Saturday, October 27, 2012

Inherit the Wind: Introduction and Summary


Inherit the Wind, a play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, was written according to the authors as a response to attacks on intellectual freedom coming from Republican Senator Joseph MaCarthy’s infamous pursuit on communists during the early 1950’s.  The “McCarthy hearings” refer to hearings conducted when McCarthy headed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953 and 1954, when McCarthy sought to root out Communism in America, especially in the State Department and armed forces.  These hearings are often confused with the activities of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that focused during the same period (actually beginning in 1947) on the film and theatre communities, and were seen by many as a witch hunt, leading friends and co-workers to turn each other in for suspected Communist leanings.  McCarthy did not launch his attack on Communism in 1950; the same year that Lawrence and Lee completed the script of Inherit the Wind, thus the author’s contention that the play was a response to McCarthyism is probably disingenuous.  It seems obvious that, if anything, the play is a response to the activities of the HUAC and that McCarthy was simply a convenient focal point for all efforts to suppress Communism in the United States.

Inherit the Wind is loosely based on the 1925 case of The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, AKA “the Scope’s trial” and “the Monkey trial.”   The play's preface says that while the trial was its "genesis," it is "not history.”  Nevertheless, the popularity of the plan caused many people to assume that it was an accurate portrayal of the events of the trial, and the true facts of the case are often forgotten.  The play was not produced on stage until 1955.  For the preceding two years, between 1952 and 1954, the authors could not find a buyer for the script.  Finally, in 1954, Margo Jones, a producer from Dallas, agreed to produce the play at Theatre '55. The opening of the play on January 10, 1955, drew rave reviews.  On April 21, 1955, the play moved to Broadway’s National Theatre, and featured Paul Muni, Ed Begley, and Tony Randall in the principal roles.  Reviews were almost unanimously favorable.  The following appeared in April 25, 1955 edition of the Morning Telegraph

by Whitney Bolton
For what it has to say, and the explicit way in which it says it, there is no more important play in New York that "Inherit the Wind," a dramatic evaluation of the famed Scope trial of 30 years ago. This is a play which, in the pleasant-tasting icing of excellent theatre, gets across to its audience the core of value beneath the icing: there is no more holy concept than the right of a man to think.

This is important beyond description. In an era when this one right along is taking a brutal beating, it is healthy and needful for creative men and women to take their stand in defenses of such a right. "Inherit the Wind" could have been much less a satisfying play and still would be a statement heartily to be embraced and supported.

The Scopes trial seems long ago and dimly away now. It seems ridiculous that an entire nation could have been aroused and flung into two bitter camps because a very small potatoes of a public teacher chose to state the theory of evolution in his classroom. That this teaching violated a statute of Tennessee was then and curiously is now true. Some statutory benefits came from the Scopes trial, but erasure of the law forbidding the teaching of evolution was not one of them. Nor is that of importance. What is of importance is that from that musty little town, whipped into fervor by the presence of William Jennings Bryan on the side of orthodox interpretations of the Bible, and Clarence Darrow, on the side of enlightenment and science, came a note of hope; that men could think of themselves without censure or impoundment and that the lost little soul of the trial, the accused, made it easier, even though by only a fractional amount, for the next accused thinker to take his stand for it.

This is the rub of what Darrow fought for. He had no great interest in publicly humiliating Bryan; he had no real concern with fighting the Bible orthodoxy. His own estimation of the case went far deeper than that and into the realm of something he looked upon as holier than sacred writ; the full, free, unmenaced and unbruised right of a human being to think.

This splendid theatrical presentation of the battle has been powerfully arrived at by the precise writing of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and it has received determined and affectionate direction from its producer, Herman Shumlin. Mr. Shumlin is a man of thought as well as a man of theatre, and it is plain in his work with this play and the people in it that is courageously alongside the late Darrow in the conviction of what makes rights and what makes the struggle to retain them.

But nothing that the authors wrote and not enough of the direction Mr. Shumlin provided would have had the thrust essential to the play if a lesser actor than Paul Muni had occupied the principal role. His interpretation of the role that is frankly Darrow is a wonder of performance, a full-bodied and magnificent performance which stirs from the moment of silent, shuffling, round-shouldered entry until the legally defeated and when his convicted little client receives from Darrow the true import of what the trial has meant in terms of freeing the minds of humanity for their noblest purpose, thought. This is one of Mr. Muni's most colorful and brilliant performances in a long career of such. It reaches horizons few actors ever see, much less arrive at, and it has the stature of giantism.

Not discernibly less brilliant is Ed Begley in a role just as frankly Bryan. Mr. Begley brings to it the needful sonorous note, the pious humility of the professional religious layman who, spreading himself in an area where only he is saint and all adversaries are labeled sinful, gloats over and mocks his foe. When these two reach their moment of clinch in the play, the work at the National Theatre becomes a thrilling event.

In 1960, a film based on the play opened in Dayton, Tennessee, the site of the actual Scopes trial, on July 21, the anniversary of the verdict rendering in the actual case in 1925.  The film was produced and directed by Stanley Kramer and starred Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond, Frederick March as Matthew Harrison Brady, and Gene Kelly as E. K. Hornbeck.  Like the play, the film was both a critical and financial success.  Most of Kramer’s films were noted for engaging the audience with political and social issues of the time and included such “message movies” as High Noon (1952, as producer), The Defiant Ones (1958), On the Beach (1959), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Ship of Fools (1965) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). 

Drummond v. Brady

To briefly summarize the play, Inherit the Wind is a courtroom drama set in the imaginary town of Hillsboro in an unspecified State at an unspecified time, "Not long ago" according to the stage directions. “It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow” according to The Playwrights' Note.  A young school teacher, Bertram Cates, is in jail for violating a State law prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution in the public schools.  His principle in-town persecutor is Reverend Jeremiah Brown, a fundamentalist Protestant Christian preacher of indeterminate denomination who believes in Biblical literalism. He is widowed, and has a daughter, Rachel who is romantically linked to Cates.  The trial is something of a cause célèbre and the local district attorney has recruited famed orator and three time Populist presidential candidate to be the primary spokesperson for the Prosecution.  For the Defense, the Baltimore-based newspaper, the fictional Baltimore Herald has hired Henry Drummond, another nationally known attorney who was once Brady's closest friend, and has dispatched a glib and cynical reporter, E. K. Hornbeck to cover the trial.

The carnival atmosphere surrounding the trial is evident by the sundry vendors hawking Bibles and hot dogs to the town people as they await the arrival of Brady.  The sarcastic Hornbeck watching the scene remarks, “Ahhhh, Hillsboro- Heavenly Hillsboro. The buckle on the BibleBelt.”  The sentiment of the crowd gathered by Reverend Brown to greet Brady is evident in the posters they carry:

ARE YOU A MAN OR A MONKEY?/AMEND THE CONSTITUTION- PROHIBIT DARWIN /SAVE OUR SCHOOLS FROM SIN/ MY ANCESTORS AIN’T APES!/WELCOME MATTHEW HARRISON BRADY/ DOWN WITH DARWIN /BE A SWEET ANGEL, DON’T MONKEY WITH OUR SCHOOLS!/DARWIN IS WRONG! /DOWN WITH EVOLUTION /SWEETHEART, COME UNTO THE LORD

Brady from the beginning is portrayed as a caricature of the southern politician, large than life, both literally and figuratively.  He sprinkles compliments on the townspeople like sugared candy while chowing down on huge quantities of food.  He can win people over with his affable manner and he succeeds in gain the confidence of Rachel Brown, extracting information from her about the defendant Bertram Cates.

Similarly, the Reverend Brown is performed as an intolerant zealot, again a stock figure of the southern fundamentalist and religious bigot. When he learns from Hornbeck that Henry Drummond will represent Cates in court, his response is predictable:

“I saw Drummond once. In a courtroom in Ohio. A man was on trial for a most brutal crime. Although he knew-and admitted- the man was guilty, Drummond was perverting the evidence to cast the guilt away from the accused and onto you and me and all of society…  You look into his face, and you wonder why God made such a man. And then you know that God didn’t make him, that he is a creature of the Devil, perhaps even the Devil himself!

 The Reverend Brown

Quick to pass judgment on the state of another man’s soul, he even alienates his daughter first by denouncing Cates and her relationship with him as sinful, and then in a frenzy of zealotry by cursing both Cates and Rachel to Hellfire.  At a rally he leads his flock:

BROWN:  (Pointing a finger toward the jail) Do we curse the man who denies the Word?
 ALL: (Crescendo, each answer mightier than the one before) Yes!
 BROWN:  Do we cast out this sinner in our midst?
 ALL:  Yes!
 BROWN:  Do we call down hellfire on the man who has sinned against the Word?
 ALL:  (Roaring) Yes!
 BROWN:  (Deliberately shattering the rhythm, to go into a frenzied prayer, hands clasped together and lifted heavenward) O Lord of the Tempest and the Thunder! O Lord of Righteousness and Wrath! We pray that Thou wilt make a sign unto us! Strike down this sinner, as Thou didst Thine enemies of old, in the days of the Pharaohs!  Let him feel the terror of Thy sword! For all eternity, let his soul writhe in anguish and damnation-
 RACHEL:  No! (She rushes to the platform). No, Father. Don’t pray to destroy Bert!
 BROWN:  Lord, we call down the same curse on those who ask grace for this sinner- though they be blood of my blood, and flesh of my flesh!

This is even too much for Brady who interrupts to put an end Brown’s hateful fanaticism.

"Heavenly" Hillsboro

The town itself also takes on the role of a character in this drama.  It is divided between the devoted and the indifferent.  The devout are the narrow-minded, mean-spirited amen chorus who follow Brady into town singing “If it’s good enough for Brady then it is good enough for me.” and join Reverent Brown in condemning Cates to Hell and damnation.  Later, they are burning Drummond in effigy and singing about ”hang[ing] Bert Cates from a sour apple tree.”  The indifferent are represented by the two jurors with speaking roles: the illiterate Mr. Bannister who wants “that there front seat in the jury box” because “everybody says this is going to be quite a show,” and George Sillers who works at the feed store.   Sillers stays “pretty busy down at the feed store” and lets his “wife tend to the religion for both of us.”  We are told in a stage direction that Cates has a “smattering” of supporter but we neither see nor hear from them.

The trial rapidly transforms from focusing on Cates’ singular crime of teaching evolution in opposition to State law to an indictment of the law itself and the mindset of the people who enacted and supported it.  Brady, Brown and the town of Hillsboro see the trail as a defense of the law and by extension their faith in the Bible as the literal and unambiguous word of God.  In a comment to Hornbeck, Brady reveals that which he fears:

I have been in many cities and I have seen the altars upon which they sacrifice the futures of their children to the Gods of Science. And what are their rewards? Confusion and self-destruction. New ways to kill each other in wars. I tell you, going the way of scientists is the way of darkness.

And in the courtroom he expands on this after interviewing one of Cates’ students:

I am sure that everyone on the jury, everyone within the sound of this boy’s voice, is moved by his tragic confusion. He has been taught that he wriggled up like an animal form the filth and the muck below!(Continuing fervently, the spirit is upon him) I say that these Bible-haters, these “Evil-utionists,” are brewers of poison. And the legislature of this sovereign state has had the wisdom to demand that the peddlers of poison- in bottles or in books- clearly label the products they attempt to sell!(There is applause. HOWARD gulps. BRADY points at the boy.) I tell you, if this law is not upheld, this boy will become one of a generation, shorn of its faith by the teachings of Godless science! But if the full penalty of the law is meted out to Bertram Cates, the faithful the whole world over, who are watching us here, and listening to our every word, will call this courtroom blessed.

Henry Drummond, in spite of the invectives hurled against him by Brady, Brown and the people of Hillsboro, is in the courtroom not to destroy their faith, but to demand the right to question it as he expresses in this exchange:  

DRUMMOND: I am trying to establish, Your Honor, that Howard (the boy from Cates’ class)- or Colonel Brady- or Charles Darwin—or anyone in this courtroom- or you, sir- has the right to think!
JUDGE:  Colonel Drummond, the right to think is not on trial here.
DRUMMOND: (Energetically) With all respect to the bench, I hold that the right to think is very much on trial! It is fearfully in danger in the proceedings of this court!
BRADY (Rises) A man is on trial!
DRUMMOND:  A thinking man! And he is threatened with fine and imprisonment because he chooses to speak about what he thinks.

It is Brady’s tactic to attack Cates, the man.  He uses information learned from Rachel Brown in confidence to attack Cates religious views.  Calling her to the stand, Brady twists her words and bullies her into tears, and it is only Brady’s wife’s horrified outburst stuns Brady back to his senses.

It is Drummond’s strategy not to defend Cates’ act, but to attack the law:

I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy. You can only punish! And I warn you (Points first at BRADY, then to various members of the audience and the JUDGE) that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys everyone it touches! Its upholders as well as its defilers!

Can’t you understand that if you take a law like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it? (Turns to the crowd in the gallery and begins addressing them. The crowd has grown strangely quiet during all of this as they listen. BRADY looks worriedly.)And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try foisting your own religion upon the mind of man! If you can do one, you can do the other! Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.(Strides slowly back to the JUDGE’S bench)And soon, Your Honor, with banners flying and drums beating we’ll be marching backward. . . .BACKWARD-to the glorious ages of that sixteenth century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!

But in the end, when Drummond’s attempts at an argument of ideas fail, Drummond too resorts to a personal attack against Brady and his fundamentalist beliefs. Having all of his attempts to show the rationality of Darwinian theory, Drummond calls Brady to the witness stand in the capacity of an expert witness on the Bible.  Drummond’s goal is to demonstrate through that the Bible is not to be taken literally Brady’s pride leads him to answer Drummond’s challenge. Brady’s responses to Drummond’s mocking questions reveal him to be closed-minded and utterly unable to respond to questions about Biblical incidents that contradict natural law. He is shown to be more unthinking and unquestioning than faithful and he is finally goaded into admitting that the “days´ of creation need not have been twenty-four hour days at all” and that the scientists might just be right in dating the age of the Earth at many millions of years instead of the 6,000 year old Earth accepted by Biblical literalists.  Drummond succeeds in undermining the credibility of Brady and his beliefs by making him appear ridiculous, the one thing Brady cannot bear.

The trial ends in Cates being found guilty but this is a hollow victory for Brady who has been marginalized by his testimony.  When, at the trials conclusion, he attempts to recapture the spotlight with a victory speech, he is utterly ignored, even by his former followers.  Mid-speech, he falls over and dies. The play concludes with Drummond eulogizing his fallen friend and adversary:

A giant once lived in that body.  But Matt Brady got lost. Because he was looking for God too high up and too far away.