Inherit the Wind

Inherit the Wind is commercial entertainment at its best. A cleverly constructed play, it sticks close to the ground, to subjects that all the members of a reasonably enlightened audience can agree on. The argument of playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee is simple: freedom of thought is better than bigotry. Although this point may not appear overly original, the two writers give it considerable dramatic intensity by recreating the celebrated 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial," where a small town school teacher was brought into court for teaching the "subversive" doctrine of evolution.

From a dramatist's point of view, the Scopes trial is very much a Good Thing, because it brought together two magnificent figures--William Jennings Bryan and the great lawyer, Clarence Darrow. As an added attraction there was H.L. Mencken, who reported the story for his Baltimore newspaper. The climax of the play comes in the confrontation scene between the two giants, when the quiet, gallus-snapping Darrow, acting for the defense, calls prosecutor Bryan to the witness chair and exposes his Bible-belting oratory as so much hot air. A most exciting scene, this, and much of the excitement is due to the fine performance of Melvyn Douglas as Darrow. One scarcely realizes just how well Douglas acts until he sheds the shuffling, angular manner of the lawyer and comes onstage for his curtain call, transformed and years younger than he has seemed throughout the play. James Westerfield, while not always as convincing as Douglas, still aquits himself capably as Bryan.

Yet there is something wrong with this play. It always seems just on the verge of becoming memorable as well as exciting--but never quite gets there. In changing the names of the people involved--Bryan becomes Brady and Darrow, Drummond--Messers. Lawrence and Lee would seem to be saying that they have reserved the right to alter the story. Nobody would begrudge them this right, except for the fact that the changes they made nearly always constitute clever dramatic effects. Thus, for instance, Bryan collapses spectacularly after the end of the trial. It's a neat trick, since it automatically restores him to the audience's sympathies. But it beclouds the potentially fascinating problem of how a once-great man, three times almost President, would feel after an ignominious, even ridiculous, defeat. The collapse is only one example of the playwrights' constant tendency to avoid exploring deep, if difficult, human problems by escaping to the simple antitheses and effects of melodrama.

Thus, in the end, the play's very cleverness works to its own defeat. As a result Lawrence and Lee have written a fine evening's entertainment but not a lasting addition to dramatic literature.