Playwrights
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
wrote Inherit the Wind as a response to the threat to intellectual
freedom
presented by the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era. Lawrence
and Lee used the Scopes Trial, then safely a generation in the past, as
a vehicle for exploring a climate of anxiety and anti-intellectualism
that
existed in 1950.
Inherit the Wind does not purport
to be a historically
accurate depiction of the Scopes trial. The stage directions set the
time
as "Not long ago." Place names and names of trial participants have
been
changed. Lawrence and Lee created several fictional characters,
including
a fundamentalist preacher and his daughter, who in the play is the
fiancé
of John Scopes. Henry Drummond is less cynical and biting than the
Darrow
of Dayton that the Drummond character was based upon. Scopes, a
relatively
minor figure in the real drama at Dayton, becomes Bertram Cates, a
central
figure in the play, who is arrested while teaching class, thrown in
jail,
burned in effigy, and taunted by a fire-snorting preacher. William
Jennings
Bryan, Matthew Harrison Brady in the play, is portrayed as an almost
comical
fanatic who dramatically dies of a heart attack while attempting to
deliver
his summation in a chaotic courtroom. The townspeople of fictional
Hillsboro
are far more frenzied, mean-spirited, and ignorant than were the real
denizens
of Dayton.
Nonetheless, Lawrence and Lee did
draw heavily
from the Scopes trial. A powerful Darrow condemnation of
anti-intellectualism,
an exchange between Darrow and Judge Raulston that earned Darrow a
contempt
citation, and portions of the Darrow examination of Bryan are lifted
nearly
verbatim from the actual trial transcript.
Although Lawrence and Lee completed
Inherit
the Wind in 1950, the play did not open until January 10, 1955. The
Broadway
cast included Paul Muni as Henry Drummond, Ed Begley as Matthew
Harrison
Brady, and Tony Randall as E. K. Hornbeck (H. L. Mencken). The play
received
rave reviews and was a box office success.
Nathan Douglas and Harold Smith wrote the
play into
a screen script in 1960. The Douglas and Smith screenplay differs from
the stage version in several respects, most notably perhaps in its
downplaying
of some academic and theological points, and its playing up of the
trial's
circus atmosphere.
A made-for-TV rewrite of the 1960
Stanley Kramer
movie ran on NBC in 1988. In this Inherit the Wind adaptation, Jason
Robards
played Darrow, Kirk Douglas played Bryan, and Darren McGavin played
Mencken.
The TV rewrite departed in only minor respects from the plot of the
earlier
Hollywood version.
Cast of Inherit the Wind (1960)
Produced by: United Artists Running Time: 127 Minutes Black and White
Directed by: Stanley Kramer
Spencer Tracy --Henry Drummond [Clarence
Darrow],
Fredric March-- Matthew Harrison Brady [Wm. Jennings Brian] ,Gene
Kelly--
E. K. Hornbeck [H. L. Mencken], Dick York-- Bertram T. Cates [John
Scopes],
Henry Morgan --Judge [John Raulston] ,Florence Eldridge --Sara Brady
,Donna
Anderson-- Rachel Brown, Claude Akins --Rev. Jeremiah Brown, Elliot
Reed--
Davenport, Phillip Coolidge-- Mayor, Paul Hartman --Meeker ,Jimmy
Boyd--
Howard [Howard Morgan] ,Noah Beery, Jr . --Stebbins ,Ray Teal --Dunlap,
Norman Fell --Radio Announcer, Hope Summers-- Mrs. Krebs
Movie Reviews of Inherit the Wind
Jay Brown, Rating the Movies **** (of 4)
"A fascinating slice of American history brought brilliantly to the
screen....Tracy
and March are superb as Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan,
respectively."
Bowtey Crowther, New York Times
(10/12/1960)
"Kramer
has wonderfully accomplished not only a graphic fleshing of his theme,
but he also has got one of the most brilliant and engrossing displays
of
acting ever witnessed on the screen.... When the two men come down to
their
final showdown and the barrier of dogma is breached, it is a triumphant
moment for human dignity--and for Mr. Tracy and Mr. March."
Variety (7/6/60) "A rousing and
fascinating
motion picture. Virtually all the elements that make for the broadest
range
of entertainment satisfaction--drama, comedy, romance, social
significance,
even suspense--are amply present.... Pairing of Tracy and March was a
masterstroke
of casting.... If they aren't top contenders in the next Academy
sweepstakes,
then Oscar should be put in escrow for another year."
Jay Nash and Stanley Ross, Motion Picture
Guide
***** (of 5) "In their scenes together, Tracy and March are
nothing
less than spellbinding, working off each other and holding their
own--two
of the most forceful images to grace the screen.... Tracy never lost a
scene to anyone except in this film, where March uses every histrionic
trick in his acting arsenal to bring the scene to his own presence, his
face, hands, and body contorting and moving with every measured line
Tracy
uttered....The film contains some of the most witty, literate lines
ever
put on the screen."
Karl W. Weimer, Jr., Magill's Survey of
Cinema
"Inherit the Wind is infused with Kramer's liberal sensibility.... The
play, following closely on the heels of the McCarthy era, was very much
an allegory of its time, and this dimension is fully exploited by
Kramer
and his screenwriters. Indeed, if the film can be faulted at all, it is
on this level: The townspeople seems a trifle too bigoted, while
Drummond's
(Darrow's) unrelenting altruism is equally suspect....Kelly, in one of
his few straight dramatic roles, brings just the right degree of
cynical
detachment to the pivotal role of E. K. Hornbeck (H. L. Mencken)
without
once sacrificing the empathy of the audience."
Carol Inannone, "First Things" (WWW)
"Inherit
the Wind reveals a great deal about a mentality that demands
open-mindedness
and excoriates dogmatism, only to advance its own certainties more
insistently....
A more historically accurate dramatization of the Scopes Trial might
have
been far richer and more interesting--and might also have given its
audiences
a genuine dramatic tragedy to watch. It would not have sent its
audience
home full of moral superiority and happy thoughts about the march of
progress."
Robert Harsh, "Exposing the Lie: Inherit
the
Wind" (WWW) "Christians, particularly William Jennings Bryan,
are
consistently lampooned throughout, while the skeptics and agnostics are
consistently portrayed as intelligent, kindly, and even heroic. I
simply
cannot escape the conclusion that the writers of the screen play never
intended to write a historically accurate account of the Scopes trial,
nor did they seriously attempt to portray the principal characters and
their beliefs in an unbiased and accurate way."
John Leonard, New York Magazine (3/21/88)
In liberal melodrama, we feel bad the morning after. Thus, in Inherit
the
Wind, after freethinker Darrow humiliates fundamentalist Bryan, both
turn
on the cynical Mencken: ‘Where will your loneliness lead you? No one
will
come to your funeral....' For liberals, winning is guilty, gloating is
indecent, and cynicism is un-American. This nostalgia for a consensus
that
never existed is one of the differences between, say, Arthur Miller and
Henrik Ibsen."
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