Night of January 16th

Introduction

If I were to classify Night of January 16th in conventional literary terms, I would say that it represents, not Romantic Realism, but Romantic Symbolism. For those acquainted with Objectivist aesthetics, I can name a more precise classification: Night of January 16th is not a philosophical, but a sense-of-life play.

A sense of life is a preconceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man's relationship to existence. I emphasize this last because it is a man's attitude toward life that constitutes the core and motor of his subconscious philosophy. Every work of fiction (and wider: every work of art) is the product and expression of its author's sense of life. But it may express that sense of life translated into conceptual, i.e., philosophical, terms, or it may express only an abstract emotional sum. Night of January 16th is a pure, untranslated abstraction.

This means that its events are not to be taken literally ; they dramatize certain fundamental psychological characteristics, deliberately isolated and emphasized in order to convey a single abstraction: the characters' attitude toward life. The events serve to feature the motives of the characters' actions, regardless of the particular forms of action -- i.e., the motives, not their specific concretization. The events feature the confrontation of two extremes, two opposite ways of facing existence: passionate self-assertiveness, self-confidence, ambition, audacity, independence -- versus conventionality, servility, envy, hatred, power-lust. I do not think, nor did I think it when I wrote this play, that a swindler is a heroic character or that a respectable banker is a villain. But for the purpose of dramatizing the conflict of independence versus conformity, a criminal -- a social outcast -- can be an eloquent symbol. This, incidentally, is the reason of the profound appeal of the "noble crook" in fiction. He is the symbol of the rebel as such, regardless of the kind of society he rebels against, the symbol -- for most people -- of their vague, undefined, unrealized groping toward a concept, or a shadowy image, of man's self-esteem.

That a career of crime is not, in fact, the way to implement one's self-esteem, is irrelevant in sense-of-life terms. A sense of life is concerned primarily with consciousness, not with existence -- or rather: with the way a man's consciousness faces existence. It is concerned with a basic frame of mind, not with rules of conduct.

If this play's sense of life were to be verbalized, it would say, in effect: "Your life, your achievement, your happiness, your person are of paramount importance. Live up to your highest vision of yourself no matter what the circumstances you might encounter. An exalted view of self-esteem is a man's most admirable quality." How one is to live up to this vision -- how this frame of mind is to be implemented in action and in reality -- is a question that a sense of life cannot answer: that is the task of philosophy.*

* For a fuller discussion of the nature and functions of a sense of life, I refer you to my articles, "Philosophy and Sense of Life" and "Art and Sense of Life," in the February and March 1966 issues of The Objectivist.

Night of January 16this not a philosophical treatise on morality: that basic frame of mind (and its opposite) is all that I wanted to convey.

This play was written in 1933. It started in my mind with the idea of writing a courtroom drama, a murder trial, in which the jury would be drawn from the audience and would vote on the verdict. Obviously, the factual evidence of the defendant's guilt or innocence had to be evenly balanced in order to make either verdict possible. But a jury's disagreement about inconclusive facts could not be of any possible interest or significance. The issue at stake, therefore, had to be psychological.

The springboard for the story was the collapse of Ivar Kreuger -- or, more precisely, the public reaction to that collapse.

On March 12, 1932, Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish "Match King," committed suicide. His death was followed by the crash of the vast financial empire he had created, and by the revelation that that empire was a gigantic fraud. He had been a mysterious figure, a "lone wolf," celebrated as a man of genius, of unswerving determination and spectacular audacity. His fall was like an explosion that threw up a storm of dust and muck -- a storm of peculiarly virulent denunciations.

It was not his shady methods, his ruthlessness, his dishonesty that were being denounced, but his ambition. His ability, his self-confidence, the glamorous aura of his life and name were featured, exaggerated, overstressed, to serve as fodder for the hordes of envious mediocrities rejoicing at his downfall. It was a spree of gloating malice. Its leitmotif was not: "How did he fall?" but: "How did he dare to rise?" Had there been a world press at the time of Icarus and Phaethon, this was the kind of obituary they would have received.

In fact, Ivar Kreuger was a man of unusual ability who had, at first, made a fortune by legitimate means; it was his venture into politics -- mixed-economy politics -- that destroyed him. Seeking a world monopoly for his match industry, he began to give large loans to various European governments in exchange for a monopoly status in their countries -- loans which were not repaid, which he could not collect and which led him to a fantastic juggling of his assets and bookkeeping in order to conceal his losses. In the final analysis, it was not Kreuger who profiteered on the ruin of the investors he had swindled; the profiteers were sundry European governments. (But when governments pursue such policies, it is not called a swindle: it is called "deficit financing.")

At the time of Kreuger's death, it was not the political aspects of his story that interested me, but the nature of those public denunciations. It was not a crook that they were denouncing, but greatness as such; it was greatness as such that I wanted to defend.

This, then, was my assignment in Night of January 16th: to dramatize the sense of life that was vaguely symbolized by Ivar Kreuger, and set it against the sense of life blatantly revealed by his attackers.

Bjorn Faulkner, the hero who never appears in the play, is not Ivar Kreuger; he is what Ivar Kreuger might have been or, perhaps, ought to have been. The two sides in the play are represented, on the one hand, by Bjorn Faulkner and Karen Andre, his secretary-mistress who is on trial for his murder -- and, on the other, by John Graham Whitfield and his daughter. The factual evidence for and against the accused is (approximately) balanced. The issue rests on the credibility of the witnesses. The jury has to choose which side to believe, and this depends on every juror's own sense of life.

Or, at least, so I hoped. I was aware, even then, that most people would not see the issue in such terms, that most people are not that consistent, neither in their conscious convictions, nor in their choice of values, nor even in their sense of life. I was aware that they would probably miss the basic antithesis and would judge on the spur or color or drama of the moment, attaching no further significance to their verdict.

I knew also that a sense-of-life issue was not the best way to implement the idea of a trial by an audience-jury, and that some explicit controversial issue would be better, such as birth control or mercy-killing or "trial marriages." But here I truly had no choice. For the life of me, I could not have invented a story dealing with some narrow issue. My own sense of life demanded a theme involving great figures and crucial fundamentals; I could not arouse myself to any interest in anything less -- then or now.

The motive of my writing has always been the presentation of an ideal man. I did not regard Bjorn Faulkner as an ideal. But I was not ready to attempt the portrait of an ideal man; his first appearance in my writing is Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, followed by the heroes of Atlas Shrugged. What I was ready to write about was a woman's feeling for her ideal man, and this I did in the person of Karen Andre.

Those interested in tracing my personal development will observe the sense-of-life consistency of this play with my subsequent novels. But my novels deal with more than a sense of life: they involve a conscious philosophy, i.e., a conceptually defined view of man and of existence. And, to illustrate the translation of a sense of life into conceptual terms: if Bjorn Faulkner were to make the same mistakes in terms applicable to actual life, he would become Gail Wynand, the most tragic character in The Fountainhead; or, if Bjorn Faulkner were to be an ideal businessman, he would become Francisco d'Anconia of Atlas Shrugged.

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.

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 the technique 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 love him 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 sold only 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 of Night 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). The only 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, I know better: I know that it could not have been different, granting the nature of my work and of today's cultural trends. But don't let anyone ever approach me about making changes in my work: I learned my lesson the hard way.

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 of Penthouse Legend, the script of Woman on Trial (which was the same, but with some cuts made by me) and the script of Night of January 16th. I was somewhat astonished by the result: in this final, definitive version, I had to cut out everything 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 of who said it, but of what was said, and that I would give in to his office boy, if the boy happened to be right. Woods did not answer; I knew even then that he did not hear me.

The final, definitive version of Night 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