Curtain Up

by Julius Green

  As ever, John1

  Gielgud had just opened in in N.C. Hunter’s A Day by the Sea at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket for Tennent Productions, playing alongside Ralph Richardson, Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike. This was his first West End appearance since his arrest and fine the previous month for soliciting an undercover police officer in a public lavatory, and Miller had been amongst the numerous members of the theatrical community to send their good wishes at what was clearly a very difficult time for him.

  As it turned out, though, A Day by the Sea was about to become the centre of media attention for a very different reason than the sexual proclivities of one of its stars. Growing resentment amongst theatre producers about the monopolistic tendencies of the Tennent empire had led Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt to undertake a detailed investigation of its activities. Binkie Beaumont’s skilful operation of an entertainments tax-exempt, non-profit distributing theatre production company (Tennent Productions Ltd) in tandem with his commercial company (H.M. Tennent Ltd) had enabled him to create a seemingly unassailable position of dominance in West End theatre. But now Wyatt was gathering evidence to support the tabling of a bill in Parliament. Specifically designed to put an end to Beaumont’s exploitation of the exemption from the tax on ticket sales offered to non-profit distributing companies, the Theatrical Companies Bill was introduced by Wyatt as a Private Members’ Bill under the ‘ten minute rule’ on Wednesday 10 March 1954, using the example of A Day by the Sea to demonstrate how Tennent Productions Ltd was saving around £500 in ticket sales tax a week, but was paying H.M. Tennent Ltd £40 per week to manage the production. Wyatt maintained that the commercial company’s entire £10,000 profit for the year was accountable to its charging of management fees to the non-commercial company, and the bill itself was designed to prevent commercial and non-profit distributing companies from sharing directors and staff, as Tennents’ did, and from working in tandem in this way. Wyatt concluded, ‘What Mr Beaumont is very cleverly and skilfully doing is using the concession which was intended for another purpose to build himself up as the greatest theatrical impresario in London and operating what is nothing less than a capitalist monopoly.’2

  By the early 1950s, the Tennent empire was indeed exhibiting all the characteristics of a monopoly, and paranoia and rumour had begun to spread amongst Beaumont’s rivals. It was alleged not only that Beaumont was operating a blacklist but that performers were frightened to accept contracts with other managements (even, in some recorded instances, at higher wages) lest they were subsequently refused work by Tennents. Many actors appeared to be under permanent contract to ‘the Firm’ and several West End theatres, including the prestigious Theatre Royal Haymarket, were seemingly on permanent rental to him. It was the clever and perfectly legal way in which Beaumont had operated the companies in tandem that had enabled him to reach a position of dominance, and it was less the direct financial question of management fees that was the significant factor than the huge negotiating power which the additional company gave him, combined with the sheer quantity of work it enabled him to produce. It was as if while H.M. Tennent Ltd provided a decent living for all concerned, Tennent Productions Ltd simply soaked up all the remaining plays, theatres and actors and thus denied a living to other managements. Yet, because his rivals had quite simply failed to spot a business opportunity, the anti-Tennent arguments would always be hampered by the fact that they did smack somewhat of sour grapes.

  According to Peter Saunders:

  Two people went to see Woodrow Wyatt, MP for Birmingham Aston. One was a producer, the late Bill Linnit, the other a major international star whose name I am still pledged not to reveal. They started a train of thought in Wyatt’s mind that led him to make long and exhaustive enquiries . . . He said he had had many representations from people of every sort and description in the theatrical industry – actors and actresses, producers, managers, etc – not only in London but up and down the country, all of whom (with very few exceptions) were strongly in favour of the bill. The exceptions, said Mr Wyatt, were employees or associates of one or other of the Tennent companies.3

  There was a problem, though:

  Wyatt said that almost invariably those who had made representations in favour of the bill had said, ‘Please do not use my name, because if you do, and it becomes known that I have made representations to you about this matter, I shall be banned by the Tennent organisation either from acting or from carrying on my business in the theatrical profession.’

  In the months between the bill’s first reading on 10 March and its second on 24 June, Tennents mounted a media and parliamentary lobbying campaign of ruthless efficiency, oiled when necessary by free theatre tickets. This carefully orchestrated campaign is documented in the Tennent business papers, which were unaccountably ‘missing’ for two decades before being anonymously donated to the V&A’s theatre collection in 2011.4 Tennents’ biggest coup was to enlist the services of another Labour MP, Sydney Silverman, to fight their cause. Silverman, who was to be a key player in the abolition of capital punishment, had opposed the bill’s first reading, although he does not appear to have had a proper grasp of the issues at stake; and it is clear from Hansard’s report of the 24 June debate that few Members of Parliament actually did. Hampered by the anonymity of his informants and by his parliamentary colleagues’ seeming inability to understand the complexities of Beaumont’s business model, Wyatt’s bill was eventually ‘talked out’.5

  The Conservatives had returned to power under Churchill in 1951 and, as an overtly anti-capitalist measure tabled by a Labour MP, the Theatrical Companies Bill would doubtless not have stood much of a chance in any case, but despite its failure it is important not to underestimate the legacy of extreme bad feeling, betrayal and mistrust that Wyatt’s evidence-gathering created within the theatrical community. Although the industry rapidly closed ranks to limit the damage, and the events surrounding the Theatrical Companies Bill are rarely referred to these days, it is clear that, in some quarters at least, the scars took a long time to heal. Typical of this is director Frith Banbury’s claim that Wyatt, in questioning him, had referred to allegations by Mousetrap director Peter Cotes that Beaumont only employed homosexuals. Banbury, himself a homosexual who worked for Beaumont, claims to have put Wyatt right on this. His interview with Wyatt was reported by Banbury to Charles Duff, author of The Lost Summer – The Heyday of West End Theatre, who duly referred to it in his book.6 According to Duff, Banbury later flatly denied telling him that Wyatt had mentioned Cotes by name. ‘Nothing I have ever done in my life caused me as much anxiety as the short “West End 1950s” section of The Lost Summer,’ Duff wrote to me, when I was carrying out research on Wyatt’s bill several years ago.7

  It is clear from Peter Saunders’ autobiography that he was, in many respects, Beaumont’s nemesis, and that it was his championing of populist theatre, as represented by Agatha Christie, that put him in a position of strength in this respect. In 1995, Lord Wyatt, whose political affinities had changed markedly in the intervening years, and who had himself dabbled in playwriting, refused to talk with me about his bill but suggested that ‘the best person to enquire about my role in bringing the manipulation of the entertainment tax laws in the 1940s–50s to the public’s attention is Peter Saunders, the impresario. You could tell him that I suggested you write to him. His address is . . .’8 Saunders, though, also refused to discuss the matter, and simply referred me to his book.9 Peter Cotes, who believed himself to have been blacklisted by Beaumont, wrote to me a few years later that ‘the less I have to say about Mr Beaumont and what you term his creation of a theatrical monopoly through his manipulation of the Entertainment Tax laws, the better.’10 He eventually agreed to answer a questionnaire, but died a few weeks later, before I could get it to him. As for the ‘major international star’ whose name Saunders pledged not to reveal, we will never know.

  One major international star with whom Saunders was delighted to advertise his association in 1954 was Ma
rgaret Lockwood. RADA-trained Lockwood had become Britain’s most popular and highly paid screen actress in the 1940s, appearing in a number of thrillers that included Doctor Syn (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), The Man in Grey (1943), The Wicked Lady (1945), Bedelia (1946), Highly Dangerous (1950) and Trent’s Last Case (1952). On stage, Lockwood had starred in tours of Pygmalion and Private Lives but had not appeared in the West End (other than two Christmas seasons as Peter Pan) since working as a young graduate in the 1930s. In September 1953, aged thirty-seven and finding herself near the end of a film contract, Lockwood and her agent Herbert de Leon had decided that it was time for her to embark upon a change of direction and to launch herself as a West End star.

  De Leon had masterminded Lockwood’s career from the outset. Having started in the business as a professional singer, he was widely regarded as the biggest and most important of the ‘one man’ agencies. With a client list that included Greer Garson, Anna Neagle, Wilfrid Hyde White, Dora Bryan, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Patricia Hayes and Jean Kent, de Leon was famous for his unorthodox methods; he never asked his clients to sign a contract with him and they were free to leave if and when they wanted to. He had seen Lockwood performing in her end-of-term RADA showcase in 1934 and, amazed that she didn’t receive an award, offered to represent her on the spot. When he died forty-five years later he was still representing her and they still didn’t have a contract.

  In Margaret Lockwood’s autobiography, which tells the story of her life up to the mid-1950s, she recalls that it was her agent who, aware of her ‘passion for Agatha Christie’, suggested asking Christie to write a play for her to star in. De Leon, a friend of Peter Saunders, talked to ‘the skilful young theatrical manager who was already presenting two of Mrs Christie’s plays in London, who accepted the idea enthusiastically . . . Mrs Christie travelled to London from her Devonshire home, and the four of us lunched together. I was charmed to meet my favourite authoress at last . . . She willingly entertained the idea of writing a play for me, and only six weeks later we had a message from her that she had already decided upon the plot and expected the whole work to be completed in two or three months.’11 Witness for the Prosecution had not yet opened when the lunch at the Mirabelle took place, so Lockwood’s choice of Christie pre-dated its phenomenal success and would have been based largely on the reputation of The Mousetrap. Coincidentally, the following August Lockwood and her daughter were to find themselves holidaying in the South of France in the same hotel as Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim. Attenborough had just completed his extended run in The Mousetrap and Lockwood was about to start rehearsals for Spider’s Web.

  Christie remembers of her first meeting with Lockwood that she ‘said at once that she didn’t want to continue being sinister and melodramatic, that she had done a good many films lately in which she had been the “wicked lady”. She wanted to play comedy. I think she was right, because she has an enormous flair for comedy, as well as being able to be dramatic. She is a very good actress, and has that perfect timing which enables her to give lines their true weight.’12 This was the first time that Christie had consciously written a star role since she had created Canon Pennefather for Francis L. Sullivan, and I have no doubt that her willingness to do so on this occasion was motivated by the fact that it was for a woman, and one whose company she enjoyed and whose talent she admired. Lockwood and Christie were clearly kindred spirits; in an interview with Reynolds News in January 1954, Lockwood remarked that ‘Agatha has the gift of doing what all women want to do, but only men have the chance. She achieves something. Men climb Everest, race fast cars, invent atom bombs, fight wars, become famous surgeons and man lifeboats. In her heart every woman, too, would like to do these things. But all we can do is dream. It is all we can do. It’s a man’s world. The only consolation I get is that Agatha kills off a few of you.’13 The admiration was mutual and, astonishingly, Christie even agreed to appear with Lockwood in a series of highly staged publicity photographs, which feature Herbert de Leon as ‘the corpse’.

  The role she created for Lockwood, Clarissa, notably shares a name with Agatha’s mother (Clarissa was also both Agatha’s and Rosalind’s middle name), although early notes for the play indicate that the character might originally have been called Laura. We get no description of Clarissa in Christie’s stage directions (doubtless a diplomatic move on her part), although we know that, according to another character, her husband is ‘years older’ than her at ‘about forty’ and that she has a twelve-year-old stepdaughter. The dreamy but resourceful wife of a Foreign Office official, Clarissa is given to fantasising about a world of high drama and adventure: ‘Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do? Or supposing a woman were to be shown in here one day and told me that she and Henry had been secretly married in Constantinople, and that our marriage was bigamous, what should I say to her? Or supposing I had to choose between betraying my country and seeing Henry shot before my very eyes?’14 It is as though The Mousetrap’s Mollie Ralston were dreaming of leading the life of Chimneys’ Virginia Revel. Inevitably a body does turn up (before vanishing again), and we end up in a scenario that has many of the complexities and much of the lightness of touch of Chimneys, as well as similarly bubbling dialogue; there is even a subtext of international diplomacy and a reference to the fictional Balkan state of Herzoslovakia, last heard of in Chimneys.

  The plot of Spider’s Web deliberately includes a number of devices that would have been familiar to readers of Christie’s stories, and involves an element of conscious self-parody of her work and of the detective thriller genre. The ‘country house’ setting is, once again a red herring; as in The Mousetrap, the house’s inhabitants are by no means landed gentry, and in this case are renting the property, which comes complete with a priest’s hole concealed behind a bookcase, allowing Clarissa the delightful curtain line ‘Exit Clarissa mysteriously.’ The whole thing rattles along at a fair old pace, greatly assisted by the fact that it is performed in real time over the course of one evening, leading Clarissa to conclude, ‘How extraordinary it is; all my life nothing has really happened to me and tonight I’ve had the lot. Murder, police, drug addicts, invisible ink, secret writing, almost arrested for manslaughter and very nearly murdered. You know, in a way it’s almost too much all in one evening.’ A delightfully wry comment from Christie on the genre in which she wrote. Clarissa’s husband, of course, doesn’t believe her, and asks her to put the kettle on.

  The Spider’s Web was a title that Christie had wanted to use for the 1943 UK release of her novel The Moving Finger, originally published in America the previous year. Collins, however, had advised Edmund Cork that there had recently been another book of that title and that they were ‘rather doubtful’ about Christie’s suggested alternative, ‘The Tangled Web’.15 In the end, Collins had stuck with the title used by Dodd, Mead & Co. for the book’s American debut, but now Christie saw an opportunity to experiment with the ‘Spider’s Web’ idea again; from the evidence of draft scripts, she was clearly torn between this and ‘Clarissa Finds a Body’ for the title of her new play.

  Christie went diligently about her task, missing rehearsals for Witness for the Prosecution and making twenty pages of preparatory notes (in Notebook 12) for what was to be the first entirely original stage play of hers to be performed since Black Coffee, all of the others having been adaptations (although often quite radical ones) of either novels or short stories. Spider’s Web was not technically a commission, but Christie entirely fulfilled her brief, creating a delightful star vehicle for Lockwood that would show off her talents to great effect in a comedy role and help her to dispel her cinematic ‘wicked lady’ image. Lockwood was thrilled: ‘Before I’d finished reading the first act I knew the part of Clarissa Hailsham-Brown was “me”. I loved it. It was light, saucy, endearing, packed with good lines and, above all, funny.’16 Christie had written the role of Pippa, Clarissa’s you
ng stepdaughter, for Lockwood’s thirteen-year-old daughter Julia (or ‘Toots’ as her mother called her), although in the end a filming contract, followed by a Christmas engagement to play Goldilocks at Brentford’s Q Theatre, prevented her from taking part. The role of Sir Rowland Delahaye was created, at Lockwood’s request, for another of de Leon’s clients, Wilfrid Hyde White; but he turned it down and the part was taken by Felix Aylmer. Oxford-educated Aylmer had learned his craft with Barry Jackson’s Birmingham Rep, and then as part of the regular ReandeaN company at the St Martin’s Theatre, before going on to make notable appearances in Olivier’s films of Henry V and Hamlet and, in 1950, becoming president of the actors’ union, Equity. Saunders gave him second billing to Lockwood, who can be been seen smothering Aylmer to death in her signature role as the Wicked Lady. A first-rate cast also included the young Desmond Llewelyn (later to be James Bond’s ‘Q’) in the role of Constable Jones, alongside Campbell Singer as Inspector Lord. Singer had the distinction of having played the role of Blore in the first full-length Christie play script to be televised, 1949’s BBC broadcast of Ten Little Niggers.

  Securing Lockwood as his star was a major coup for Saunders, and he made the most of it, booking an unusually long eleven-week pre-London tour which commenced on 27 September and opened, as usual, in Nottingham. As with the promotion of Attenborough and Sim for The Mousetrap, the poster design for Spider’s Web consisted largely of a picture of Lockwood, and her name appeared on the publicity and programme in considerably larger type than Christie’s; Saunders’ oft-repeated mantra that he ‘made Christie the star’ only held good so long as there was nobody else to step into the shoes.