Jerome Lawrence

Wrote ' Inherit the Wind ' ; 88

Jerome Lawrence, a playwright and theater director whose plays include the classic courtroom drama " Inherit the Wind, " died Feb. 29 at his home in Malibu, his niece Deborah Robison said. He was 88.

With Robert E. Lee, his writing partner of more than 50 years, Mr. Lawrence wrote 39 plays, including " Auntie Mame, " " The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail " and " First Monday in October. " Twelve of their collaborations reached Broadway.

" Inherit the Wind, " a fictionalized telling of the " monkey trial " of John T. Scopes, the Tennessee schoolteacher who was arrested for teaching Darwin ' s theory of evolution, ran for three years on Broadway and has been translated into more than 30 languages.

The play opened in 1955, 30 years after the trial took place, but its theme of defending independent thought in an oppressive environment struck a chord.

More than a decade after " Inherit the Wind, " Mr. Lawrence and his partner again captured the zeitgeist, this time during the Vietnam era, with their play about Thoreau ' s act of civil disobedience in refusing to pay taxes to support a war against Mexico.

" The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail " had its premiere at The Ohio State University in 1970. The authors deliberately avoided Broadway; the play was produced in many regional theaters and on college campuses, thanks to American Playwrights Theater, a network that Lee and Mr. Lawrence helped found in 1963.

Mr. Lawrence was born in Cleveland in 1915. Mr. Lawrence and Lee met in New York in 1942 while Mr. Lawrence was a writer for CBS radio and Lee was working for the Young & Rubicam advertising agency. Their first collaboration was a radio play called " Inside a Kid ' s Head. "

They entered the Army in 1942 and were among the founding group of the Armed Forces Radio Service. They got out of the Army in 1945 and began writing for radio; after their first taste of Broadway, a musical called " Look, Ma, I ' m Dancin! ' " in 1948, they devoted themselves to the theater.

" Inherit the Wind " was first performed in Dallas in January 1955 and reached Broadway in April of that year amid extensive press coverage and public debate.

In 1956 they wrote " Auntie Mame, " based on the novel by Patrick Dennis. Ten years later they adapted that play into the musical " Mame, " with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. It ran for more than 1,500 performances.

Lee and Mr. Lawrence continued to work together closely until Lee ' s death in 1994. Their last collaboration was " Whisper in the Mind, " about an imaginary meeting between Benjamin Franklin and the 18th-century hypnotist Frank Anton Mesmer.

In addition to Robison of Berkeley, Mr. Lawrence is survived by his companion, Will Willoughby of Malibu; his niece Paula Robison of Boston; and a nephew, Joshua Robison of San Francisco.