Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee are best known for two plays, Inherit the Wind ( performed in 1955) and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail (1970), which together had more than three million copies in print by the end of the 1990s. Although their writing partnership, spanning more than a half century, produced significant work in radio, television, and cinema, the stage plays and musicals of Lawrence and Lee seem likely to remain most enduring. Inherit the Wind and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, along with Lawrence and Lee's comedy Auntie Mame (1956) and its musical version, Mame (1966), have remained in constant production worldwide since first appearing on North American stages. Both Inherit the Wind and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail signaled new modes of production in the American commercial theater.

Born three years apart, the two playwrights did not make contact until they were in their mid twenties...