Elisberg Industries
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Products
    • Books
    • Movies
  • About Elisberg Industries
    • Our Corporate Board
    • Information Overstock
    • Elisberg Industries Entertainment Information
    • Elisberg Statistical Center of American Research
    • Consultancy Service
  • Contact
    • How to Find Us
  • Kudos
  • Good Things to Know
    • The BOB Page
    • Sites You Might Actually Like
Decent Quality Since 1847

One Blind Mouse

11/25/2022

4 Comments

 
Back in 1966, when I was but a kidling, I went on a family trip to Europe, and when we were in London, I went with my older brother to see Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap.  (Our folks went to a different play.)  I was very excited about going, since I liked Agatha Christie mysteries and had heard so much about this monumentally long-running play.  So long-running that it was a phenomenon.  I'd read the short story (though a long one, almost a novella) beforehand, so I knew whodunnit -- but at intermission I asked my brother who he thought the killer was. (Don't worry, I won't give it away.) He kept changing his guess -- "no, wait, I think it's..." -- and I just politely sat there smiling at him.  (Fun fact:  He didn't guess it.)

Two years later, on another family trip, I got a poster for the show.  I later had it framed, and it sits on my wall --
​
Picture

For the record, I saw the play in its 14th year.

What I love about the poster is how it trumpets, "THE LONGEST RUNNING PLAY OF ANY KIND IN THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH THEATRE."  That was in 1968.  Its 16th year.

Today, the production celebrates its 70th!

The play opened on November 25, 1952.  And yes, it's still running.  After 21 years, it moved next door to the St. Martin's Theatre, and it's changed casts (often) -- over 400 actors and actresses have performed in it -- but those are pretty much the only differences.

(Though it's changed casts often -- in fact, now, they change casts every year, generally in November -- some actors stuck with the show for a long time.  In the poster above, you'll notice at the bottom of the cast list one of the actors I saw, David Raven.  He stayed in the show for 11 years!  Not a bad daily job for a stage actor...)

The show has currently run for over 28,000 performances over those 70 years.  To put this in perspective, the longest running show in the of history New York theater is the off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks, which ran for 42 years and 17,162 performances.  And eventually closed.  (On Broadway, The Phantom of the Opera is still going with a remarkably long-running 34-year production, however its producers recently announced that they would be closing the show in five months, in April.)  Meanwhile, Ol' Man Mousetrap, it just keeps rolling along.

Agatha Christie wrote in her autobiography that her agent thought the play would run for an impressive 14 months, but she totally disagreed.  "It won't run that long," she said. "Eight months perhaps. Yes, I think eight months."  Even that would have been a great run for a play.  Today, it's a joke.

My favorite story about The Mousetrap is that before it opened, Agatha Christie signed a movie contract, though with one proviso:  no movie could be made until the play finally closed for six months.  And that was 70 years ago, with no closing notice in sight.  (The show's website says that it is taking ticket orders through November, 2023 -- a year from now.) That's why you haven't seen a movie of The Mousetrap.

(By the way, the movie producer in question was John Woolf, who happily went on the have an notable career despite this, most memorably winning an Oscar for Best Picture with Oliver!  His other movies included Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and Room at the Top, among many others.)

Also fun is that when the play opened, Agatha Christie gave the rights to the play to her grandson Mathew Pritchard as a gift for his ninth birthday.  (This article here is an interview with him about the birthday gift.)  With the returns, he later set up the Colwinston Trust, which among its many donations to the arts has supported some of the most famous venues in Wales, including the Wales Millennium Centre, The Welsh National Opera, and Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre.

Noteworthy, too, is that in the opening night cast, a young actor Richard Attenborough played the investigator, 'Detective Sergeant Trotter'.  His wife Sheila Sim was also in the cast as 'Mollie Ralston,' one of the owners of the snowbound Monkswell Manor where the play takes place.  They each received a 10% profit-participation in the show, which was deducted from their combined weekly salaries. ("It proved to be the wisest business decision I've ever made," Attenborough later said, not shockingly, though added, "but foolishly I sold some of my share to open a short-lived Mayfair restaurant called 'The Little Elephant' and later still, disposed of the remainder in order to keep Gandhi afloat."  However, considering that Gandhi won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Attenborough won for Best Director, it does seem like money very well-spent, and got its own financial -- and professional -- return.)
​
There are a few things I didn't know about The Mousetrap ​until very recently.  Starting with that it did not begin life as a short story.  Rather it was originally written as a 1945 radio play for the BBC, in honor of the birthday of Queen Mary.  (It was presented under the name Three Blind Mice.)  Agatha Christie adapted the radio play as a short story, which she then adapted for the stage.  The title had to be changed, though, because there had been another play with the same name, done before World War II.

(The new title was suggested by Christie's son-in-law Anthony Hicks.  Of all things, it comes from Hamlet.  And in a nice bit of appropriate whimsy, from the famous "The play's the thing" scene when he is giving advice to the actors.  Asked the name of the play, he jokingly refers to it as "The Mousetrap.")

What I also didn't know about The Mousetrap until just a few weeks ago is that the background for the reason of the murder was loosely inspired by a true life story.

In another odd twist, somewhat similar to that of the movie rights, Christie requested that the short story not be published in the United Kingdom as long as the play was running in London's West End.  When I read about that, I couldn't figure out how I was able to have read it.  But it turns out that the story was allowed to be published in the United States and appeared in the collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories.

I've still kept my copy all these years.  A whopping 45-cents.  And the original title is duly noted on the cover.
​
Picture

By the way, if you haven't seen last year's movie See How They Run with Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan and Adrien Brody, it's a fun, comic-murder mystery that's centered around a murder that occurs backstage during the early days of The Mousetrap.  The story is totally fictional, but real details are mixed in -- including Richard Attenborough being a character, as is John Woolf, it taking place at the Ambassador Theatre and a few other matters, as well as Agatha Christie taking part, as well.

Also, on more of a personal note, when I returned to London in that aforementioned 1968 family trip, I went to see a wonderful one-act play by Tom Stoppard called The Real Inspector Hound.  It was a deeply-clever satire of theater, critics, drawing-room murder mysteries and, in particular, The Mousetrap.  And such a total joy that even as a kid I could appreciate it (especially having seen The Mousetrap ​two  years earlier).  My poster of it sits on the wall next to the one of ​The Mousetrap.


Picture

​And let's just add another twist to the story.  Because this is Agatha Christie and The Mousetrap, after all --

Though The Mousetrap has been running for 70 years in London's West End, it has oddly never played on Broadway.  Until...now!  Producers in London and New York just announced today that The Mousetrap will finally play on Broadway some time in 2023.

That’s a pretty good, pre-Broadway tryout.  

(I still don’t know why it took this long.  Nor do articles I've read about this Broadway opening.  Though a large Broadway house might not be the best idea for this intimate show, at the moment its schedule for a limited engagement, so it seems like that could be the right choice.  Of course, there's always the possibility of it being extended -- although for 70 years might be a bit of a stretch...)

Producers say that the Broadway run's set design will include an authentic touch -- the only piece of the original set that still survives— the mantelpiece clock — will be loaned from the London production. Also, the backstage wind machine (which was described as "unique") that has the original producer’s name imprinted on it and still used today, will also be loaned.
​
Anyway, to find out more about the original London production, you can check out the official website for The Mousetrap here.

And here's their current trailer.
4 Comments
Edward Zuckerman
11/26/2022 09:22:37 am

The Real Inspector Hound -- in my view the best play Stoppard has written.

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/26/2022 08:17:30 pm

Ed, I haven't seen enough Stoppard to comment on that, but I'm thrilled to find the first person I've ever met who also has seen "The Real Inspector Hound"!!! Huzzah! And all the nicer that it's you. Yes, it's absolutely wonderful and lunatically funny. Among the many things I love about it are not just that it's such a well-written play, but that it uses theater SO well and is SO incredibly clever in its staging and structure.

P.S. When I saw it in 1968, since it's a one-act play, there was another one-act play on the bill (as you can see on the poster above), and oddly it was NOT written by Stoppard. But it too was wonderful and very clever. "The Audition" by Sean Patrick Vincent is a comedy about three young people auditioning a play for an idiot, semi-racist producer -- and the fun staging is that the actor playing the producer sits in the first row of the balcony. (I was also sitting in the front row, but on the other side.)

So, it was a great even of theater that shredded the theater. But that's what "The Real Inspector Hound didn't play in New York for about five years. Stoppard had to write another one-act play to pair with it, which ended up being "After Magritte."

Reply
Walter Podrazik
11/27/2022 12:14:32 pm

I did not see The Mousetrap quite as far back as you, but close. Thanks for spelling out that long long history. Probably inspired by that same news story I just finished revisiting See How They Run just yesterday. Perhaps one reason I have such deep affection for the whole enterprise (with its multiple performance and publishing stipulations) is that, for once, an author called all the shots! And to this day, if I'm talking with anyone about it, I always check whether they've seen it. Otherwise, no spoilers. The cast asked for our discretion at the end of the performance and I still feel honor-bound to respect that!

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/28/2022 04:37:46 pm

Wally, thanks for the note. And yes, I haven't given away the spoiler either all these years. Starting with my brother guessing at intermission. It's pretty remarkable for so many people to *generally* keep the secret for 70 years. (I'm sure plenty of people have given it away, but not most.)

By the way, I read that (not surprisingly) they'll keep that same tradition when it plays on Broadway -- in the curtain call, have an actor ask the audience not to give away the resolution.

The not-publishing the story is (to me) the most remarkable author stipulation Because a stipulation not to make a movie until six months after a play closes is pretty basic. It's just that the play hasn't closed for 70 years that's so hilarious. What's surprising is that there wasn't a qualifying codicil put in the contract that said if the play ran for more than X-years, the movie could be made. Since that's common, too. But either they just presumed it wouldn't be an issue with this little, drawing-room mystery...or she held out and refused it.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture
    Elisberg Industries gets a commission if you click here before shopping on Amazon.
    Picture
    Follow @relisberg

    Author

    Robert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 

    Elisberg is a two-time recipient of the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting. He's written for film, TV, the stage, and two best-selling novels, is a regular columnist for the Writers Guild of America and was for
    the Huffington Post.  Among his other writing, he has a long-time column on technology (which he sometimes understands), and co-wrote a book on world travel.  As a lyricist, he is a member of ASCAP, and has contributed to numerous publications.



    Picture
           Feedspot Badge of Honor

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    Animals
    Audio
    Audio Land
    Books
    Busienss
    Business
    Chicago
    Consumer Product
    Education
    Email Interview
    Entertainment
    Environment
    Fine Art
    Food
    From The Management
    Health
    History
    Huffery
    Humor
    International
    Internet
    Journalism
    Law
    Los Angeles
    Media
    Morning News Round Up
    Movies
    Music
    Musical
    Personal
    Photograph
    Piano Puzzler
    Politics
    Popular Culture
    Profiles
    Quote Of The Day
    Radio
    Religion
    Restaurants
    Science
    Sports
    Technology
    Tech Tip
    Theater
    The Writers Workbench
    Tidbits
    Travel
    Tv
    Twitter
    Video
    Videology
    Well Worth Reading
    Words-o-wisdom
    Writing

    RSS Feed

© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2023
Contact Us    About EI    Chicago Cubs
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Products
    • Books
    • Movies
  • About Elisberg Industries
    • Our Corporate Board
    • Information Overstock
    • Elisberg Industries Entertainment Information
    • Elisberg Statistical Center of American Research
    • Consultancy Service
  • Contact
    • How to Find Us
  • Kudos
  • Good Things to Know
    • The BOB Page
    • Sites You Might Actually Like