Night of January 16th (sometimes advertised as The Night of January 16th) is a theatrical play by Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand, inspired by the death of Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger. The play is set in a courtroom during a murder trial, and an unusual feature is that members of the audience are chosen to play the jury. The court hears the case of Karen Andre, a former secretary and lover of businessman Bjorn Faulkner who is accused of his murder. The play does not directly portray the events leading to Faulkner's death; instead the jury must rely on character testimony to decide whether Andre is guilty. The play's ending depends on the verdict. Rand's intention was to dramatize a conflict between individualism and conformity, with the jury's verdict revealing which viewpoint they preferred.
The play was first produced in 1934 in Los Angeles under the title Woman on Trial; it received mostly positive reviews and enjoyed moderate commercial success. Producer Al Woods took it to Broadway during the 1935–36 season and re-titled it Night of January 16th. It drew attention for its innovative audience-member jury and became a hit, running for seven months. Doris Nolan, in her Broadway debut, received positive reviews for her portrayal of the lead role. Several regional productions followed. An off-Broadway revival in 1973, under the title Penthouse Legend, was a commercial and critical failure. A film based on the play was released in 1941; the story has also been adapted for television and radio.
Rand had many heated disputes with Woods over script changes he wanted for the Broadway production. Their disputes climaxed in an arbitration hearing when Rand discovered Woods had diverted a portion of her royalties to pay for a script doctor. Rand disliked the changes made for the Broadway production and the version published for amateur productions, so in 1968 she re-edited the script for publication as the "definitive" version.
History Background and first production
Rand drew inspiration for Night of January 16th from two sources. The first was The Trial of Mary Dugan, a 1927 melodrama about a showgirl prosecuted for killing her wealthy lover, which gave Rand the idea to write a play featuring a trial. Rand wanted her play's ending to depend on the result of the trial, rather than having a fixed final scene. She based her victim on Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger, who was known as the "Match King" for the matchstick-manufacturing monopolies he owned. When Kreuger's business empire became financially unstable, he shot himself on March 12, 1932 after being accused of involvement in potentially illegal financial deals. The incident inspired Rand to make the victim a businessman of great ambition and dubious character, who had given several people motives for his murder.
Rand wrote Night of January 16th in 1933. She was 28 and had been in the United States for seven years after emigrating from the Soviet Union, where her strong anti-Communist opinions had put her at risk. Rand had never written a stage play, but had worked in Hollywood as a junior screenwriter for Cecil B. DeMille, and later in RKO Studios' wardrobe department.; In September 1932, Rand sold an original screenplay, Red Pawn, to Universal Studios and quit RKO to finish her first novel, We the Living.; She wrote the stage play with the hope of making money from it while finishing her novel. By 1934 her agent was trying to sell the play and the novel, but both were repeatedly rejected.; Red Pawn was shelved and Rand's contract for rewrites on it expired. Rand's husband, actor Frank O'Connor, was getting only minor roles with little pay, leaving the couple in financial difficulties. With the last of her money from Red Pawn exhausted, Rand got an offer for her new play from Al Woods, who had produced The Trial of Mary Dugan for Broadway. The contract included a condition that Woods could make changes to the script. Wary that he would destroy her vision of the play to create a more conventional drama, Rand turned Woods down.
Soon after she rejected the offer from Woods, Rand accepted an offer from Welsh actor E. E. Clive to stage the play in Los Angeles. It first opened at the Hollywood Playhouse as Woman on Trial; Clive produced, and Barbara Bedford played Andre. The production opened on October 22, 1934, and closed in late November.
Broadway production At the end of the play's run in Los Angeles, Woods renewed his offer to produce the play on Broadway. Although he was a renowned producer of many famous plays in a career of more than three decades, Woods had lost much of his fortune in the early 1930s and had not produced a hit in several years. Being refused by a neophyte author shocked him and increased his interest. Woods still wanted the right to make script changes, but he made adjustments to the contract to give Rand more influence. She reluctantly agreed to his terms.
Rand arrived in New York City at the beginning of December 1934 in anticipation of the opening in January 1935. The play's financing failed, delaying the production for several months until Woods arranged new financing from theater owner Lee Shubert. When work resumed, Rand's relationship with Woods quickly soured as he demanded changes she later derided as "a junk heap of worn, irrelevant melodramatic devices". Woods had made his success on Broadway with low-brow melodramas such as Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model and risqué comedies such as The Demi-Virgin. Woods was not interested in what he called Rand's "highfalutin speeches", preferring the dramatic conflict to focus on concrete elements, such as whether the defendant had a gun. The changes to Rand's work included the creation of a new character, a gun moll played by Shubert's mistress.
The contract between Woods and Rand allowed him to hire collaborators if he thought it necessary, paying them a limited portion of the author's royalties. He first hired John Hayden to direct, paying him one percentage point from Rand's 10-percent royalty. Although Hayden was a successful Broadway director, Rand disliked him and later called him "a very ratty Broadway hanger-on". As auditions for the play began in Philadelphia, Woods demanded further script changes and was frustrated by Rand's refusal to make some of them. He engaged Louis Weitzenkorn, the author of the previous hit Five Star Final, to act as a script doctor. Rand's relationship with Weitzenkorn was worse than hers with Woods or Hayden; she and Weitzenkorn argued over political differences as well as his ideas for the play. Woods gave Weitzenkorn another percentage point from Rand's royalties without informing her. Rand filed a claim against Woods with the American Arbitration Association; she objected to Weitzenkorn receiving any portion of her royalties, and told the arbitration panel Weitzenkorn had added only a single line to the play, which was cut after the auditions. Upon hearing this testimony, one of the arbitrators responded incredulously, "That was he did?" In two hearings, the panel ruled that Weitzenkorn should receive his agreed-upon one percent, but that Woods could not deduct the payment from Rand's royalties because she had not been notified in advance. Despite the disputes between Rand and Woods, the play opened at Shubert's Ambassador Theatre on September 16, 1935, where it ran successfully for seven months. It closed on April 4, 1936, after 283 performances.;
Subsequent productions and publications
When the play's success on Broadway was clear, Woods launched productions of the play in other cities, starting with San Francisco. It opened there at the Geary Theater on December 30, 1935, and ran for five weeks with Nedda Harrigan in the lead role. Harrigan stayed with the show when it moved to the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, where it opened on March 1, 1936. After the Broadway production closed, Woods started a road tour that included productions in Boston and Chicago.
International productions of the play included shows in London, Montreal, and Sydney. The production in London opened on September 29, 1936, where Phoebe Foster took the lead role for her first appearance on the London stage. It closed after 22 performances. A production in Montreal opened on June 16, 1941, starring Fay Wray as Andre and Robert Wilcox as Regan. In Sydney, the play opened at the Minerva Theatre on June 19, 1944, with Thelma Grigg as Andre.
Night of January 16th was first published in an edition for amateur theater organizations in 1936, using a version edited by drama professor Nathaniel Edward , which included further changes to eliminate elements such as swearing and smoking. Rand disavowed this version because of the changes. In 1960, Rand's protégé Nathaniel Branden asked about doing a public reading of the play for students at the Nathaniel Branden Institute. Rand did not want him to use the amateur version; she created a revised text that eliminated most of Woods' and 's changes. She had her "final, definitive version" published in 1968 with an introduction about the play's history.
In 1972, Rand approved an off-Broadway revival of the play, which used her preferred version of the script, including several dozen further small changes in language beyond those in the 1968 version. The revival also used her original title, Penthouse Legend. It was produced by Phillip and Kay Nolte Smith, a married couple who were friends with Rand. Kay Smith also starred in the production under the stage name Kay Gillian. It opened at the McAlpin Rooftop Theater on February 22, 1973, and closed on March 18 after 30 performances.
Night of January 16th was the last theatrical success for either Rand or Woods. Rand's next play, Ideal, went unsold, and a 1940 stage adaptation of We the Living flopped. Rand achieved lasting success and financial stability with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. Woods produced several more plays; none were hits and when he died in 1951, he was bankrupt and living in a hotel.
Synopsis The plot of Night of January 16th centers on the trial of secretary Karen Andre for the murder of her employer, business executive Bjorn Faulkner, who defrauded his company of millions of dollars to invest in the gold trade. In the wake of a financial crash, he was facing bankruptcy. The play's events occur entirely in a courtroom; Faulkner is never seen. On the night of January 16, Faulkner and Andre were in the penthouse of the Faulkner Building in New York City, when Faulkner apparently fell to his death. Within the three acts, the prosecutor Mr. Flint and Andre's defense attorney Mr. Stevens call witnesses whose testimonies build conflicting stories.
At the beginning of the first act, the judge asks the court clerk to call jurors from the audience. Once the jurors are seated, the prosecution argument begins. Flint explains that Andre was not just Faulkner's secretary, but also his lover. He says Faulkner jilted her to marry Nancy Lee Whitfield and fired Andre, motivating Andre to murder him. Flint then calls a series of witnesses, starting with the medical examiner, who testifies that Faulkner's body was so damaged by the fall that it was impossible to determine whether he was killed by the impact or was already dead. An elderly night watchman and a private investigator describe the events they saw that evening. A police inspector testifies to finding a suicide note. Faulkner's very religious housekeeper disapprovingly describes the sexual relationship between Andre and Faulkner, and says she saw Andre with another man after Faulkner's marriage. Nancy Lee testifies about her and Faulkner's courtship and marriage, portraying both as idyllic. The act ends with Andre speaking out of turn to accuse Nancy Lee of lying.