← Harold's Old Time Radio
Harold's Old Time Radio
Agatha Christie - BBC 90-12-30 Close-Up
00:26:19
Agatha Christie - BBC 90-12-30 Close-Up
Loading summary
Transcript39 lines
- [00:00]
Narrator (John Webster)
Well, now on Radio 2, we're going
- [00:01]
Interviewer/Host
to delve into the BBC's archives for
- [00:04]
Narrator (John Webster)
a close up on Britain's best known author of murder mystery and suspense. The BBC presents Agatha Christie a radio portrait of the celebrated authoress and playwright.
- [00:41]
Agatha Christie
The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as the Stiles case has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the worldwide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumors which still persist.
- [01:20]
Narrator (John Webster)
Those were the opening sentences of Agatha Christie's first detective novel. With the publication of the Mysterious Affair at Stiles, and our first meeting with Hercule Poirot, the engaging little Belgian detective with the egg shaped head and outsized moustache, there began one of the most remarkable careers in the history of fiction. Poirot won for himself a world public comparable with that of Holmes and Father Brown. And his creator's books have sold by the million in Britain, the United States and elsewhere. Since the Stiles case, there have been between 50 and 60 other mysterious affairs. Superbly contrived, brilliantly told. As if this were not enough, Mrs. Christie became the first woman dramatist ever to have three successful plays running in the West End simultaneously. Yet what, after all, do her countless readers know of Agatha Christie? Her book sales are fabulous. And yet less is known of her than of probably any other famous writer of popular fiction. Her father was American by birth, but she was born in Devonshire and was encouraged to write by that great west country novelist, Eden Philpotts. But let Agatha Christie speak for herself and tell us about her work.
- [02:38]
Agatha Christie
People often ask me what made me take up writing. Many of them, I fancy, wonder whether to take my answer seriously, although it's a strictly truthful one. You see, I put it all down to the fact that I never had any education. Perhaps I'd better qualify that by admitting I did eventually go to school in Paris when I was 16 or thereabouts. But until then, apart from being taught a little arithmetic, I'd had no lessons to speak of at all, although I was gloriously idle. In those days, children had to do a good many things for themselves. They made their own dolls, furniture, and they made Christmas presents to give to their friends. Nowadays they're just given money and told to buy their presents in a big store. But I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts. And there's nothing like boredom to make you write so by the time I was 16 or 17, I'd written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel. By the time I was 21, I'd finished the first book of mine ever to be published, the Mysterious Affair at Sleep Styles. I'd sent it to one or two publishers who didn't want it, and eventually it went to John Lane. About a year later, I heard it had been accepted. Well, that's how it began. And since that time, I've written something like 55 books and half a dozen plays.
- [04:00]
Narrator (John Webster)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles set the pattern for the methods and manner of the volatile little Belgian in the many Poirot mysteries that were to be unfolded in year by year. Poirot, uttering a hoarse and inarticulate cry, and putting his hands over his eyes, swayed backwards and forwards, apparently suffering the keenest agony. Good heavens, Poira, what is the matter? Are you ill?
- [04:36]
Hercule Poirot (Character)
Ay, no, no, it's. It is that I have an idea.
- [04:41]
Narrator (John Webster)
Oh, one of your little ideas.
- [04:44]
Hercule Poirot (Character)
Oh, my foine. This time it is an idea. Gigantic, stupendous. And you. You, my friend, have given it to me.
- [04:54]
Francis L. Sullivan (Actor who played Poirot)
Look.
- [04:55]
Hercule Poirot (Character)
The final proof. The last link of the chain is now in my hands. A letter and a murderer's own handwriting. Mes amis, let me read it to you. Dearest Evelyn, you'll be anxious at hearing nothing. It is all right. Only it will be tonight instead of last night. You understand there's a good time coming. Once the old woman is dead and out of the way, no one can possibly bring on the crime. To me, that idea of yours about the bromides was a stroke of genius. But we must be very circumspect. A false step here, my friends. The letter breaks off. Doubtless the writer was interrupted, but there can be no question as to his identity. We all know his handwriting. Let me introduce you to the murderer.
- [06:03]
Narrator (John Webster)
Poirot's first recorded case sold well, especially in view of the fact that it was the first attempt of a completely unknown woman writer. Her first publisher was John Lane, and by one of life's happier circumstances, his nephew, Sir Alan Lane, was later to play a big part in the Agatha Christie story. For Sir Alan founded the amazingly popular library of Penguin Books and was to increase the Christie circulation by more than 5 million copies.
- [06:30]
Sir Alan Lane (Publisher's nephew)
I remember very clearly when that book, the Mysterious Affair Styles, was published by my uncle, John Lane of the Bodily Head. My reaction wasn't exactly a critical one. Far from it. I didn't read it as a publisher because at that time I happened to be the office boy. I devoured it as I devoured my weekly blood. I enjoyed it. The probability is that I should have enjoyed it a great deal more if I had known that one day my own firm would print and sell, which is more to the point, between 5 and 6 million books by this author. We were going to become close friends with a lot of common interests. My wife and I were to spend memorable times with Agatha and Max, her husband, in the Mesopotamian desert. But these pleasant happenings were hidden from me. I had just read about this mysterious affair in the intervals of licking stamps and being more or less polite to visitors and thought it was a jolly good story. Years afterwards, 10 years perhaps, I met Agatha Christie again. She has lived most of her life in Devon. Devon is the home of my own family and I found myself being invited to spend happy weekends at her home. First in Torquay and then on the banks of the Dart. We have a lot of interests in common. Both of us are fond of old houses and old furniture. And over the years we've traipsed all over the west of England together, popping in and out of antique shops. She is a great collector. I am just a minor one. I have lived with Agatha and her husband in the desert. I have stayed with him time and time again in the past 25 years. I know from her output alone that she is a prodigious worker. And yet in all that time, wherever we've been, I have never yet heard the click of her typewriter. I have never seen her writing or typing. And in fact I've never been conscious of her having done any work at all, in spite of the astonishing quantity and quality which she steadily produces. When we were with her in the little mud hut at Nimrod, he she would be busy on the job of organizing the day to day work of the camp. And in the evenings she'd be occupied by her sewing and needlework. What we didn't realize now was that while she was doing all these manifold things, some new Agatha Christie play or novel was being worked out in her mind. Whichever way you look at it, there's only one Agatha.
- [08:49]
Narrator (John Webster)
Agatha Christie was working as a dispenser in a Red Cross hospital during the first World War when she wrote the Mysterious Affair at Styles. It was published a year or two later. And from that time to the present day the keys of the famous Christie typewriter have been tapping out a never ending flow of novels, articles, short stories and plays. Her fifth novel, the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is still regarded by many people as her finest. Ackroyd was sitting as I had left him, in the armchair before the fire. His head had fallen sideways and clearly visible just below the collar of his coat was a shining piece of twisted metalwork. Parker and I advanced to whistle over the recumbent figure. I heard the butler draw in his breath with a sharp hiss stamp. From behind, he murmured, horrible. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, with a chattering surprise ending, was hailed as a classic of detective fiction. In a few years, Agatha Christie had become a highly skilled craftsman and people were curious to know what her approach to the business of writing was.
- [09:59]
Agatha Christie
Yes, I do find one's friends are curious about the way one works. What is your method? They want to know? Well, the disappointing truth is that I haven't much method. I typed my own drafts on an ancient, faithful machine I've owned for years. And I find a Dictaphone useful for short stories or for recasting an act of a play, not for the more complicated business of working out a novel. No, I think the real work is done in thinking out the development of your story and worrying about it until it comes right. That may take quite a while. Then, when you've got all your materials together, as it were, all that remains is to try to find time to write the thing.
- [10:40]
Narrator (John Webster)
There is an altogether astonishing continuity about the Christie career. Almost exactly 30 years ago, Agatha Christie's agent sold a short story to the grand magazine which has long since ceased publication, for what today would seem to be a very modest fee. Mr. Mayhearn adjusted his pince nez and cleared his throat with a little dry as dust cough that was wholly typical of him. Then he looked again at the man opposite him, the man charged with willful murder. The story was called Witness for the Prosecution and on it was based the play of the same title. The play which, while still running successfully in London, became a hit in New York. So, turning for a moment to the Agatha Christie plays, let's hear Richard Attenborough who starred in one of them, the Mousetrap.
- [11:35]
Richard Attenborough (Actor)
I don't think I'll ever forget the first time I met Agatha Christie. And that's not just a figure of speech to begin with. She's just about the last person in the world you would ever think of in connection with crime or violence or anything blood curdling or dramatic. She's the calmest, gentlest, most charming and matter of fact character you can imagine. And the thought of her is probably the best selling thriller writer of the day. Is frankly incredible. Some time ago, when my wife, Sheila, Sim and I were into Dorothy, a son, Peter Saunders, told us that he had a play he wanted us to do. A play by Agatha Christie. And although we were obviously tied up and in a show that looked like running for quite a time, they said they'd wait until we were free. So could we give them some sort of date? Well, Sheila and I went into it pretty carefully and set a date some 15 months ahead. By which time we were sure that Dorothy would have ended. That was fine. And so the next thing was to meet the author. We'd read the play, of course, which at that time was called Three Blind Mice. I must say we were taken absolutely by surprise when we met this very sweet and delightful person. She was so kind and friendly, Rather like the embodiment of everything one expects from the perfect aunt. But even then, I think we realized that she was very definitely someone who knew her own mind. For one thing, she was convinced that Sheila was absolutely right for the girl in the play. But I'm not at all certain that she thought I was quite right. Any rate, she said that I would be right for part of something, Sergeant Trotter, if not all of it. We were both very excited and told her we thought it was a most wonderful piece of theatre. And then, making an utterly typical remark, Mrs. Christie said. Well, I think we ought to get
- [13:33]
Narrator (John Webster)
quite a little run out of it.
- [13:35]
Richard Attenborough (Actor)
The three of us became the greatest of friends. But when we said good bye after that lunch, we just couldn't get over the fact that this quite quiet, precise, dignified lady could possibly have made our flesh creep and fascinated people all over the world with her mastery of suspense and her gift for creating on the stage and the screen such an atmosphere of terror.
- [13:59]
Agatha Christie
What are you doing? Why? Just turned out the light. No, don't.
- [14:08]
Sir Mortimer Wheeler (Archaeologist)
Get away from me.
- [14:17]
Narrator (John Webster)
With her remarkable output of novels, short stories and plays, even experienced writers wonder how on earth Mrs. Christie does it. She has her own answer.
- [14:27]
Agatha Christie
It's difficult to say, but three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it. On the other hand, plays, I think, are better written quickly. Of course, writing plays is much more fun than writing books. You haven't got to bother about long descriptions of places and people or about deciding how to space out your material. And you must write pretty fast to keep in the mood and to keep the talk flowing. Naturally, I prefer to write a play as a play, that is, rather than to adapt a book. The only reason I ever did. That was because I didn't care very much for what happened when other people tried to turn my books into plays. So in the end, I had to do it myself.
- [15:09]
Narrator (John Webster)
Mrs. Christie has always held strong views about the way in which her characters have sometimes been recreated on the stage and screen. In one of her books, she has the character of a woman novelist who expresses these views.
- [15:22]
Agatha Christie
You've no idea the agony of having your characters taken and made to say things they never would have said and do things they never would have done. And if you protest, all they say is that it's good theater.
- [15:37]
Narrator (John Webster)
But whatever Agatha Christie may have thought of her characters as portrayed on screen or stage, or indeed of her own fabulous success as a thriller writer, she found consolation in writing romantic novels under a different name. More than 20 years ago, reviewers discovered a new writer called Mary Westmacott Christy. Fans had no idea of the connection between the two authors. As Mrs. Christie says herself, I get
- [16:04]
Agatha Christie
a great deal of pleasure in writing my Mary Westmacott books. I concealed Mary Westmacott's identity very successfully for nearly 20 years, but it's a secret no longer, and I can only say that writing a different type of story is my indulgence, and I enjoy it tremendously.
- [16:21]
Narrator (John Webster)
One remarkable quality of this prolific writer is her gift for detachment. She has many interests, not least archaeology. And Sir Mortimer Wheeler, himself a celebrated archaeologist and author, gives us this picture.
- [16:35]
Sir Mortimer Wheeler (Archaeologist)
Agatha Christie. I think of her at a party, as it might be one of those episodes in her own novels or plays, when the characters are assembled and the plot thickens. She is sitting a little to one side of the scene, dressed probably in brown, with a jewel of old fashioned upon her corsage. Unlike the others, she has no wine glass beside her and obviously needs neither the stimulus nor the gesture which such provision assures to lesser folk. Beneath a wealth of gray hair, she looks upon the world with calm and kindly eyes, observant rather than inquisitive, and always with a twinkle or a smile in readiness. Her talk is easy and leisurely enlivened now and then with an unanticipated flash of wit, but not in the full sense of the term vivacious. She is essentially a shy presence, adding a wise geniality to the party rather than noticeably dominating it. This quality of reserve and quiescence seems to me to be also an integral quality of her writing. The characters and episodes, even the climaxes, emerge from her books and plays much more like a plant growing than like the jigsaw puzzle with which they're sometimes compared. How many hours she spends at her desk, I do not know. But she finds ample time also for living and seeing. Presently she will be climbing the great mounds which represent the famous Assyrian city of Nimrod in northern Mesopotamia, where her husband, Professor Emil Mallowan, is to renew the exhibition that have in recent years revealed so much of the history and craftsmanship of 26 centuries ago. And Agatha will be no idle bystander. She is a part of the expedition alike, its hostess and at home in its workshops. Years ago, her crime story Murder in Mesopotamia had just such a setting. And who knows what mystery still awaits her lively eye amidst those antique mounds and the ghosts of bygone kingdoms.
- [18:43]
Narrator (John Webster)
For one of her recent novels, Mrs. McGinty's Dead, Agatha Christie wrote this dedication to Peter Saunders in gratitude for his kindness to authors. Mr. Saunders, one of our best known theatrical managers, is the man behind Mrs. Christie's successes on the West End stage and in New York.
- [19:03]
Peter Saunders (Theatrical manager)
Yes, I've had the good fortune to present Agatha Christie's extraordinary run of post war successes in the West End, to say nothing of the current hit on Broadway. But what pleases me more than anything you know is the fact that our relationship is a far more friendly and a far happier one than that of just author and producer. I've seen perhaps as much as most people of her approach to work. I know from experience that remarkable facility she has for marshalling her ideas and scenes in her mind without putting pen to paper. I said to her once, how's the new play going? It's finished, she told me. But when I asked, may I read it? She replied so disarmingly, oh, I haven't written it. But she had given me a very strictly truthful answer. From her point of view, the play from beginning to end had been worked out to the last detail. The writing of it was an act of mere physical labour. I've been taking round some of her plays on tour, although in fact I didn't meet Mrs. Christie until 1950. I think it may come as a surprise to some of her present day admirers to realize that the words by Agatha Christie have been on Britain's playbills for something like 27 years. Alibi was the first. Black Coffee is still playing throughout the world. Then there was Love from a Stranger, Pedal at end, house, 10 little niggers, which played for a year on Broadway, Appointment With Death, Murder on the Nile and Murder at the Vicarage. At last I was able to do what I'd always wanted and put on by myself, a new play by Agatha Christie. This was the Hollow. It ran for 11 months and with it began this fantastic four year long period of success in the West End. So that when 1955 began, her name was in lights outside three of London's famous theaters. And if that wasn't enough for one dramatist, there was a Broadway hit to her credit as well. Then, after the Hollow, the mousetrap, staged in 1952, is still cracking away in tremendous form, having put up the world's record for any thriller. Then, to complete the triple achievement, we have Witness for the Prosecution and for good measure, Margaret Lockwood in Spider's Web.
- [21:30]
Interviewer/Host
Usually you read all the books of your favorite author without a hope of ever meeting them. I can truthfully say I've been reading Mrs. Christie's mystery stories ever since I was at school. I haven't missed one of them. So you can imagine how I felt when the chance came to act in one of Agatha Christie's play plays. And not just a play, but one she'd written specially for me. One day Peter Saunders and Herbert De Leon told me they had this idea of asking Mrs. Christie if she'd write a play for me. Before we met at lunch, I realized that although I'd loved reading her stories, I really had no idea how she would look. And like a good many others must have been, I was taken completely by surprise. She was utterly unlike anything I had remotely imagined. She was perfectly charming and we got on very well. But I couldn't help thinking of her in the setting of a country vicarage. We discussed the whole idea and naturally, of course, it was to be a murder play. Then we talked for a while about the kind of character I should play, and Mrs. Christie vanished into Devonshire. Three months later the complete play arrived. I sent her a telegram right away to say how delighted I was with it. I couldn't do it for some time, of course, because I was making a picture. So the whole plan remained a deep, dark secret between the four of us until the first announcement was made in the press.
- [22:51]
Peter Saunders (Theatrical manager)
Witness for the Prosecution, as you know, opened in New York a couple of days after Spider's Web had its first night in London and has turned out to be one of the biggest hits there for years.
- [23:02]
Agatha Christie
The basic idea, Witness for the Prosecution, was in one of my very early short stories. I was very pleased indeed when my old friend Francis L. Sullivan was engaged for the New York production. And of course Patricia Jessel, who created the part here. Larry Sullivan played the part of my Belgian detective. Hercule Poirot in alibi more than 25 years ago.
- [23:25]
Francis L. Sullivan (Actor who played Poirot)
Yes, it was in 1928 that I first played Monsieur Poirot in a touring company of Arabi, and it was through this that a couple of years later I made my first West End success in the the same part in Black Coffee. And I again played him for a third time in peril Den House in 1940. Although I met Mrs. Christie at rehearsals and we had got on very well, I did not get to know her really intimately until the end of the war, when I approached her to write another play for me. My wife and I were living at Hazelney in Surrey at the time, and Agatha came down to stay with us for several weekends whilst discussing what the play should be. On one of her weekend visits, I had an excellent chance to observe at least the outward manifestations of the creative phase of her work. At the back of the house, my wife, in a moment of insane optimism over the English weather, had caused a swimming pool to be made, with half a dozen paths leading down to it through the chestnut woods. And one fine Sunday morning I discovered Agatha wandering up and down these paths with an expression of intense concentration. I asked her what she was doing, but she was very uncommunicative, so I left her to it and dived into the pool. The sequel came about a year later when there arrived one day a copy of the Hollow with the printed dedication to Larry and Annie, with apologies for using their pool as the scene of a murder.
- [24:41]
Narrator (John Webster)
After that contribution from Francis L. Sullivan in America, a last word from the author of this program, Gail Pedrick.
- [24:49]
Gail Pedrick (Program writer)
Of all the scripts I've written In the past 25 years, 8 or 900 in all, this was one of the most interesting to do. But in one way it puzzled and bothered me a little, just a little. And this is really most unusual. Now and again, you see, the. The picture seemed too good to be true. Her friends, one and all, think she's wonderful and say they will never forget the time they first met her. And I'm sure they mean it. True, there was more than a hint that she's a woman who knows her own mind and doesn't hesitate to speak it. But what an admirable quality. Then we are told she has a way of sitting in company, withdrawn and sometimes silent. And I suppose some people might find it exasperating to think she's plotting scenes of violence and villainy while they're talking their heads off about something else. But to be reserved, after all, is only shyness. Grown up. No, her friends love her and are under some happy, comfortable spell. All the same, the rest of us may be forgiven for wondering if the real Agatha Christie isn't rather more baffling than some of her characters.
- [26:08]
Narrator (John Webster)
That radio portrait of Agatha Christie was written for the BBC by Gail Pedrick. The narrator was John Webster, and the production was by Thurston Holland.