TV Review : We’re Still Inheriting the Wind : Evolution Issue Timelier Than Ever

As long as censorship is relevant, “Inherit the Wind” will be relevant, attacking statutory ignorance and exposing bigots and simpletons who would use religion to shackle freedom of speech and ideas.

So Sunday’s version of this story based on the famous 1925 Scopes “monkey trial” (9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39) is as timely as ever--if uneven dramatically. And Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas are a fine pair of battling warriors, butting heads, egos and beliefs in a Tennessee courtroom as Henry Drummond and Matthew Harrison Brady, respectively.

The story’s real clash, deep in the Bible Belt, pits messianic faith against an educator’s right to teach logic--or, as Drummond puts it, “theright to think.”

“I want to bring this country back to God,” argues the fundamentalistpolitician Brady before prosecuting Bert Cates for violating a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution. When Brady insists that he has received instructions directly from God, “Inherit the Wind” seems to echo the rhetoric of some contemporary evangelists.

The edges are fictional, but “Inherit the Wind” is reality at the core. Brady is based on fiery orator William Jennings Bryan, who ran three times for President before volunteering to help prosecute Thomas Scopes as part of his campaign against atheists and agnostics. Drummond is based on Clarence Darrow, the famed Chicago attorney who led the defense of Scopes, fearing the incursion of religious fanaticism into education. Cates is based on Scopes, a 24-year-old high school teacher in Dayton, Tenn.

“Inherit the Wind” began as a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. It begat a 1960 movie with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March and a 1965 TV production on NBC.

Written by John Gay and directed by David Greene, this newest NBC version comes alive when the two principals finally have their nose-to-nose duel, as Drummond puts his adversary Brady on the stand and then methodically breaks him down and discredits the anti-evolution law, winning the mental battle while losing the jury.

Although Robards and Douglas provide their own smoke, Greene’s trial sequences lack the muggy, steamy summer atmosphere that fed tensions inside the packed Southern courtroom. Brady’s rambling final tirade is a bit overcooked, moreover. And Drummond’s post-verdict defense of Brady to cynical newsman E. K. Hornbeck (Darren McGavin), as being a former “giant” of a man, plays awkwardly at best, considering all that has transpired.

The story suffers most, however, from its frequent forays outside the courtroom, blurring and meandering in its attempt to explore the relationships between Brady and his wife (Jean Simmons) and between former friends Brady and Drummond. That sifting process becomes a stagnant detour.

“Inherit the Wind” makes better theater than it does precise history. Playwrights Lawrence and Lee never pretended theirs was a journalistic account; they openly took license with some of the facts of the Scopes case. Far from being an unknowing victim, for example, Scopes agreed to teach evolution in his classroom in order to test the Tennessee law, a test that had been urged by the American Civil Liberties Union. Then, too, the jury was not even present when Darrow interrogated Bryan. And Bryan died five days later, not immediately after the trial.

If Darrow did think of Bryan as a giant, moreover, he may have meant girth, not intellect. Upon hearing of Bryan’s death, Darrow was quoted as saying: “A man who for years had fought excessive drinking now lies dead from indigestion caused by overeating.”