Curtain Up (17 page)

       
GERALD: All the trouble women get, they usually deserve. They've no sense – absolutely no sense.

       
ENID: I expect that's true sometimes.

       
GERALD: Born fools, the little angels! (Kisses the tips of his fingers) Woman's weakness is man's opportunity. Did Shakespeare say that or did I think of it myself? I believe I thought of it. If so, it's good, it's damned good!

       
ENID: Have some more port? . . .

       
GERALD: I'm a remarkable man. I'm – well – different to other men.

       
ENID: Yes, I think you are.

       
GERALD: I've a lot of power over women for instance. I've always had it. I discovered quite young that I could twist women round my little finger. It's like a useful gift. Boyish – that's the note they like. Makes them feel maternal. The eternal boy – it fetches every time.
¹¹

And the corresponding section in Vosper's
Love From a Stranger
:

       
BRUCE: You're a sensible girl, aren't you?

       
CECILY: How do you mean?

       
BRUCE: You don't ‘go on' at a man. Very few women can say ‘Oh, all right,' and leave it at that . . . But, then, most women are fools. (He smiles to himself)

       
CECILY: (trying to be conversational) Do you think so?

       
BRUCE: I don't think, I know – born fools! . . .

       
CECILY: Perhaps you're right.

       
BRUCE: And women's weakness is man's opportunity. Did someone write that, or did I think of it myself? – If I did it's good, damn good! ‘Women's weakness is man's opportunity.'

       
CECILY: You have extraordinary insight into things. Have some more coffee.

       
BRUCE: Please . . . Yes, you're right, I have great insight. I've a lot of power over women. I discovered quite early in life that I could twist women round my little finger. It's a useful gift.

       
CECILY: It must be.

       
BRUCE: Boyish – that's the note they like – makes them feel sort of maternal . . . It gets them every time . . .
¹²

The characters, as it happens, get through three names each, from their first appearance in the story to Vosper's script via Christie's. The original story's female protagonist, Alix Martin, becomes Enid Bradshaw in Christie's play and Cecily Harrington in Vosper's. The abandoned suitor, who, in another echo of Christie's own experience, becomes an abandoned fiancé in both her dramatisation and Vosper's, similarly morphs from Dick Windyford to Dick Lane to Nigel Lawrence, and the story's murderous husband, Gerald Martin, becomes Gerald Strange and eventually Bruce Lovell. Enid's female friend Doris West, a character introduced in Christie's play, becomes Cecily's friend Mavis Wilson in Vosper's. Christie's script keeps the cast to an absolute minimum: Enid Bradshaw, Doris, the two men in Enid's life and a pessimistic but highly entertaining housekeeper in each of her London and country properties. The two housekeepers, Mrs Huggins and Mrs Birch, each outdo the other in their condemnation of the male sex, and are particularly sorely missed in Vosper's script, which clumsily introduces a gardener from the original story, and adds a maid, a doctor and an unnecessary comic aunt to the cast list.

Mrs Huggins is clearly cast from the same mould as Stevens in
Eugenia and Eugenics
:

       
MAVIS: According to you Mrs Huggins, married life is a continuous battle.

       
MRS HUGGINS: And so it is, Miss. With one party always defeated. And what I say is this – take care as you're the winning party from the start!

She goes on to sing to herself, ‘tunelessly' and prophetically, ‘It brings you but trouble and danger to listen to Love from a stranger', thereby giving Vosper the title of his version of the play. When Enid arrives at Philomel Cottage, the idyll is
somewhat undermined by the presence of Mrs Birch, who ‘has none of Mrs Huggins' cheerful pessimism' and who has discovered that her own husband is a bigamist.

Since the Hughes Massie correspondence archives relating to Christie's work do not commence until 1940, quite how or why Christie handed over her script and the credit for it to Vosper, not to mention 50 per cent of the theatrical royalty and film rights income, is unclear. One can imagine, though, that he may have been approached about playing the role of Strange and made his own authorship a condition of his involvement. Like Laughton and Sullivan before him, Vosper evidently saw Christie's work as a vehicle for advancing his own career, and in engaging with it as such inadvertently conspired to delay and compromise the arrival of an interesting new female playwriting voice.

Vosper's option gave him a year to write the piece and get it produced in the West End but, as he neared completion of the script, an unexpected problem arose. Thirty-six-year-old actor/writer Vosper was a friend of thirty-year-old actor/writer Emlyn Williams, who tells the extraordinary story in his autobiography of being invited to dinner at Vosper's house late in 1935:

One night we were at Frank Vosper's house in St John's Wood. I liked him more and more, for his generous character and for the sensitive talent under the buffoonery. He mentioned that he was in the middle of writing a new play. I mentioned that I was too and he asked me how mine was getting on . . .

‘What's yours about, or aren't you telling?

‘Oh, it's another murder play . . .'

He looked at me. ‘Really? So's mine.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘Based on an Agatha Christie short story.' That sounded safe.

‘A detective play like
Alibi
?'

‘Oh no, not a mystery. I've turned it round so I could base it on the Patrick Mahon case.'

I stared at him. He went on. ‘D'you remember it? He cut the woman up and no-one would believe it, he was such a charmer.'

I had to say something. ‘Mine's about a charmer too, who cuts up a woman.'

It was his turn to stare. ‘Is there a girl who falls for him?'

‘Yes.'

‘What are you calling yours?'

I told him.

‘Good title. Mine's
Love From a Stranger
.'

That was a good title too. They were interchangeable. Then he said, ‘Are you by any chance writing a part for yourself?'

‘Yes.'

‘So am I. Who d'you have in mind for the girl's part?'

‘A star if possible,' I said, ‘emotional but with restraint. Edna Best, for instance.'

‘I've just written asking her if she'll read my play when it's finished.'

Another silence. Then he beamed and added, ‘Just as well we like each other. We need a drink.'
¹³

And so started the astonishing parallel histories of Emlyn Williams' breakthrough play,
Night Must Fall
, and Vosper's Christie adaptation. Perhaps as a result of this conversation, Vosper appears not to have pursued the Patrick Mahon angle. Mahon was a killer notorious for having dismembered his victim in a gruesome 1924 murder case, and although this aspect of the murder in question adds a dramatic
frisson
to
Night Must Fall
, it would have been an unnecessary embellishment to Christie's work. Nonetheless, from their beginnings in Scotland to their eventual Broadway presentations, the two plays continued to dog each other's progress.

That both writers should have been in pursuit of Edna Best to play the female lead in their plays was not surprising. Best had been the talk of the town ten years previously when she appeared alongside Noël Coward (replaced soon after
opening by John Gielgud) in Margaret Kennedy's
The Constant Nymph
, produced, directed and co-adapted from Kennedy's novel of adolescent sexuality by Basil Dean. She had previously been part of the regular ReandeaN ensemble, playing Meggie Albanesi's twin sister in
Lilies of the Field
in 1923. ‘Two of the most popular young actresses of the day', according to Dean, although Best, he observed, was ‘always true to the limitation of her own talent'.
¹⁴
The fact that in 1935 she chose Vosper's play rather than Williams' may have had something to do with the fact that they had worked together the previous year in Alfred Hitchcock's
The Man Who Knew Too Much
. But although Vosper had secured his leading lady of choice, he himself was not in the cast when the production's pre-West End tour opened in the spring of 1935. On 17 March the
Observer
had announced that ‘Miss Edna Best and Mr Frank Vosper are to appear together in
Love From a Stranger
by Mr Vosper and Miss Agatha Christie', but on 7 April it carried the news that ‘Mr Frank Vosper has given up the leading man's part in his play, written in collaboration with Miss Agatha Christie,
Love From a Stranger
. The two chief parts will be played by Mr Basil Sydney and Miss Edna Best.' The way that Christie's contribution to the script is acknowledged in these reports is notable; she is credited as joint author of the play rather than simply the writer of a story from which it is adapted. It is unclear what led to this very late change of plan on Vosper's part; it may be that his instincts told him that the script needed more work and that he felt he could better fulfil his role as writer from a position in the stalls. Basil Sydney, his substitute, was a British film and stage actor who had spent much of his career on Broadway.

The licensing records for
Love From a Stranger
in the Hughes Massie ledgers are incomplete, but in April 1935
The Stage
announced that ‘Hugh Beaumont, of the firm of Moss Empires and Howard & Wyndham Tours Ltd, is busily engaged upon three new productions. One is “Love From A Stranger” by Frank Vosper and Agatha Christie.'
¹⁵
There is also reference
in the files to correspondence with ‘H M Tennent';
¹⁶
Harry Tennent, along with Beaumont, had set up Moss Empires and Howard & Wyndham Tours Ltd in 1933 to provide touring productions for the theatre-owning chains that were later to form a cornerstone of the notorious cartel that became known as ‘the Group'. And so it was that Hugh ‘Binkie' Beaumont, of whom we will hear a great deal more, became one of the first producers of plays from the work of Agatha Christie, although one suspects that twenty-six-year-old Beaumont may have been more attracted by Vosper's charms than by Christie's talent.

According to Williams, ‘the Stage announced that “Emlyn Williams' new thriller
Night Must Fall
will open on 29 April at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh. On the same evening, Frank Vosper's new thriller
Love From a Stranger
will open at the King's Glasgow.” For one bemused moment I thought the two plays were opening not only on the same night, but in the same theatre.'
¹⁷
Love From a Stranger
actually premiered at the Theatre Royal Birmingham the previous week, but both plays were well received in Scotland, and Vosper's cast, and Scottish director Campbell Gullan, were praised by critics. Although Vosper himself did not appear, his sister Margery played the role of the feisty maid Edith and, intriguingly, the dramatis personae included a ninth character, a female role listed simply as ‘A Stranger', who appears in no versions of the script other than that for this first tour.
¹⁸

‘Whichever play got to London first would kill the other, and nothing to be done about it,' concluded Williams. It seemed to him for a moment that both productions might be competing for a potential West End slot at the Duchess Theatre but, following a short tour, Vosper and Beaumont decided that Vosper should spend some time on rewrites and should re-rehearse the production with himself in the leading role, as had originally been intended. J.B. Priestley was running the Duchess independently of the big theatre-owning cartels at the time, and
Night Must Fall
opened there on 31 May 1935, running for 436 performances before transferring to London's Cambridge Theatre where it ran for a
further 205. The production was Williams' first big success as a playwright.

On Sunday 2 February 1936, the revamped version of
Love
From a Stranger
was presented for one performance at Wyndham's Theatre, with Vosper taking the role of Bruce Lovell and his sister Margery demoted to assistant stage manager. The new production was directed by Murray MacDonald and, in the absence of Edna Best, who was presumably no longer available, the role of Cecily was played by Marie Ney, who had appeared alongside Best in
The Constant Nymph
. At this time it was common practice to present one-off performances of new plays on Sundays in West End theatres in the hope of securing them a future life. In
The Stage
's review of this presentation by one of the ‘Sunday societies', the 1930 Players, it commented, ‘in the desirable event of the play being put into an evening bill it should be played by the same cast . . . the play, effectively produced [i.e. directed] by Murray Macdonald, was enthusiastically received by an audience which included many well-known theatrical folk.'
¹⁹
This showcase performance had the desired effect: nine days later, Moss Empires and Howard & Wyndham Tours Ltd took up the West End option, opening it at one of their parent company's own theatres, the New in St Martin's Lane, on 31 March 1936.

The production was very well reviewed. Ivor Brown in the
Observer
remarked that ‘this play soon sails away into those profusions of homicidal mania and sadistic frenzy which are the cordials and sweetmeats of this curious age.' He felt that Vosper's performance maybe gave the game away too soon: ‘it is unwise to make us so early certain that Lovell is fully qualified for the chairmanship of the United Society of Operative Homicides and Dirty Workers. Or else he should declare himself straight away, as the author-actor of “Night Must Fall” has done.' But he was full of praise for the ‘authentic and tremendous suspense about the struggle between Bruce and his captive wife', admiring Vosper's ‘very clever performance, a first rate study of disintegration', and Marie Ney's
‘charming and persuasive picture of the fluttering and rather foolish young woman . . . with a very powerful grip on the second half of her part, when the amorous lady becomes the Amazon and fiercely fights for her life with wit and grit, since tooth and claw are of no avail.'
²⁰