Curtain Up

by Julius Green

  Given the amount of negotiation and the extensive paperwork involved in preparing the production, Lee Shubert, who was by then seventy-three and still firing on all cylinders, must have been delighted with the financial outcome. The play opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on 27 June 1944 and transferred to the Plymouth Theatre on 9 January 1945 where it ran until 30 June, clocking up a total of 426 Broadway performances. This is the first Christie-related stage work for which any accounts are available. An interim statement of operating profit from December 1944 shows that, with more than six months left to run, the Broadway production had repaid its set-up costs of $17,157.38 and generated a profit after running costs and royalties of $46,977.17.52 Of this, Hollywood talent agent Frank Orsatti received 10 per cent, presumably on behalf of a client or clients appearing in the production, and the Shuberts then split the balance 75/25 with de Courville, whose perspicacity seems to have paid off. A touring production which had been launched in October was already adding to the project’s profitability. Never ones to miss a trick, the Shuberts negotiated a reduced author’s royalty for the tour, which then ran well into 1946, latterly under licence to another producer. According to Christie biographer Laura Thompson, ‘The play of the book also ran on Broadway where it caught the attention of the theatrical impresario Lee Shubert.’53 I would say it probably did, given that he made a great deal of money out of it.

  Probably of less concern to Shubert would have been the reviews, which were generally not as supportive as those for the London production had been. It does seem, though, that despite their reputation for penny-pinching, the Shuberts pushed the boat out with the production values. The production design by Howard Bray, which was based on that of the London production by Clifford Pember, came in for particular praise. The New York Times’s verdict was that ‘The Messrs. Shubert and Albert De Courville have given the play a good American production. Like the number of corpses and potential corpses, all the ingredients were there. But as it turned out Ten Little Indians does not climb far above the potential stage.’54 Howard Barnes in the Herald Tribune felt that the play was ‘A high class melodrama . . . mannerly, literate and occasionally terrifying . . . a superior bit of nonsense . . . Miss Christie writes well for the theatre . . . the ending is definitely anti-climactic. With the excellent acting and the taut staging by Albert de Courville, it still manages to be a pleasantly chilling hot-weather entertainment.’55 The New York Post remarked that ‘The change in ending, which will be pounced upon at once by all avid Christie readers, is in the interests of romance. It removes some of Mrs Christie’s original ruthlessness, but it does not violently distort the plot, nobody is going to care very much, especially since she herself is credited with the dramatization.’56 The New York Journal-American lamented that the production ‘left me the way it found me, damp, dejected and disinterested’57 but the New York Word-Telegram countered that it was ‘Top-notch escapist stuff, sheer unmitigated, fantastic, enjoyable nonsense. Last night’s audience were wildly enthusiastic about it.’58

  It seems, however, that American audiences were watching a rather different play from that seen in Britain. Christie herself did not attend, but one suspects that she would have been horrified to see her work advertised variously as a ‘hilarious chiller thriller’, a ‘hilarious mystery thriller’ and a ‘superlative comedy mystery’.59 Significantly, when Cork requested a copy of the performance script for his records, Kaufman advised Lee Shubert to send him ‘the manuscript of the original play Ten Little Niggers as it was written by Miss Christie, and not the playing version which is being produced’.60

  In the absence of a resonance with the inhabitants of a beleaguered island state, de Courville had clearly decided to play to his own strengths and direct the piece as straightforward comedy melodrama. In this context it still appears to have struck a chord as wartime entertainment, albeit in a far less sophisticated way than Hentschel’s production. Again, the wartime context is evident in the playbill text, which includes the following notice from the Mayor of New York: ‘The way that the Theatre has responded to our defense effort is a matter of pride to every citizen, for the work of the Theatre in keeping up the morale of the members of our armed forces is something which in its way is as vital to our war effort as the production of additional military equipment.’61

  The playbill also carries a note that ‘Because of governmental restrictions, The Playbill, in common with all publications, will have to curtail its consumption of paper. During this emergency it will not be possible to furnish a copy of The Playbill to every person. With your co-operation this regulation can be met without hardship if you will share your copy of The Playbill with your companion.’ Paper was by no means the only thing in short supply. In the Shubert production office’s day files, we find a certificate dated 7 December 1944 from the Office of Price Administration, Shoe Division, allowing the company to issue four pairs of rationed shoes to the actors and carrying the warning: ‘For you or anyone else to transfer these stamps or shoe ration check for any purpose other than that for which they are issued is a violation of the regulation and subjects violators to certain penalties.’

  The day files give a fascinating insight into the running of a Broadway show in the 1940s, with the production team having to deal with a number of issues as they arise. Just as rehearsals were about to start it was discovered ‘by purest coincidence’ that Pat O’Malley, playing the role of Blore, was British, and the Shuberts had to appeal to the actors’ union, Equity, for permission to allow him to continue in the role: ‘The part of Blore is characterised as a provincial detective and written in the vernacular of that County (Devonshire, England). It requires a player thoroughly versed in the peculiar accent and dialect of that particular locality, and moreover, an artist with a sense of comedy.’ Mr O’Malley, claimed the Shubert office, ‘will be a featured member of the cast, commanding one of the highest salaries in the play’, and it was simply too late to replace him. ‘In view of the extraordinary circumstances and the impossibility of replacing Mr O’Malley at such short notice with an actor capable of playing this unique part . . . we trust that you will give this application your favourable consideration.’62 O’Malley was indeed amongst the production’s highest earners. Veteran stage and film actor Halliwell Hobbes, playing Wargrave, and debonair Hollywood leading man Michael Whalen, playing Lombard, were earning $400 per week in performance, while O’Malley was next in line on $350. However, whilst the character of Blore claims to operate a detective agency in Plymouth, the Shuberts are somewhat overstating the case about the necessity for a Devonshire accent (a good South African accent would actually be more useful for the role), and it seems that O’Malley’s expertise in any case lay elsewhere when it came to accents; his playbill biography reveals that he ‘is a well-known radio personality, creator of such ether-famed favourites as Sam Small and ’Erbert Pinwinkle; his Lancashire dialect songs and stories have won him a wide following on the coast-to-coast networks, Hollywood and radio. This is his second US stage appearance.’

  Even if they knew they were being bluffed, Equity decided not to take on the Shuberts over this matter, and replied the next day that, following a meeting, they had ‘granted your request permitting Equity members to work with Mr O’Malley, subject to all the rules and regulations of Equity’s Alien Actor Policy, particularly the payment of the alien actor dues.’63 Less happy was the outcome for Claudia Morgan, playing Vera Claythorne, sacked by the Shuberts when a Sunday evening radio commitment of hers was rescheduled to Fridays, causing a scheduling clash with the play.

  Most importantly, as the production playbill remarked, this was Agatha Christie’s ‘first play of her own writing to be presented in this country’. For one glorious week there were productions running simultaneously in the West End and on Broadway. Legendary New York Times cartoonist Al Hirschfeld drew caricatures of the play’s ten protagonists, which ran across the top of two pages. Agatha Christie, playwright, had not only arrived, but was suddenly
big business. The London run had been a great success, but following its Broadway premiere it was immediately clear that her classic suspense drama was desitined to become a truly global phenomenon.

  Options for professional productions had already been sold for a number of overseas territories during the war, including some that were under Nazi occupation at the time. On 13 November 1944 a licence was issued to the Czech-born film actor Herbert Lom, who had moved to the UK in 1939, to produce the play ‘in Czechoslovakia for five years from the liberation of Czechoslovakia or from the cessation of hostilities in Europe whichever is the earlier’.64 On 1 December 1944 the Finnish and Swedish rights – and those for Norway and Denmark from the date of ‘liberation or the cessation of hostilities in Europe, whichever is earlier’65 – were sold to the Finnish director Arvid Englind for five years from the date of agreement. Interestingly, Hughes Massie had allowed for the eventuality that hostilities might cease without the territories concerned actually having been liberated. In support of the continued effort to make them so, ENSA was licensed on 23 June 1944 to undertake a six-week tour, and Ten Little Niggers followed Love From a Stranger into the fray. The play had already become a forces favourite, with a special performance in London attended by Montgomery; and a group of Dutch prisoners of war even staged their own dramatisation at Buchenwald concentration camp.

  In September 1945 Hughes Massie took an advertisement in The Stage newspaper:

  TEN LITTLE NIGGERS

  As played at the St James’s Theatre, London; Broadhurst Theatre, New York; Theatre Maringy, Paris; Stockholm, Brussels and Buenos Aires

  NOW AVAILABLE FOR REPERTORY

  Apply: Hughes Massie66

  Amongst a number of high-profile repertory productions of Ten Little Niggers in the 1940s were those staged at the Embassy Theatre (1948) and the Theatre Royal Stratford East (1949). The Embassy, which in the 1930s had staged controversial plays addressing the ‘colour question’, evidently had no issue with the play’s title.

  This was just the beginning of what was to prove an extremely lucrative international and repertory market for Christie’s work, and it was her world-wide appeal, as evidenced by Hughes Massie’s voluminous licensing records, that within two decades was to confirm her position as without question the most performed female playwright in history. Although many of her contemporaries, including Clemence Dane, Dodie Smith and Enid Bagnold saw their work premiere both in the West End and on Broadway, none of them come close to achieving Christie’s lasting domestic and international success at all levels of production. Even the plays of hers that were to fare less well in the West End and on Broadway went on to carve a lucrative niche in secondary touring and repertory markets, trading on the reputation of their more successful counterparts. And all of this was masterminded by Edmund Cork, as it slowly dawned on him that the licensing of subsidiary rights of Christie’s work for the stage, if properly managed, could be a substantial revenue source for both his client and his agency.

  When Hughes Massie placed their advertisement, six weeks after the surrender of Japan finally ended the Second World War, Agatha Christie had just celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday. She rightly saw Ten Little Niggers as the turning point in her playwriting career, and later wrote to Rosalind:

  I remember when I had hopes of Ten Little Niggers being put on – Charles Cochran was mad about it – naturally I was very excited however his backers refused point blank to put up the cash – they were united in their opinion that it would be a terrible flop – laughed off the stage – one after another of the characters being killed off – the silliest plot they’d ever heard of – Cochran was very angry but he couldn’t win them over – when Bertie Meyer put it on quite unexpectedly a couple of years later, he was furious. Nobody laughed at everyone getting killed. Irene Hentschel produced it beautifully. It played at the St James Theatre till that was bombed in the war and then shifted to the Cambridge. All theatrical things are a pure gamble.67

  For Christie, though, the theatrical gamble wasn’t over, and there were to be some bitter disappointments before her position as the most successful female playwright of all time became unassailable.

  SCENE FIVE

  Towards Zero

  The triumphant progress of Ten Little Niggers was marred for Christie by the failure of three further full-length plays that she wrote, and that were premiered, during the war: her own adaptations of her novels Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death and Towards Zero.

  Christie remained enormously productive as a novelist during this period; between 1939’s Ten Little Niggers and 1945’s Sparkling Cyanide, she penned a further nine books, including such classics as Evil Under the Sun, The Body in the Library and Five Little Pigs. The year of 1944 alone saw the publication of Towards Zero, Death Comes as the End (the Egyptian historical mystery which benefited from the advice of Stephen Glanville) and a new Mary Westmacott novel, Absent in the Spring. Yet, while she rarely mentions her work as a novelist in her correspondence, her wartime letters to Max are brimming with news of her latest theatrical ventures, and of her close involvement in the process of nurturing them from page to stage. She also reports on her own frequent visits to the theatre in London where she enjoyed many of the great Shakespearian productions of the day, including those given by the Old Vic Company when it returned from its Blitz-imposed exile in Burnley to play at the New Theatre. Her commentaries on these productions are insightful and demonstrate a playwright’s appreciation of the craft.

  Given the volume of her own theatre work at this time, the frequent illegibility of her writing and her failure to date the majority of her correspondence, it is hardly surprising that disentangling her wartime theatrical activity has not been a priority for biographers who, in any case, tend to marginalise her work for the stage. The resulting picture, inevitably, has tended to be somewhat inaccurate. Her letters contained so much news of casting, rehearsals, rewrites and opening nights on tour and in the West End that even Max became confused. ‘Now pay attention,’ she chided him in October 1943, ‘Ten Little Niggers is not the Sullivan play! Allan Jeayes is playing the judge.’1

  Ten Little Niggers was, of course, Christie’s main theatre project throughout this period. As we have seen, the first draft was written in early 1940 and it eventually played in the West End between November 1943 and July 1944. A simultaneous touring production, commencing in April 1944 and for which Agatha attended rehearsals, was again directed by Irene Hentschel and presented by Meyer, Farndale and the PES. It starred Arthur Wontner as Wargrave, well known to the public for his 1930s film portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, in a performance that Agatha felt was even better than that of Allan Jeayes. The Shuberts’ Broadway production ran from June 1944 to January 1945 at the Broadhurst Theatre, continuing at the Plymouth Theatre until June 1945, and their US tour was on the road for two years from the autumn of 1944. The three further novel dramatisations that ran parallel with all this may well have been an exciting prospect for Christie at the time, but they ultimately did her reputation as a dramatist no favours with producers, actors or critics. Given her intense book writing schedule during this period, she may perhaps have been spreading her playwriting skills rather thin.

  The dramatisation of Death on the Nile, which turned out to be a massively time-consuming and frustrating project, had originally been conceived as another vehicle for Francis L. Sullivan, following the ill-fated Peril at End House. The first title to be discussed with Sullivan for this purpose was Triangle at Rhodes, a Poirot novella originally published in the Strand Magazine in 1936, and in the four-novella collection Murder in the Mews the following year. It was a sort of prototype for the 1941 novel Evil Under the Sun, but Edmund Cork clearly had reservations about its suitability for stage adaptation. In September 1942 he wrote to Agatha at Lawn Road, ‘I read Triangle At Rhodes last night. It certainly is a perfectly marvellous dramatic situation and would probably make just as good a play as any of them, but it is not the later, highly chara
cterised Poirot, is it?’2 Agatha wrote back, ‘I feel rather “anti” Poirot play.’3 As she later explained with reference to Black Coffee, in a letter to a researcher, ‘After seeing that and the previous plays dramatised from my books I decided, quite definitely that Hercule Poirot was utterly unsuited to appear in any detective play, because a detective must be necessarily the onlooker and observer, and can only succeed if he abandons detection for positive action. That is, he should not be in a detective play but in a thriller.’4