After thinking about it when writing the post about privacy, I was able to get a copy of First Monday in October from the library. It turns out that the play, which in fact is by the same authors as Inherit the Wind, is much like the movie version. The movie added a few scenes, but nothing really to change the story (e.g., in the movie, the justice takes another to see a special type of machine at a museum ... in the play, he brings it to his "chambers"). The minimalism of the play vs. the more open nature of the movie does not really change much overall, though a surprise that is honestly a bit too melodramatic works better when it is not as hokey as it is in the movie version. Ditto some of the personal interaction between the two adversaries ... a bit too hokey in the film version.
The movie does have some nice visuals as well as an in joke of sorts where a law student from Paper Chase becomes a law clerk (though in the play, he is supposed to be from a less Ivy league sort of school). Likewise, the movie does have Walter Matthau ... but the primary performance on the stage had Henry Fonda! Fittingly, Fonda a few years later played a poor defendant in Gideon's Trumpet. Anyway, reading the play, I had Matthau's voice in my head, plus some Jill Clayburgh, who played the younger first woman justice. Something confuses me -- the original on stage was Jean Arthur, best known for films like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. How can she play a character in her 40s in the 1970s? Arthur, who apparently had great stagefright and didn't do well, was much too old.
Justice Snow, a cranky old liberal who particularly is very concerned about privacy and freedom of speech while wary of corporations clearly was based on Justice Douglas, though some said the former was a much nicer guy. Douglas didn't like the play -- didn't think it really dealt with the issues in a serious way. The play has a few gems. One involves privacy and how God made the world alone, and it would be much different (and popular) if this was not so. Justice Snow also noted that privacy is no luxury; it is an essential (dissenting opinion) for true creativity. Judge Loomis, the conservative new women justice also had a good line about how she did have children ... her ideas were her children, some were painful and unpopular, but they had equal right to exist, and she cherished them all. And, Snow noted he and a conservative justice who died were like a couple of flying buttresses on opposite sides of a Gothic cathedral, holding it up.
The play has some playful lines as well, well played by Walter Matthau (who was really not that old when the movie came out, but had an old cranky look about him for years). The business of the Court was primarily referenced by two cases ... an obscenity matter (already passe by the mid-1970s) and a shareholder suit in a powerful multinational. The first was a pretty easy matter really, liberty vs. puritanism, the latter a pretty thin evil specter. Yeah, overall, there is some charming stuff, but not really a good inner core. Honestly, I thought Inherit the Wind a bit exaggerated too (no concerned young girlfriend etc. in real life), but there was more meat there all the same.
Good idea for a play, but Douglas sorta had a reason to be not too impressed. Still, especially for those interested in the subject matter or who aren't too discriminating, the play and movie might be worth a look. I did enjoy both in a fashion, enough good there to do so.