Missouri Repertory Theatre
Kansas City's MRT has decided to substitute "Inherit the Wind" into the 1999-2000 schedule. This was done in direct reaction to the Kansas State Board of Education's decision to eliminate the requirement to teach evolution as part of the science curriculum. You can learn more about MRT's thinking, and plans for the production, at:
http://missourireptheatre.org/What_s_News/what_s_news.html

Showtime
In June, 1999, the cable channel Showtime began airing an original film production of the stage play "Inherit the Wind." Unfortunately, the play takes an exceedingly liberal license with the factual subject, which is the Scopes "Monkey Trial." All viewers of this film (and viewers of all versions of Inherit the Wind as well) should know that the actual events of the trial did not happen as depicted in the movie (or the play). Scopes was not jailed, he did not have a girlfriend with a minister father, and, the real-life William Jennings Bryan (as represented by the Matthew Harrison Brady character) most certainly did not die the last day of the trial.

"Inherit the Wind" is fiction couched in a historical context. It was not written to analyze either the issues of church/state relations, or the validity of teaching evolution in the classroom.

If you get an opportunity to watch the Showtime presentation, be sure to stick around for the 20-minute show which follows. It ably 'confesses' the differences between the play and what really happened. Although George C. Scott and Jack Lemmon star in the pivotal roles of the Showtime film, I nevertheless found it to bring nothing new to the play. The Spencer Tracy/Fredric March film version is still my favorite.

Visit a Web site
An excellent Web site for exploring the reality behind the fiction of "Inherit the Wind" can be found at Famous American Trials, by Professor Doug Linder, UMKC School of Law. Be sure to visit the link "Notes on Inherit the Wind", at the bottom of the Scopes Trial page.

According to Professor Linder, "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."

Or Read a Book!
I just finished reading the superb, Pulitzer Prize winning book, Summer for the Gods. The book is subtitled 'The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion'. The author, Edward J. Larson, is a professor with joint appointments in law and history, and he took his Ph.D. in the history of science.

If you're interested in the Scopes trial, you should read this book. (It is available in paperback.) The trial was a huge national event, with papers from across the nation covering the developments in the weeks prior to, and during, the trial. You may know the outcome: Scopes was convicted and charged with a $100 fine, but did you know the fine was paid by a newspaper? Later, of course, the conviction was overturned on a technicality, thereby robbing the defense of any hopes of an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Tennessee left the law Scopes was convicted of violating on the books for 40 more years, although it was no longer enforced.

Before reading this book, I really had no idea of the magnitude of the historical and sociological currents present in the first quarter of this century which resulted in Tennessee's Butler Act (the law Scopes was convicted of violating), and to the "raging battle" between the pro-evolutionists and the anti-evolutionists. To really appreciate the magnitude of this trial, one needs to understand why it attracted such personalities as William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. Larson does an excellent job of "setting the stage" to explain these cultural forces, the personalities involved, and the skeleton of law at the heart of the matter. The facts of the case, as well as the times in which it occurred, are so very, very interesting, that our poor friend, "Inherit the Wind", is reduced to triviality, deception, and mediocrity, none of which do justice to the trial which started it all.