I am still asked, once in a while — and it always astonishes me — whether I intended Karen Andre to be found guilty or not guilty. I did not think that there could be any doubt about my verdict: of course, she is not guilty. (But this need not deter any prospective viewer or reader from pronouncing his own judgment: in this matter, to each his own sense of life.)
The original title of this play was Penthouse Legend.
This is still its best title; it gives some indication of the play’s nonrealistic, symbolic nature. But it was changed twice, first to Woman on Trial, then to Night of January 16th. In both cases, the producers assured me that my original title would be a serious handicap to the play; one of them claimed that the public was antagonized by the word “Legend” and he cited the failure of some movies which had used that word in their titles. I thought that this was nonsense, but I did not want the producers to work under the pressure of doubt or fear in regard to an issue about which they felt very strongly, but which I considered unimportant.
Today, I regret it. Night of January 16th is an empty, meaningless title. It was, however, the least offensive one of those suggested to me at the time. I could not change it later: the play had become too famous.
In a way, that title is appropriate to the practical history of the play: for me, it was empty, meaningless — and very painful.
The play’s history began with a series of rejections by New York’s theatrical producers. I was living in Hollywood at the time, but I had an agent who kept sending the play to one producer after another. What I regarded as the most original feature of the play was the idea of drawing the jury from the audience. It was precisely because of this idea that the producers rejected the play: the jury gimmick would not work, they said, the public would not go for it, it would “destroy the theatrical illusion.”
Then, simultaneously, I received two offers for the play: one from A. H. Woods, a well-known New York producer, the other from E. E. Clive, a British actor who ran a modest stock company at the Hollywood Playhouse. But Woods wanted the right to make changes in my play at his sole discretion. So I rejected his offer and signed a contract with Clive.
The play was produced at the Hollywood Playhouse in the fall of 1934, under the title Woman on Trial. The role of Karen Andre was played by Barbara Bedford, a star of the silent movies. E. E. Clive directed it and played a small part; he was a brilliant character actor, who loved my play and seemed to understand it, at least to the extent of knowing that there was something unusual about it. To this day, I deeply appreciate his attitude. But, as a producer, he was badly handicapped by lack of funds. The production was competent, but somewhat unexciting: unstylized and too naturalistic. The play received good reviews and had a modestly successful run.
At its conclusion, A. H. Woods renewed his offer for a Broadway production. The contract clause regarding script changes was reworded, but in a highly ambiguous manner; my agent assured me that the new clause meant that all changes were to be made by mutual consent. I did not think so; I was fairly certain that it still gave Woods the control he wanted, but I decided to take the chance, relying on nothing but my power of persuasion.
The rest of the play’s history was hell.
The entire period before and after the play’s opening was a sickening struggle between Woods and me. I managed to prevent the worst of the changes he wanted to introduce, and I managed to preserve the best of the passages he wanted to eliminate, but that was all I could do. So the play became an incongruous mongrel slapdashed out of contradictory elements.
Woods was famous as a producer of melodramas, some of which had been good, some dreadful. Melodrama was the only element of my play that he understood, but he thought that there wasn’t enough of it. So, “to liven it up,” he introduced, in small touches, a junk heap of worn, irrelevant melodramatic devices that clashed with the style, did not advance the action and served only to confuse the audience — such as a gun, a heat test to determine its erased serial number, a flashy gun moll, etc. (The gun moll was introduced, in the last act, to throw doubt on the testimony of Guts Regan, which, of course, she did not accomplish. I did not write that bit; it was written by the play’s director.) Woods actually believed that only guns, fingerprints and police matters could hold an audience’s attention, but “speeches” could not. To his credit as a showman, I can say only that he thought the jury gimmick was a great idea, which is what made him buy the play.
This was my first (but not last) encounter with the literary manifestation of the mind-body dichotomy that dominates today’s culture: the split between the “serious” and the “entertaining” — the belief that if a literary work is “serious,” it must bore people to death; and if it is “entertaining,” it must not communicate anything of importance. (Which means that “the good” has to be painful, and that pleasure has to be mindlessly low-grade.) A. H. Woods was a faithful adherent of that school of thought, so that it was useless to mention the word “thought” to him, or “idea” or “philosophy” or “sense of life” in connection with any theatrical matter. It would be inexact to say that he was antagonistic to such concepts: he was completely tone-deaf to them. I was naive enough to be shocked by it. Since then, I have observed the same tone-deafness in regard to this dichotomy (though, usually, on its other side) in men who had less excuse for it than A. H. Woods: in college professors. At the time, I fought against that dogma to the limit of my brain and endurance. I am still fighting that battle today, with the same intensity, but without the painful, incredulous astonishment of youth.
In regard to casting, Woods’ judgment was better than his literary views. He gave the part of Karen Andre to a talented unknown, a young actress he had discovered — Doris Nolan. She was very attractive in the right way, she was an unusually good type for the part and gave an excellent performance. The male lead, the part of Guts Regan, was played by Walter Pidgeon. This was my one contribution to the casting. At that time, which was the period of transition from the silent movies to the talkies, Pidgeon was regarded as through in Hollywood and was playing in a summer stock theater in the East. He had been one of my favorites in the silent movies (where he had played strong, glamorous, aristocratic villains) and I had seen him on the stage in Hollywood, so I suggested that Woods go to see him in summer stock. Woods’ first reaction was: “Aw, he’s through,” but he went. To give him credit, Woods was so impressed with Pidgeon’s performance that he signed him for Night of January 16th at once (and told me: “Aw, that guy’s great”). Shortly after our opening, Pidgeon signed a long-term movie contract with M-G-M, which was his new start in pictures, the beginning of his rise to stardom. He told me later that he owed that contract to his performance as Guts Regan. (I regret that M-G-M confined him to the homey, “Mister Miniver” type of role; he deserved better than that.)
This was one of the few pleasant incidents connected with Night of January 16th. By the time the play opened on Broadway (in September of 1935), it was dead, as far as I was concerned. I could feel nothing for it or about it except revulsion and indignation. It was not merely a mangled body, but worse: it was a mangled body with some of its torn limbs still showing a former beauty and underscoring the bloody mess. On opening night, I sat in the back row, yawning — not out of tension, but out of genuine boredom, since it was an event that had no value-meaning for me any longer.
The play received mixed reviews; it did not become a hit, but what was regarded as a “success.” It ran for six months. What made it successful and talked about was, of course, the jury gimmick. On opening night, Woods had arranged in advance for a jury of celebrities (of whom the only one I remember was Jack Dempsey, the former heavyweight champion). For the first couple of weeks thereafter, he kept a jury of stooges on hand backstage, just in case the members of the audience did not volunteer. But he soon found the precaution unnecessary: his office was besieged by requests from celebrities and others who wanted to sit on that jury; there were more volunteers than he could accommodate.