Americana

By LANCE MORROW

CLARENCE DARROW by DAVID W. RINTELS

Clarence Darrow represents some of the best America that we can remember --a rugged liberalism long before it was gilded with chic, the common man invested with intellect. In a nation of somewhat disheveled justice, Darrow did genuinely unpopular things as a lawyer from 1878 to 1938. He saved Leopold and Loeb from the death penalty, defended blacks against rape charges, kept the lynch mobs from the Haymarket "conspirators." He was an honest and useful man.

Henry Fonda's Darrow, which last week began a limited run on Broadway before going to Boston, Detroit, Denver and Los Angeles, has something of both the fascination and the mustiness of the history in it. It is a one-man show, a long reminiscence over Darrow's career. Fonda ranges across Darrow's life--his scant formal learning (one year of law school), his increasing involvement in dangerously unpopular cases, like that of the Wobbly Big Bill Haywood, and, of course, the Scopes trial.

Fonda is often wonderful to watch in what amounts almost to one American monument impersonating another. He works with a master's skill at understatement. The trouble is that the audience is apt to come away more instructed than entertained. David Rintels' script smacks of American hagiology: "I speak for the poor, the weak," says Fonda, sounding perilously like the Statue of Liberty. For all Fonda's skill and Darrow's charm, the mind wanders sometimes, as during the American Legion's "I Speak for Democracy" contest.

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