tall tale they’re telling. The animation certainly outdoes any live-action reenactment but also emphasizes the ridiculous circumstances with its playful visual style. The humor, however, does dwell in the juvenile, but how could it not considering the story begins with goat testicles. It’s hard to say if a patient’s frank courtroom testimony (“I used to have a floppy dong, but it ain’t floppy no more”) was taken directly from transcripts or is simply a gem of reimagining on Stylinski’s part. The only time this tone seems in any way inappropriate is in the final act’s sobering revelations, especially regarding the consequences of Brinkley’s fraud on his wife and son. But one interviewee’s final confession, “I’d call him a psychopath, but I’m not medically qualified to do so,” displays a whimsically devious spirit wholly on par with the rest of Nuts!. Sometimes the only appropriate reaction to mass gullibility is dark humor.
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