by Julius Green
It was to the Martha’s Vineyard production that Shubert is referring in his letter to Christie of the following month, expressing his hope that she herself will now undertake the necessary changes. Ober was tasked with establishing exactly what was needed, and at the end of November wrote to Cork to say that Shubert and, interestingly, de Courville both thought that ‘the denoument is abrupt and does not play well. They feel that Mrs Mallowan could with very little rewriting handle this scene more adroitly.’49 A week later he followed this up with
I had a discussion a couple of days ago with Shubert and de Courville regarding the Towards Zero contract . . . De Courville, as a matter of fact, urged that we try to get Mrs Mallowan to come over here and work on revisions of the play and I am glad to see that this is in the realm of possibility. I think the difficulty could also be solved by having the play tried out in England first. You will have had by now my letter saying that neither de Courville nor Shubert want any drastic alterations and they do not want to change the character of the play. It has been difficult, however, to get them to be very specific about what they feel is the matter with it. They gave the play a stock try-out [another reference to the Martha’s Vineyard production] and they simply feel that the denouement is abrupt and does not play well. If this is so it would be apparent in an English try-out and Mrs Mallowan could fix the script over there.50
He goes on to suggest that, English rights being reserved to Christie, Bertie Meyer could perhaps offer the Shuberts a co-production in London. Changes, however, were not forthcoming from Agatha, and she did not take up the Shuberts’ apparently generous offer of a trip to New York to carry out the work.
After the frenzied activity of the war, Agatha was now reunited with Max and with Greenway; the former unscathed by his contribution to the air force’s work in North Africa, the latter with the colourful addition of a mural depicting the American navy’s war effort, painted by one of its wartime residents. Clement Attlee’s Labour Party, with its full-blooded commitment to the introduction of a Welfare State, had swept Churchill from power after the end of hostilities in Europe. It was a time of austerity and of change and Agatha, like many of her contemporaries, seems to have been afflicted with post-war doldrums. Despite the safe return of Max, the war had taken its toll on her family, with the loss in October 1944 of her son-in-law Hubert Prichard, just at the moment when she had been rushing to complete the script of Towards Zero. Now was a time for taking stock and looking to the future rather than tidying up loose ends from wartime projects. The Shuberts’ licence was extended to enable them to open on Broadway by 1 October 1946, but it was not to be, and Agatha Christie’s play of Towards Zero was never seen or heard of again.
One of the conditions of the contract extension on Towards Zero negotiated by Ober was that the Shuberts were obliged to put Hidden Horizon, now incorporating some changes that they had requested in Act Three, into production in the meantime. The eventual fate of Hidden Horizon thus appears to have been dictated more by contractual considerations than by any genuine enthusiasm for the piece on the part of either its British or American producers. In order to understand the motivations of those concerned it is necessary to appreciate the huge premium that the licensing system placed on achieving a West End (and, in America, a Broadway) production. The originating producer in the UK would secure the rights to a new play by paying an advance against the writer’s royalty income (typically £100 against 10 per cent of box office sales). This would give the producer a specified period (usually one year) in which to secure a West End opening (often following a pre-West End tour or provincial ‘try-out’). The option period could usually be extended in return for a further advance payment, provided that no other managements were competing for the licence. Having opened in the West End, the licensee would have the right themselves to produce the work in Great Britain, Ireland and various dominions, colonies and dependencies for a period of seven years in return for the agreed royalty payments. They would also have the right to sub-license in these territories and would have first option to acquire for sub-licence the American rights, retaining a share of the author’s income from any such deals.
In the case of Hidden Horizon, for instance, if Reandco had produced in the West End, exercised the American option and then sub-licensed to a Broadway producer, they would have received 40 per cent of Christie’s royalties. The West End production would also have entitled them to a third of her income from the play in other overseas territories. In this instance, a commission was deductible from Reandco’s share and payable to Sullivan’s company Eleven Twenty Three Ltd who had, with Hughes Massie’s co-operation, assigned their original licence to Reandco.
Having opened in the West End, the producer would also benefit from the sale of film rights if this took place within the seven-year period, in this case receiving a third of income from the sale of either the play or the original novel, Death on the Nile. During the seven-year period, the producer would also receive a share (in this case 40 per cent) of the author’s income from amateur, repertory, broadcasting and television rights in Britain and associated territories. A sub-licence issued by the originating West End producer to an American producer would similarly give them a timeframe in which to produce on Broadway, following which the American producer would be entitled to a share of the British producer’s income from a film sale and from American sub-licensing, in particular to stock (i.e. repertory) theatres. These financial incentives offered to the originating West End producer and their Broadway counterpart were deemed to be fair recompense for the publicity that these particularly high-profile productions would bring to the work, thereby enhancing its attraction to film studios (for which a Broadway run was particularly important), repertory, touring, stock and amateur companies. They also gave the producers concerned a vested interest in assisting the writer’s agent with maximising the various potential income streams from it during the seven-year duration of the original licence. Arrangements not dissimilar to these remain custom and practice in the licensing of stage works to this day. Edmund Cork was no fool, and he understood the nuances of the game very well.
Following their failure to find a West End home for the play, Reandco’s West End option for Hidden Horizon had duly been allowed to lapse on 16 October 1945, but two weeks later a new licence was issued to them on rather different terms. Alec Rea had by now become a substantial producing force in his own right, and Cork saw no advantage in falling out of favour with him, given his continued interest in Christie’s work. Reandco’s prevarication had forfeited them their share of income from a film sale and various other secondary licences, although they retained post-West End touring rights, and in the new deal Christie was, unusually, entitled to 20 per cent of profits to the producer arising out of the licence.51 All this was the price of Cork’s continued patience.
Most significantly, as a special condition of the arrangement whereby they had been allowed to sell an American option to the Shuberts without themselves having presented the play in the West End, any income generated thereby for Reandco would be held in an escrow account by Hughes Massie until they themselves had staged a West End production. Reandco’s new licence contained the usual provision for an American option to be taken up after the West End opening. So, with the most powerful theatre organisation on earth already holding a licence for a Broadway production, Reandco had the biggest possible incentive to achieve a West End run for the play, exercise their American option and cash in their share of the income from a likely Broadway run. Cork’s strategy in reinstating Reandco’s entitlement to 40 per cent of Christie’s Broadway income may at first seem questionable but, as internal Shubert correspondence shows, they were, unsurprisingly, reluctant to exercise their option on an English play if that play had not been deemed worthy of a West End run. And in any case the boost to secondary markets for the play that a West End run would bring was evidently deemed worth the sacrifice by Cork. The renegotiated licence issued to Reandco in October 1945 i
s the first time that we see the play referred to as ‘Murder on the Nile’52 – the play’s third title, for what was to be its third production. For this incarnation Reandco continued to share producing credits with Barry O’Brien.
In the circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the eventual West End production of Murder on the Nile appears to have been something of a half-hearted affair, doubtless motivated principally by Reandco’s desire to secure a share of the American income and the sale of a sub-licence for the post-West End touring rights in the piece; ‘direct from the West End’ carried a certain cachet then, as it does now. The production opened at the Ambassadors Theatre on 19 March 1946, more than two years after it had premiered in Dundee. It ran for six weeks. This was not, as has previously been assumed, because it failed at the box office, but because it had been specifically booked in for a limited season while, according to The Stage, the cast of the long-running popular revue Sweeter and Lower took a holiday and rehearsed for the opening of its sequel Sweetest and Lowest.
The cast of Murder on the Nile was largely that which had appeared in the previous year’s tour, and the director was once again Oxford-educated Claud Gurney – a safe pair of hands but no Irene Hentschel. Contrary to some accounts, the role of Miss ffoliott-ffoulkes was played not by Helen Hayes, who later portrayed Miss Marple on American TV, but by the more elderly British actress Helen Haye. Having provided ‘Oriental singing’ in both Dundee and on tour, Mischa de la Motte was no longer with the company, and the highly regarded Vivienne Bennett (who had appeared in the 1937 television broadcast of Emlyn Williams’ Night Must Fall) had taken over the role of Jacqueline de Severac. But the most significant change was that the man for whom the play had been written was himself no longer in it. Francis L. Sullivan was either not available or simply didn’t fancy a six-week run, and Father Borrowdale (as he was now named) was played by character actor David Horne. The next we hear of Sullivan is from Cork at the end of the following year, with regard to the possibility of him appearing in an American tour of Alibi. Mrs Sullivan’s scenery was retained for Murder on the Nile and continued to receive good reviews, although for the most part the play and the actors didn’t.
The Times led off the critical drubbing: ‘Once more the “Who did it?” piece, and this time in its crudest form. Motives are distributed amongst passengers in the Observation Saloon of the Nile Steamer as lightly as though they were raffle tickets, and none of those who receive one has the personality to make us wish that he or she will or will not be the winner or loser . . . we cannot help hoping that it will turn out to be the parson who, whether as a platitudinous Father Confessor or a highly ratiocinative amateur detective, is no end of a bore.’53 To save you looking it up, as I had to, ratiocination is the process of logical reasoning.
The Daily Mail put it even more bluntly: ‘If even my gullible old eyes can spot successively the future assassin, the accomplice, and even the method of murder in Murder on the Nile, something is wrong. Indeed, it is a hard job to find much right with Agatha Christie’s new thriller . . . the company in general seems to suffer from a lack of spirit, natural enough in the circumstances, yet something which I found myself catching.’54
The Observer’s Ivor Brown, whose wartime household income had been swelled by royalties from the West End and touring productions of Ten Little Niggers, was less condemnatory:
As far as plot (intricate of course) is concerned, the new Agatha Christie play might as well have tipped its corpses into the Nile. But Egypt offers the scene painter a better chance (nicely taken by Danae Gaylen) . . . The piece has the proper excitements of its hard-worked kind; a weakness lies in the blending of the usual mystery-mechanism with unusual human emotion. We have come to take our murders lightly in this kind of theatre; consequently a serious ending, with the guilty party nobly declining an obvious suicide at sacerdotal urgence, the better to find salvation via the scaffold, is too momentous a finale for so light a morsel of playmaking . . . Mr David Horne, as a detectively-minded Anglican priest, persuasively mixes clues and canonicals . . .55
The Stage noticed that ‘Father Borrowdale has a good deal in common with his Chestertonian counterpart Father Brown. David Horne, playing a part that has been taken on tour by Francis Sullivan, very skilfully suggests, both in appearance and manner, this subtly contrived pillar of the High Church.’56 The Daily Telegraph noted that whilst ‘not a vintage Christie’ the production was ‘likely to fill the Ambassadors Theatre for some time to come’;57 in fact it didn’t, simply because of the limited engagement at the theatre. For some reason Rea does not appear to have advertised the fact that this was a limited season, but on 27 April, as scheduled, the production moved aside to enable Sweetest and Lowest to open. Two days previously, The Stage had announced that touring producer D. Rewse-White had secured the UK touring rights from Reandco and that a tour would commence in July; the deal had doubtless been brokered by co-producer Barry O’Brien, who booked touring dates for Rewse-White. The previous week Reandco had taken up their American option and thereby secured their share of any income from a Broadway production. The intentionally brief West End run of Murder on the Nile at least appears to have served its purpose in certain respects.
Murder on the Nile opened two weeks after the closure – having clocked up a record-breaking 1,998 performances – of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit. Coward’s Private Lives was in its second year at the Apollo, and the Old Vic Company, led by Olivier and Richardson, were playing Henry IV Part One at the New Theatre. Competing for the attention of Shakespeare audiences, the irrepressible Donald Wolfit could be seen in a repertoire of the Bard’s work at the Winter Garden Theatre. On a lighter note, Lupino Lane was appearing in Me and My Girl at the Victoria Palace, and it was the last chance to see Bud Flanagan in Cinderella at the Adelphi. Esther McCracken’s No Medals was in its second year at the Vaudeville and Mary Hayley Bell’s Duet for Two Hands was enjoying success at the Lyric, co-produced by Jack Buchanan and the People’s Entertainment Society.
Six weeks after Murder on the Nile closed, Reandco, in co-production with the increasingly ubiquitous H.M. Tennent Ltd, opened another Christie play which ran for 289 performances at the West End’s Apollo Theatre. On this occasion, the Christies concerned were Dorothy and Campbell Christie; Campbell, the younger brother of Agatha’s former husband, enjoyed a successful playwriting partnership with his wife. They had already seen two of their plays performed in the West End, including 1935’s ‘comedy thriller’ Someone at the Door, which appears to have been written at exactly the time when Agatha herself was penning the similarly titled Someone at the Window. Now, in 1946, Grand National Night was to be Dorothy and Campbell Christie’s first big success, and would be followed by a number of other plays including Carrington VC and The Touch of Fear. Agatha had remained on friendly terms with Campbell, a well-known wit with a distinguished record of military service, following her divorce from Archie; but it must nonetheless have rankled somewhat to see her own producer score such an apparently effortless hit for a part-time writer. When in 1963 Campbell was found dead in his gas-filled kitchen at the age of sixty-nine, a hugely respectful Times obituary quoted his view on state subsidy for the arts as being ‘Why pay people to put plays on that audiences don’t want to see?’58
Given Murder on the Nile’s undistinguished West End premiere, it seems extraordinary that the Shuberts decided to proceed with a Broadway production at all. In early July 1946 J.J. Shubert wrote to brother Lee, in one of the terse internal memos that characterised the organisation: ‘I notice you have Hidden Horizon which must be produced by September 30, 1946; also Towards Zero by October 1, 1946. Are you going to do anything about producing these plays?’59 Their company had so far invested $10,000 in acquiring options on them, so the question was a legitimate one.
The Shuberts’ paper trail on Hidden Horizon makes that for Ten Little Indians look relatively straightforward; this is largely due to their having been licensed by Reandco, who a
t the time were themselves about to lose their licence for failing to produce in the West End. The Shuberts’ ever-diligent lawyers had spotted that Reandco would have no film or American stock rights to pass on if they themselves had failed to produce in the West End, and a side agreement with Christie to secure their position in this regard was therefore required, reassuring the Shuberts that in the event that Reandco’s own licence lapsed, they would still receive 25 per cent of income from a film sale and 50 per cent of income from stock licences if they produced the play on Broadway. That, along with tortuous dealings with the Dramatists Guild and de Courville, numerous assignments and warranties that were required from the various parties (going back as far as Sullivan’s Eleven Twenty Three Ltd) and a number of requests to extend the date on the Broadway licence, kept the Shuberts’ lawyers and the Ober office busy for almost six months.
Eventually, on 27 July 1945, an exasperated Ober wrote to Lee Shubert himself (‘Shubert, as you know, is a difficult man,’ he had commented to Cork two weeks earlier60): ‘With painstaking care we have gotten all the supplementary documents which your legal department thought necessary . . . Now I am constantly getting enquiries from our London office, wanting to know what the status of the contract is. I am afraid, therefore, that unless the contracts are returned to us fully executed by Friday, August 3rd, we will have to withdraw the play and make other arrangements for its production.’61 Shubert signed the contract on 1 August.