Curtain Up

by Julius Green

  In response, Saunders wrote to Kerr, not to object to the ‘lowbrow’ label but to applaud his perspicacity in celebrating it. This was typical of former journalist Saunders’ direct level of engagement with critics, and the letter provides a fine example of his committed and articulate advocacy of populist theatre:

  My Dear Kerr,

  I was most interested in your article, date lined London, August 14th, headed ‘Second rate London plays have rewarding virtues’, as I produce plays – including ‘Witness For The Prosecution’.

  At least I see in your article a clue as to why so many British plays fail on Broadway.

  From what you say, the American theatregoers live on a diet of caviar and grilled nightingales’ tongues on toast. There is no room for the hunk of bread and cheese.

  London critics can be as devastating and hypercritical as those in New York. But in the past twenty years they have gradually come round to the view that they must judge plays not on the grounds of ‘Is it good?’, but ‘Is it good of its kind?’

  London critics have frequently panned plays, at the same time qualifying their disapproval with ‘The public liked it’ and ‘The audience laughed hugely’. Those plays have frequently become box office successes, and yet the critics’ integrity has been retained.

  Now I think that these critics have done a vast service to the London theatre. The theatregoing public is no longer confined to London’s West End, but is 90% comprised of the outlying districts and provincial towns. The critics, by not strangling at birth plays which are good in their own sphere, have encouraged a brand new theatregoing public. This same theatregoing public might have to be dragged into the theatre by Agatha Christie or broad farce, but they may end up by taking a look in at Chekhov.

  I regret deeply that you say that lowbrows have been discouraged from bothering with Broadway. You cannot surely expect to have all the New York theatre full of what you call first-rate plays? Or if they are first-rate in type, some of them must be inevitably fifth rate in quality.

  Is it not better to see a good play by Agatha Christie than a bad one by Chekhov? The wine connoisseur may disdain the common beer, but beer will always have a larger public than wine.

  I am sorry I did not happen to meet you when you were in London, as I should have liked to have discussed the subject with you at length.

  Kind regards

  Yours sincerely,

  Peter Saunders31

  Needless to say, Kerr responded positively to Saunders’ missive, and the two struck up a dialogue.

  For all its populist appeal, or perhaps because of it, Christie’s work was also an enduring favourite with the royal family. Both Princess Margaret and the Duchess of Kent attended Witness for the Prosecution, the latter on two occasions, and on 1 December 1953 the Duke and Duchess of Windsor made their first appearance at a London theatre since their intended marriage led to the 1936 abdication crisis. The audience stood and applauded when they took their seats. The ultimate royal command performance, though, took place after the end of the West End run, when a production was specially mounted for two weeks in May 1955 by the Theatre Royal Windsor to coincide with a visit to their local theatre by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. John Counsell, the theatre’s director, believed that the visit was intended by the royals to be a gesture of support for the repertory movement, and as such it was no doubt a welcome one. He and the Queen’s private secretary had both suggested Witness for the Prosecution as the play to mark the occasion, as the newly crowned monarch had been sorry to miss it in the West End. When the Duke of Edinburgh enquired of a member of the theatre’s staff whether the news of the royal visit had made any difference to business, the response was, ‘Well, sir, to a play by Agatha Christie on a Saturday night, the honest answer must be “No”!’32

  If ever a playwright could boast of being ‘by Royal Appointment’ then it was Agatha Christie; but royal endorsement, of course, wins you no friends amongst the chroniclers of post-war theatre history. And, ironically, neither does successfully appealing to the widest possible market. Theatre histories tell us that in 1953 Joan Littlewood’s pioneering Theatre Workshop took over the Theatre Royal Stratford East, but not that a play by Agatha Christie was filling the Winter Garden.

  Amongst the many publicity schemes devised by Saunders to promote Witness for the Prosecution, arrangements were made to cancel a performance early in the run so that a five-minute extract could be performed live on Face the Music, a television programme then fronted by popular bandleader Henry Hall. Although it is not entirely clear from the surviving paperwork whether this scheme reached fruition, pay rates for the actors were agreed with the BBC and Saunders himself prepared a five-minute script featuring a narrator that he had written in for the occasion. ‘I am no script-writer,’ he modestly declared to his BBC contact.33

  A combination of critical approval and astute marketing ensured that Witness for the Prosecution was another financial success for Saunders, despite the perceived disadvantages of its West End home. In a letter to a prospective investor, he had warned, ‘Before definitely deciding to participate, I do feel I should stress the fact that this particular play is a complete speculation, and unlike The Mousetrap has a negligible value as to its subsidiary rights.’34 He presumably meant by this that the play’s large scale was likely to deter repertory productions. Ironically, it was The Mousetrap that would fail to realise the full potential of its subsidiary income, owing to the withholding of repertory and amateur rights during the West End run. The investors in Witness for the Prosecution, on the other hand, were destined to make an astonishing return on subsidiary rights; when the final accounts were drawn up in 1962, seven years after the end of its West End run, the profit distributed to investors, including income from repertory, touring and international sales, as well as a substantial film deal, stood at £98,812.35 Not bad for a play that cost £4,200 to put on.

  Six investors had between them contributed £2,000 to a £5,000 capitalisation, including reserve funds, leaving Peter Saunders responsible for £3,000. As Saunders states, the costs of the production were higher than anticipated, meaning that the reserve fund (£800) was unusually low as a proportion of the capital raised, and he is therefore likely to have had to underwrite the project himself in its early performance weeks. It is perhaps indicative of his nervousness that the production was technically mounted by Aurora Productions Ltd, another company he owned, rather than by his main company, Peter Saunders Ltd. This also effectively protected The Mousetrap from any potential financial fallout from Witness for the Prosecution. In the event, the gamble paid off handsomely. As well as its 37.5 per cent producer’s share of the profit, its own investment meant that Aurora Productions benefited from 60 per cent of the investors’ 62.5 per cent share; this amounted to 75 per cent of the overall profit, well over a million pounds in today’s money. With her £500 investment, Mrs Duke would have received her money back plus £6,176 (around £92,000 today). She would certainly have been able to afford to buy Mrs MacDougall a new dress.

  The play’s investors were not entitled to a share of amateur licensing income, although, perhaps precisely because of its large number of small roles, it was to prove hugely popular in this market too. Samuel French entered into their usual deal for English language publishing and amateur rights as soon as the play had opened in the West End, and Saunders benefited from half of Christie’s 80 per cent of amateur fees for the duration of his own licence.

  Forgive me if I pause to quote almost two pages about Witness for the Prosecution from Agatha Christie’s autobiography. To me, this passage sums up perfectly the huge thrill she got from her involvement with every element of the process of creating a piece of theatre and her deep understanding of and engagement with that process. Nowhere does she share with us the experience of writing a novel with the passion and detail that she does here:

  It was one of my plays that I liked best myself. I was as nearly satisfied with that play as I have been wit
h any. I didn’t want to write it; I was terrified of writing it. I was forced into it by Peter Saunders, who has wonderful powers of persuasion. Gentle bullying, subtle cajoling.

  ‘Of course you can do it.’

  ‘I don’t know a thing about legal procedure. I should make a fool of myself.’

  ‘That’s quite easy. You can read it up and we’ll have a barrister on hand to clear up anomalies and make it go right.’

  ‘I couldn’t write a court scene.’

  ‘Yes, you could – you’ve seen court scenes played. You can read up trials.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know . . . I don’t think I could.’

  Peter Saunders continued to say that of course I could, and that I must begin because he wanted the play quickly. So, hypnotised and always amenable to the power of suggestion, I read quantities of the Famous Trials series. I asked questions of solicitors as well as barristers; and finally I got interested and suddenly I felt I was enjoying myself – that wonderful moment in writing which does not usually last long but which carries one on with a terrific verve as a large wave carries you to shore. ‘This is lovely – I am doing it – it’s working – now, where shall we go next?’ There is that priceless moment of seeing the thing – not on the stage but in your mind’s eye. There it all is, the real thing, in a real court – not the Old Bailey because I hadn’t been there yet – but a real court sketchily etched in the background of my mind. I saw the nervous, desperate young man in the dock, and the enigmatic woman who came into the witness box to give evidence not for her lover but for the Crown. It is one of the quickest pieces of writing that I have done – I think it only took me two or three weeks after my preparatory reading.

  Naturally it had to have some changes in the procedure, and I also had to fight desperately for my chosen end to the play. Nobody liked it, nobody wanted it, everyone said it would spoil the whole thing. Everyone said: ‘You can’t get away with that,’ and wanted a different end – preferably one used in the original short story I had written years ago. But a short story is not a play. The short story had no court scene in it, no trial for murder. It was a mere sketch of an accused person and an enigmatic witness. I stuck out over the end. I don’t often stick out for things, I don’t always have sufficient conviction, but I had here. I wanted that end. I wanted it so much that I wouldn’t agree to have the play put on without it.

  I got my end, and it was successful. Some people said it was a double cross, or dragged in, but I knew it wasn’t; it was logical. It was what could have happened, what might have happened, and in my view what probably would have happened – possibly with a little less violence, but the psychology would have been right, and the one little fact that lay beneath it had been implicit all through the play . . .

  Of all the stage pieces I have had produced this came closest in casting to my own mental picture: Derek Bloomfield [sic] as the young accused; the legal characters whom I had never really visualised clearly, since I knew little of the law, but who suddenly came alive; and Patricia Jessel, who had the hardest part of all, and on whom the success of the play most certainly depended. I could not have found a more perfect actress. The part was a difficult one, especially in the first act, where the lines cannot help. They are hesitant, reserved, and the whole force of the acting has to be in the eyes, the reticence, the feeling of something malign held back. She suggested this perfectly – a taut, enigmatic personality. I still think her acting of the part of Romaine Helder [sic] was one of the best performances I have seen on a stage.36

  There speaks a true playwright, fully engaged with her art on all levels. And, if nothing else, this passage gives the lie to Hubert Gregg’s accusation that Christie never credited Saunders sufficiently for her theatrical successes. In her introduction to Saunders’ The Mousetrap Man, written after this but published before it, she reiterates, ‘His principal victory was making me write my play, Witness for the Prosecution . . . I still think it is the best play I have written and both Peter Saunders and others agree – but without him it would never have been written.’37

  Her husband also agreed with Agatha that it was her best play:

  Some of Agatha’s plays have earned as much fame and popularity as her books, and I think that most critics would name Witness for the Prosecution as the tops: The Old Bailey as the theatrical mise en scene held a magnetic attention for the audience, which felt itself in the dock; no-one who has seen the play will be able to forget it – the highest tribute one can pay to a work of art. Patricia Jessel gave a brilliant performance, and the play was destined for a good run, but the size of the cast, the amplitude and inconvenience of the theatre, prevented it from enjoying the long run that it deserved.38

  Max, interestingly, is the name of the female protagonist’s alleged lover in the play, taken from the short story which pre-dates Agatha’s relationship with Mallowan. There are some jottings which indicate that she toyed with changing the name to Ivan from that of her own husband for the play, but in the end she stuck with the reference to ‘my beloved Max’.

  In January 1954 Agatha booked a big group of friends to see Witness for the Prosecution and in February, buoyed by her theatrical success, she hosted a party at the Savoy for one hundred friends and relations. The guest list included Dorothy L. Sayers and Campbell and Dorothy Christie, whose successful court-martial drama Carrington VC had opened at the Westminster Theatre three months ahead of Witness for the Prosecution. Although a success, it had not proved to be the threat to Agatha’s play that Saunders had feared.

  In May 1954, declining box office income justified replacing the orchestra with an organist and Saunders negotiated a rent reduction with his landlords. These belt-tightening measures enabled Witness for the Prosecution to continue to run successfully at the Winter Garden until the end of January 1955, where it eventually completed 458 performances. Edmund Cork was a happy man. When the production had been running for just over a month, he wrote to Harold Ober in New York, ‘This play is the biggest success we have had for years. It was put on at the worst time of year in the worst theatre in the West End, and it is just packing out. We are selling rights for it all over Europe on terms which we had only heard about before!’39 And it wasn’t just Europe that was interested. Broadway was also beckoning again, and this time all were agreed that Christie’s play was sufficiently ‘first rate’ to pass muster on the Great White Way.

  As soon as the London production of Witness for the Prosecution opened, American producers started to bid for the Broadway rights. In New York Christie was still celebrated for the outstanding success of Ten Little Indians a decade earlier. The brief pre-war appearances of Morton’s The Fatal Alibi and Vosper’s Love From a Stranger were long forgotten, Hidden Horizon had sunk without trace after twelve performances in 1946, Towards Zero and The Suspects had never made it to Broadway and The Mousetrap had deliberately been withheld. The scene was well and truly set for a second Broadway triumph for Christie.

  Saunders and Cork’s growing impatience with the Shuberts over their handling of The Hollow effectively ruled them out as Broadway partners for Witness for the Prosecution, and Lee Shubert’s death in December 1953 in any case drew a convenient line under their dealings with his company. In his autobiography, Basil Dean recounts how he had found some respite from his own wearisome dealings with the Shuberts in the good company of independent New York producer Gilbert Miller, a Sullivan-sized personality who took Dean under his hospitable wing: ‘I should have had a thin time of it during those first days in New York but for Gilbert Miller’s friendliness.’40 Now, over thirty years later, it was to this characterful figure that Saunders also turned.

  Sixty-nine-year-old New Yorker Miller was well known on the London theatre scene, where he was involved in the St James’s Theatre, and had enjoyed success as a producer on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, it was as a West End producer that Miller had first made his mark, clocking up sixteen West End productions, including the 1916 hit Daddy Long Legs, before his
first Broadway venture in 1922. His London years had been notable for a successful business relationship with Gerald du Maurier, and although since the 1930s he had focused more on his work in New York, he continued to produce regularly in London as well. No one could have been better positioned to deal with the issues surrounding the presentation of Christie’s sometimes very ‘English’ work on Broadway, and Miller personified a showbiz pizzazz that Saunders and Cork had doubtless found lacking in their seemingly interminable dealings with the Shuberts’ lawyers.

  Ably supported by his Hungarian general manager, George Banyai, Miller was very much the man of the moment in New York; in 1951 he had presented the Oliviers in a transfer of their London success alternating Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra with Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and, by way of contrast, had introduced Broadway to twenty-two-year-old Audrey Hepburn in Gigi. His Times obituary would note that ‘Miller’s association with a play was a guarantee that, whether it was by Harold Pinter or Terence Rattigan, by Anouilh or Agatha Christie, it would be presented with theatrical glitter, excitement and a conscientious regard for its style and purpose.’41 Better still, Miller operated Henry Miller’s Theatre (now the Stephen Sondheim), founded by his father in 1918, a truly independent concern that had escaped the clutches of the Shuberts. And it was here that Witness for the Prosecution was destined to find its Broadway home.

  ‘A lot of American producers wanted to buy Witness for the Prosecution,’ writes Saunders, ‘and I decided to co-produce it with Gilbert Miller, chiefly because he seemed quite happy for me to take a much more active part in the production than the others wanted me to do.’42 It was perhaps because Miller was such a well-known figure on the London scene that Cork and Saunders felt confident to draw up the American paperwork themselves and, despite the tortuous debâcle with the Shuberts over The Hollow, that they once again did so without consulting Harold Ober and his lawyers. They did, however, take on board Ober’s previous warning that it was essential to use the Dramatists Guild Minimum Basic Agreement, ensuring that this labyrinthine document formed the basis of the contract. Additional paperwork43 specified that principal roles should be played as far as possible by Englishmen (leaving the large number of non-speaking roles to American Equity members) and emphasised that no changes to the script could be made without the author’s permission. It was also explicitly stated that a share in the income from the sale of film rights would only be triggered by a minimum run of six weeks on Broadway.