Misremembering History Part Deux

For the first installment of this series look here.

When I was a kid (around 1960) the Darien Showcase put on a production of Inherit The Wind, which had been a hit play on Broadway and then a successful movie starring Spencer Tracey, Frederic March and Gene Kelly.  The play was based on the events of the Scopes Monkey Trial that took place in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. (Clarence Darrow & William Jennings Bryan)

So why would I know this?  Well, my dad had a small role in the production playing an Italian organ grinder with a trained monkey (see how this neatly fits into the title of the play!) who is one of the flock of people drawn to Dayton (called Hillsboro in the play) and creating the circus like atmosphere around the big trial.  From my perspective it was very cool because we drove to the Hartford area and actually got a monkey which stayed in our house for the week and which my dad brought onstage for each performance.  As I remember, the monkey was a nasty little bugger.

The authors of the play, Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, stated in the preface that it was not meant to be an historical account of the trial.  Rather it was intended as a parable attacking Senator Joe McCarthy and Red Scare tactics.  At the time, this limitation was recognized.  The New Yorker drama critic wrote that in the play "History has not been increased but almost fatally diminished" and the review in Time magazine stated "The script wildly and unjustly caricatures the fundamentalists as vicious and narrow-minded hypocrites" and "just as wildly and unjustly idealizes their opponents".

However, the power and enduring legacy of the play have transformed it in many minds into an accurate account of the trial and of the struggle between science and fundamentalism.  Since the original 1955 production, which ran for nearly three years, there have been several Broadway revivals of the play, including two within the past 15 years.  The 1960 movie was followed by TV films in 1965, 1988 (starring Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas) and 1999 (starring Jack Lemmon and George C Scott).  The play is still frequently performed by local theater groups and in schools.  Inherit The Wind also became used in schools to teach students about the 1920s - in 1994, for instance, the National Center for History in Schools instructional standards recommended using selections from the Scopes trial or excerpts from Inherit The Wind.  This trailer from the 1960 movie gives you a better idea of the tone:



The plot revolves around the trial of a schoolteacher in a small town where a tough mayor and fundamentalist preacher rule the roost.  The schoolteacher is accused of trying to teach evolution in the local school and faces jail.  The town is portrayed as governed by a mob atmosphere.  The lawyer for the prosecution is shown as a narrow-minded man trying to manipulate the mob and the defence lawyer as the voice of tolerance.  At the climax of the play, the prosecutor rails against the small fine levied on the defendant by the court and then collapses and dies.

I was one of those many minds who thought the play bore some semblance to reality.  It was only through understanding the history of that era more thoroughly and, most importantly, reading Edward Larson's book, Summer For The Gods, a Pulitzer Prize Winner in 1998 that I slowly unlearned what I thought was the history.  The real story of the Scopes Monkey Trial is more rich, interesting and complex than the story presented in Inherit The Wind.  It also reminds us that trying to pigeon hole America's past history into today's categories can lead to an impoverished understanding of our past.

In the next installment, we'll look at what actually happened in 1925 and why a misdemeanor case caught the nation's attention.