"Night of January 16th" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ayn)

The play was produced at the Hollywood Playhouse in the fall of 1934, under the titleWoman 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
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 forNight 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, "MisterMiniver" type of role; he deserved better than that.)
This was one of the few pleasant incidents connected withNight 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.
One interesting incident of the play's run was a benefit performance given for the blind. (I did not attend it: I could not bear to see the play again, but I was told about it.) All the members of the jury and most of the audience were blind; the foreman of the jury was Helen Keller. Graham McNamee, a famous newscaster, acted as a narrator to describe visual information, when needed. The verdict that night was "Guilty."
As to the general record of verdicts during the play's run in New York, they were 3 to 2 in favor of acquittal -- according to the stage manager, who kept a tally.
That winter, Woods launched two road companies (starting out of Chicago and Los Angeles) and a third company in London; all of them did very well.
The Chicago production remains in my mind for the unexpected reason that a drama critic, Ashton Stevens, gave me the only review that pleased me in my entire career. I have received reviews that might be called better and some that I deeply appreciated, but none of them said the things I would have wanted to be said. I learned to expect nothing from reviewers because of the so-called favorable reviews, not because of the illiterate smears. What I liked about Ashton Stevens' piece was that he understood thetechnique of drama, knew what it takes and praised me for the best aspects of the play's structure; he praised me for an attribute which only a viewer in full focus can appreciate: ingenuity. He treated the play as a melodrama, since that is all it had become; I am inclined to believe that his sense of life was probably the opposite of mine, since he wrote: "It is not as close and upclimbing a piece as[The Trial of] Mary Dugan. Nor as heart-tearing. None of the characters is lovable."
But here is what I lovehim for: "But it is the fastest courtroom melo I ever saw. It shoots its stuff from a dozen angles, and every shot is a surprise.
"The biggest and best surprise is when the prisoner -- the tense, Roman-medal-faced Karen Andre -- crashes and crumbles as Gunman ('Guts') Regan rushes up the aisle and into court and informs her that the man she is accused of murdering IS dead. That, ladies and gentlemen of the audience, is a S E C O N D-A C T C U R T A I N. [Typography his.]. . .
"You see, the play flattered the cunning of the audience. It permitted us to anticipate with some success. But it never left us right for more than a jiffy. . . There is a kind of genius in the play." (If there was, in the version he saw, I marvel at his ability to see it.)
The play was unusually successful in summer stock: in its first summer (1936), it was presented by eighteen theaters, and was a leading favorite for many summers thereafter. One bright spot of the summer of 1936 was a week at a theater in Stony Creek, Connecticut, where the part of Guts Regan was played by my husband, Frank O'Connor.
In subsequent years, the play was presented, in various translations, in most European countries. In World War II, it was presented by the U.S.O. for the American troops occupying Berlin. It is still being given occasionally in various parts of the world, with or without my knowledge; at least, I receive unexpected royalties from it, once in a while. And, once in a while, it is still played here, in summer stock. It has been presented on the radio and twice (by two different companies) on television.
The amateur market of this play belongs on the horror side of its history. The amateur rights were sold to a publishing house that issued an adapted, "cleaned up" version. The amateur market, they claimed at the time, consisted of church, school and college groups that worked under a strict kind of censorship (I do not know who imposed it): these groups were not allowed to mention a love affair or a mistress, or to smoke onstage, or to swear, etc. For instance, they were not allowed to use the word "Guts," so that my character's name was changed to "Larry" Regan. That version of my play was adapted by the publishing house; it was not to be sold in bookstores or to the public, but was to be soldonly to amateur groups for amateur performances. Once in a while, I hear -- with somewhat helpless indignation -- that some fan of mine has somehow obtained a copy of that version. So I want to state formally, for the record and as a public notice, that the amateur version ofNight of January 16th is not written by me and is not part of my works.
The movie version of this play is another horror story. I had nothing to do with its screen adaptation. There is nothing of mine in that movie, except the names of some of the characters and the title (which was not mine). Theonly line of dialogue from my play which appears in the movie is: "The court will now adjourn till ten o'clock tomorrow morning." The cheap, trashy vulgarity of that movie is such that no lengthier discussion is possible to me.
Through all those years, while the play was becoming famous, I felt a painfully growing embarrassment: I did not want to be associated with it or to be known as its author. I thought, at the time, that I had merely been unlucky in my producer and in the kind of people I had to deal with. Today,
For twenty-five years, I never looked at a script of this play, and winced whenever it was mentioned. Then, in 1960, Nathaniel Branden asked me to let him give a reading of the play at Nathaniel Branden Institute, in response to requests from students. I could not let him read the A. H. Woods version, so I had to prepare a definitive version of the play. I compared the original script ofPenthouse Legend, the script ofWoman on Trial (which was the same, but with some cuts made by me) and the script ofNight of January 16th. I was somewhat astonished by the result: in this final, definitive version, I had to cut outeverything that had been contributed by the Woods production (except one line change and the title). I cut out, of course, the gun moll, the gun and all the cruder elements of that sort; but I did not expect to find that even small lines and minor touches were jarringly wrong and had to be discarded.
I felt an odd kind of sadness: my mind went back to a certain argument I had with Woods during the rehearsals. We were sitting in the front row of an empty theater and he was saying indignantly: "How can you be so stubborn? How can you argue with me? This is your first play and I've been in the theater for forty years!" I explained to him that it was not a matter of personalities, age or experience, not a matter ofwho said it, but ofwhat was said, and that I would give in to his office boy, if the boy happened to beright. Woods did not answer; I knew even then that he did not hear me.
The final, definitive version ofNight of January 16th is closest, in content, to the script of Woman on Trial. I made no changes in story or substance; the additional changes I made were mainly grammatical. That final version is the one now published here, in this book.
I am glad to see it published. Up to now, I had felt as if it were an illegitimate child roaming the world. Now, with this publication, it becomes legitimately mine.
And, although it has played all over the world, I feel as if it were a play that has never been produced.
AYN RAND
New York, June 1968


Note to Producer

This play is a murder trial without a prearranged verdict. The jurors are to be selected from the audience. They are to witness the play as real jurors and bring in a verdict at the end of the last act. Two
The play is built in such a way that the evidence of the defendant's guilt or innocence is evenly balanced and the decision will have to be based upon the jurors' own values and characters. The two parties opposed in the trial are as radically antagonistic as will be members of any audience, where some will sympathize with the wife, others with the mistress. Either decision will bring the protest of the opposite side; the case is bound to arouse arguments and discussions, for its underlying conflict is the basic conflict of two different types of humanity. It is really the audience who is thus put on trial. In the words of the defense attorney: "Who is on trial in this case? Karen Andre? No! It's you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, who are here on trial. It is your own souls that will be brought to light when your decision is rendered."
The jurors' seats are to be on the stage, as in a real courtroom. Thus we give the public all the excitement of a murder trial. We heighten the public's interest by leaving the decision in its own hands and add to the suspense by the fact that no audience, at any performance of the play, can be sure of its outcome.

Characters
JUDGE HEATH DISTRICT ATTORNEY FLINT DEFENSE ATTORNEY STEVENS KAREN ANDRE DR. KIRKLAND JOHN HUTCHINS HOMER VAN FLEET ELMER SWEENEY MAGDA SVENSON NANCY LEE FAULKNER JOHN GRAHAM WHITFIELD JAMES CHANDLER SIEGURD JUNGQUIST "GUTS" REGAN COURT ATTENDANTS
TIME:Present
PLACE:New York Courtroom
Act One
Scene:The stage represents a New York courtroom. It faces the audience, so that the public is in the position of spectators in a real courtroom. In the center of the back is the Judge's desk on a high platform; behind it is the door to the Judge's chambers; by the side of the desk, at left, is the witness stand, facing the audience; behind it is the door to the jury room. In front of the Judge's desk is the desk of the Court Reporter; at right the desk of the Court Clerk. Behind it is the door through which witnesses enter the courtroom. Farther downstage, at right, is a table for the defendant and attorneys; at left another table for the prosecution. At the wall, left, are the twelve seats for the jurors. Farther downstage is a door through which spectators enter the courtroom. At the opposite wall, at right, are a few chairs for spectators. Steps lead down from the stage in the right and left aisles. When the curtain rises the court session is ready to open, but theJUDGEhas not yet made his appearance. The prosecution and defense are ready at their respective tables.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY FLINTis a heavy, middle-aged man with the kindly appearance of a respectable father of a family and the shrewd, piercing manner of a pawnbroker.DEFENSE ATTORNEY STEVENSis tall, gray-haired, displaying the grooming and sophisticated grace of a man of the world. He is watching his client, who does not pay any attention to him and, sitting at the defense table, calmly, almost insolently studies the audience. The client, the defendantKAREN ANDRE, is twenty-eight. One's first impression of her is that to handle her would require the services of an animal trainer, not an attorney. Yet there is nothing emotional or rebellious in her countenance; it is one of profound, inexorable calm; but one feels the tense vitality, the primitive fire, the untamed strength in the defiant immobility of her slender body, the proud line of her head held high, the sweep of her tousled hair. Her clothes are conspicuous by their severe, tailored simplicity; a very costly simplicity, one can notice, but not the elegance of a woman who gives much thought to her clothes; rather that of one who knows she can make any rag attractive and does it unconsciously.
When the curtain rises the lights in the audience do not go out.
BAILIFF:Court attention!
[EVERYONErises asJUDGE HEATHenters.BAILIFFraps]
Superior Court Number Eleven of the State of New York. The Honorable Judge William Heath presiding.
[TheJUDGEtakes his seat.BAILIFFraps andEVERYONEsits down]
JUDGE HEATH:The people of the State of New York versus Karen Andre.
FLINT:Ready, your Honor.