by Julius Green
Neither Christie nor Saunders had been able to attend the Broadway premiere of Witness for the Prosecution, as they were busy preparing for their next West End production, Spider’s Web, though Saunders had managed to get to New Haven for the opening of its pre-Broadway tour. There was still unfinished business with the Shuberts relating to their licence for The Hollow which Saunders hoped he could resolve on his visit to America, and he was keen to meet with Harold Ober’s lawyers Howard Reinheimer and Irving Cohen to discuss this. Edmund Cork wrote a formal letter for Ober to use when presenting Saunders to third parties: ‘This will introduce Peter Saunders who, as you know, is coming to New York in connection with the production of Witness for the Prosecution. Peter Saunders has become about the most successful independent theatre manager here, and is very important to us as he presents all the Christie plays, but it is more to the point that he is a very good friend, and I would appreciate anything you can do for him while he is in America.’66
In the covering note to Ober accompanying the letter of introduction, Cork reminds him that Saunders has had The Mousetrap running for two years and Witness for the Prosecution for almost a year. He comments that business on the Spider’s Web tour is indicative that it will be the ‘biggest success of the three’ and that Saunders’ production of William Douglas Home’s The Manor at Northstead is also playing to ‘packed houses’. Delightfully, and veraciously, Cork adds that ‘Peter is a man of great integrity but he is much less easy-going than most theatrical people, and I should think it quite possible that his relations with American managers will need a little lubrication.’ Although Cork’s word of warning was not without justification, Saunders appears to have charmed the Americans: ‘I find Peter Saunders a very attractive man and he spoke very warmly of you,’ wrote Ober to Cork.67 There is a marvellous picture of Saunders taken on this visit, standing next to a large car outside the Shubert Theatre in New Haven and looking every inch the successful impresario. Although the Shuberts no longer owned the New Haven theatre that bore their name, it is ironic that Saunders, having switched allegiance to Miller, found himself standing under signage that advertised it.
Despite Francis L. Sullivan’s excellent reviews, and his long and chatty ‘letters home’ to Saunders (in which he urged Saunders to cast him in the rumoured film of Witness for the Prosecution, and to look out for work for his actress niece),68 the management seem to have been keen to dispense with their troublesome male star at the earliest opportunity. They were clearly intending to replace him as soon as his contract expired at the end of June 1955, and as early as February Saunders was writing to Banyai, ‘The part of Sir Wilfred Robarts must be played by an unusual personality, and not just a good actor. I don’t have to tell you, too, how important the girl is – although curiously enough Robarts is at least as important . . . If Mr Miller liked the idea, I would urge you to sign him [David Horne] up now, and I think you could get him more cheaply than Sullivan, especially if you could give his wife a non-speaking part at a nominal salary.’69 However, events were about to secure Sullivan’s position in the role.
In 1955 the Broadway production of Witness for the Prosecution scooped a number of prestigious awards. At the ninth annual Tony Awards in March, Francis L. Sullivan and Patricia Jessel were honoured as Best Featured Actor and Best Featured Actress in a Play; this was an extraordinary achievement for the two British performers, although it rather makes one wonder what the judges considered the leading male and female roles in the play to be. In April, Christie herself received the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers Guild of America for Witness for the Prosecution, and the following month the play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play, keeping good company with the Best Play, Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. All of this, of course, put a premium on the performances of Sullivan and Jessel, and in the end both of their contracts were extended until the end of the Broadway run, after which they headlined Miller’s tour of the play to major US cities including Chicago and Los Angeles. Sullivan was even awarded a six-week holiday and a salary of $1,000 per week as part of his new deal.70
Witness for the Prosecution played for 645 performances on Broadway and, as in London, the production was a huge financial success as well as a critical one. I have been unable to locate accounts (in fact, Saunders frequently criticised Miller for failing to supply detailed accounting), but it is noted in correspondence between the producers that at its height the Broadway production, which ran for almost two years, was averaging well over $4,000 profit per week ($1,000 of which went to Saunders), with Christie’s royalties worth over $2,000 per week.71
In my view it can be no coincidence that Christie’s two big Broadway successes were also the subjects of two of the most successful films of her work, René Clair’s And Then There Were None (1945) and Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957). But if negotiations over film rights with the Shuberts had seemed tortuous, then these were to pale into insignificance when it came to dealing with Gilbert Miller on the subject; ‘I have never known such hell!’ Cork wrote to Ober in September 1955.72 Not only did Miller initially maintain that the previous licensing of television rights to the short story in the USA might compromise the sale of film rights but, when the time came, Saunders and Cork proved unable to agree with him on a timetable for such a sale. The English producer and agent were all for securing an immediate sale off the back of the Broadway reviews, but the more experienced Miller wanted to protect his Broadway revenues and in any case felt that the longer the show ran in New York the higher the price they would be able to command; and there were certainly plenty of bidders. Contractually, it was up to Saunders when to sell the film rights and for how much (Saunders would receive 30 per cent of the price and Miller 20 per cent); but it was discovered that the small print of the American Dramatists Guild Minimum Basic Agreement had given Miller himself the right to match any offer made by a third party. Suspicion thus grew in the English camp that Miller had a vested interest in keeping the price as low as possible and was doing his best to jeopardise a lucrative sale.
In using the Dramatists Guild Agreement as the basis for the deal with Miller for Witness for the Prosecution, Cork and Saunders had been unaware that it included certain ‘Supplemental Provisions’ which they appear not to have had a copy of. Miller’s ‘matching right’ was part of these provisions and, according to Ober, would have been deleted as a matter of course had his office had sight of it. Ironically, therefore, it was Cork and Saunders’ maladroit attempt to apply the Agreement that had created the problem. Ober’s weary admonition of Cork in March 1955 was once more by way of closing the stable door: ‘I hope that in future neither you nor Peter Saunders will sign a contract with an American manager or picture company without having it gone through by an American lawyer or agent, preferably by both.’73
In the end, much to Miller’s chagrin, Ober was brought in to assist with brokering the sale of the film rights. Miller’s lieutenant, George Banyai, complained to Saunders that Ober was ‘slow, old-fashioned and thinks $100,000 is a lot of money’.74 Saunders replied to Banyai, ‘I do so regret that after my friendly association with the Gilbert Miller office this slight feeling of acrimony has crept in.’75 Shortly afterwards Saunders wrote to Robert Lewis, the play’s director, ‘When I am told that Miller is the best of American managements to deal with, I wonder what the others are like’;76 this elicited the response, ‘Please don’t even repeat such nonsense that Miller is the best of the American managers. He has been for years among all intelligent people a laughing stock. I have told you of some good American managers and there are a few more. Probably the same percentage as in England or elsewhere.’77
The Hollywood press followed the convoluted negotiations for the film sale with interest, and substantial figures from $250,000 to $450,000 were talked about. Warner Brothers, United Artists, 20th Century Fox, Columbia and MGM were all at the table at some point, and the labyrinthine and sometimes
acrimonious film negotiations fill several files on both sides of the Atlantic. At the end of 1955 Miller, with some partners, eventually paid $325,000 (reported in the UK as £116,00078) to exercise his matching right and outbid Louis B. Mayer, who had reached a widely reported deal with Ober for $300,000.79 Miller immediately sold the rights on to American film producer Edward Small for $435,000.80 The sale to Miller was thus not quite the unqualified triumph reported by Cork to his client and trumpeted by Saunders in the British press. In any event, the eventual 1957 film was produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr and Edward Small, and released by United Artists. The film’s opening credits billed Witness for the Prosecution as ‘Agatha Christie’s international stage success’ and its cast included Charles Laughton as Robarts, a singing Marlene Dietrich as Christine (Broadway audiences had sniggered at the name Romaine, believing it meant ‘lettuce’) and Tyrone Power as Vole (in his last role before his death in 1958 at the age of forty-four). It also featured popular Irish actress Una O’Connor repeating her Broadway success in the role of housekeeper Janet Mackenzie, and Laughton’s wife, Elsa Lanchester, in a part written in especially for her. Francis L. Sullivan, who had become an American citizen after the Broadway opening, had died in New York the previous year, aged fifty-three. He had written to Saunders expressing his hope that he would be cast in the film, and the final irony of his career was that, having won a Tony award for his role in the play, he was posthumously and conclusively upstaged by Charles Laughton.
Agatha had taken the precaution of organising in advance of the film sale for its proceeds to be gifted to Rosalind as part of Edmund Cork’s ongoing tax avoidance strategy (not tax ‘evading’, as stated in Laura Thompson’s biography of Christie, I am happy to assure readers). Rosalind wrote to Cork, ‘I am content to leave it to you to do your best with Gilbert Miller but hope you will fix something with him soon – 300,000 dollars will suit me.’81 The letter is dated simply ‘July 12th’. You would think that for a missive of such import it might have been appropriate to make a note of the year (1955). But like mother, like daughter.
It was not until Witness for the Prosecution was installed on Broadway that Cork felt it safe to experiment with American licensing for the relatively low-key The Mousetrap. There was some excitement when Jack Benny’s agent asked to see a script at the end of 1954: ‘The idea appears to be outrageous at first,’ wrote Cork to Ober, ‘but I am inclined to think this is just the sort of gimmick that is necessary to put this play over in America.’82 Quite which role in The Mousetrap the sixty-year-old comedian was considering is unclear but, perhaps fortunately for all concerned, the idea went no further.
On 3 May 1955 Cork wrote to Rosalind:
The Mousetrap has passed its thousandth performance in London [which it had celebrated on 22 April] and as from yesterday the cast has been completely changed, with the exception of Patric Doonan [who had replaced Attenborough] and we are hoping that it will go on for some time at the Ambassadors, and that this will be followed by a long tour with the London company . . . Whether this is a play that will stand up to Broadway is very doubtful indeed. Half a dozen American managements have been interested, but finally decided that it was too ‘small’ a play for them. However, we are embarking on rather an interesting experiment, which will show how the Americans react to it. We have made arrangements for one of the best of the summer theatres – the Arena Theatre in Washington DC – to put it on for a season of eight weeks. This will probably not bring in more than about a thousand dollars in cash, but it will give us a chance of judging how God’s Own People like it. If it clicks, then on to Broadway in the autumn.83
Ober was less convinced that Washington was a potential stepping-stone to Broadway, advising Cork that ‘it is my experience that it is difficult to tell from a summer production whether a play will be a Broadway success.’84 He had, however, heard good things about the 247-seat Arena Stage from his son and from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter, Frances, both of whom lived in Washington, and he spoke highly to Cork of Zelda Fichandler, ‘who seems a very intelligent woman and whose small theatre in Washington is successful’.85 Co-founded by Fichandler five years previously in a converted former burlesque and movie house, Arena Stage was one of America’s first not-for-profit theatres and a pioneer of the regional theatre movement. Perhaps most interestingly, The Mousetrap, like all its productions, was to be performed in the round, which must have presented the set designer with some challenges.
And so it was that the American premiere of The Mousetrap took place in Washington DC on 17 May 1955, directed by Zelda Fichandler. Ober was right: the outcome in Washington was a happy one, but it did not propel the play to Broadway. The Washington Post and Times Herald reviewed it favourably: ‘Arena, I suspect, has a major hit in this take-you-out-of-yourself evening.’86 On 15 June, Cork wrote to Rosalind, ‘The Mousetrap does well at Washington. The house is sold out every night and they would like to run it all summer. I don’t think there is any reason why they should not. There doesn’t seem to be any interest in a Broadway production so far, the general idea being that it would be rather an anti-climax to Witness for the Prosecution if it were done on Broadway. However, I don’t think there is any doubt that it will do very well with amateurs, and bring in a lot of money for Mathew.’87 Ironically, Arena Stage, which moved to larger premises after the run of The Mousetrap, would in future years become a major supplier of productions for Broadway.
Witness for the Prosecution closed on Broadway on 30 June 1956, but it was not until 5 November 1960 that The Mousetrap finally received its New York premiere at the Maidman Playhouse, ‘off Broadway’s finest theatre’ according to a profile of its young producer, Robert Feldstein, in the New York Journal-American three weeks before it opened.88 In the article, Feldstein claimed to have been in negotiation for the rights for a year and a half and that the production had broken all off-Broadway records for advance sales. He also confidently predicted a run of ‘four years’. He was certainly an energetic promoter, feeding amusing stories to the press and providing audiences with forms on which they were encouraged to indicate who they thought the murderer was before the start of the second act.
The New York reviews were not raves, but neither were they as damning as those for Hidden Horizon. They praised the acting, direction and set and, whilst finding some flaws in the script, seemed generally happy to enter into the spirit of the piece despite it lacking the high drama of Ten Little Indians and Witness for the Prosecution. ‘It is a paradox of the London theatre that, although Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is not her best play it is her most successful,’ observed the New York Times, adding that ‘it is not exactly a blood-curdling experience. One murder does take place on the stage, and another impends through most of the evening. But it is the Christie skill and polish in throwing you off the scent that keeps the entertainment going’ and concluding, ‘The Mousetrap will not exactly shake you up, but neither will it let you down.’89 The Morning Telegraph was less supportive, describing the play as a ‘mild little mystery charade’ and remarking that ‘Agatha Christie has written excellent mystery thrillers for the stage such as Witness for the Prosecution and Ten Little Indians. The latest detective story is not in the same class. It is not even up to grade C Christie, which is too low on the scale even for off-Broadway, where you have to be more thrilling, more stimulating than the Broadway fat cats to attract audiences.’90
On 10 November, Cork wrote to Christie, ‘I enclose the New York Times review of The Mousetrap. The reception has not been quite as good as I hoped it might be, but the Ober office think it has a chance of a fair run. These off-Broadway productions, although they can be remunerative, are on a small scale and do not interfere with other rights. I see I wrote fully about the pros and cons on the 13th of July, and I am sorry to find now that you are rather against it.’91 The production moved to the off-Broadway Greenwich Mews Theatre on 15 February and completed a total of 192 performances. The Mousetrap never played Broadway, and
the best that can be said of its New York premiere is ‘no harm done’.
It seems, however, that the 1960 production was not technically the play’s New York premiere. A typewritten flyer archived in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts advertises The Mousetrap for the ‘First Time in New York!’ for four performances from 5 to 7 December 1957 at 263 West 86th Street.92 This is the address of the West End Theatre, a small community theatre on the second floor of the Methodist Church of St Paul and St Andrew. The production was directed by Franklyn Lenthall, a notable collector of theatrical artefacts who in the same year purchased the Boothbay Playhouse in Maine. Whatever the status of the Lenthall Players, they were presumably presenting the play under an amateur licence. But in doing so they made theatrical history.
Agatha herself never saw one of her plays performed on Broadway. She visited New York in 1956, after Witness for the Prosecution had closed, when accompanying Max to America to collect a gold medal that he had been awarded by the University of Pennsylvania. They also took the opportunity to go to Hollywood, where at least she was able to see Witness for the Prosecution being filmed. This was the first time Agatha had been to America since the Grand Tour with Archie in 1922 and she greatly enjoyed the experience. She was to go once more, ten years later, again accompanying Max who was giving a lecture tour, and on this occasion taking the opportunity to visit her American paternal grandfather’s grave in New York’s Greenwood cemetery.
SCENE FOUR
Hat-Trick
Amongst Gilbert Miller’s papers from this period is a letter from John Gielgud dated 26 November 1953. It reads,
Dear Gilbert,
Thank you so much for thinking of me on the first night at the Haymarket. The warmth of the audience and their enthusiastic reception was touching and thrilling, as you can imagine, and I have never been more aware of the kindness and love that has surrounded me at this time.