Curtain Up (35 page)

At the end of 1950, as she turned sixty, it must have seemed to Christie that her playwriting ambitions were to come to nothing. And then, suddenly and extraordinarily, all that was to change. Within four years she would become the undisputed Queen of the West End.

Saunders Saves the Day

British post-war theatre was characterised by the dominance of the H.M. Tennent production empire, known as ‘the Firm', and the theatre building-owning cartel, known as ‘the Group'. Whilst the two were not unconnected through various directorships and shareholdings, it is notable that in the UK the dominant theatrical production company and the major building-owning interests were at least nominally controlled by different people (the means of production and distribution, if you like, were technically separate entities), whereas in the USA at the time they were both directly controlled by the Shuberts.

‘The Group' was an interconnected collection of theatre-owning and producing entities which had started to establish links in the early 1940s. It involved such potent ‘bricks and mortar' managements as Prince Littler, Stoll Theatres, Associated Theatre Properties, Moss Empires and Howard & Wyndham, and included theatre buildings throughout the country as well as in London's West End. While no single company or individual within the Group could be accused of operating a monopoly, the labyrinthine network of long and short building leases, directorships and shareholdings that bound it together effectively created one. In 1952 the Federation of Theatre Unions (comprising Equity, the Musicians' Union and the National Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees) published a 280-page book called
Theatre Ownership in Britain
, which lists
and analyses the directorships and holdings of all the major building owners and production companies. It is not exactly a thrilling read, but it is astonishing in its analysis and exposure of what was clearly a highly organised cartel, with a number of independently owned theatre buildings struggling to exist in its shadow.

H.M. Tennent Ltd was formed in 1936 by Harry Tennent and his assistant Hugh ‘Binkie' Beaumont, who had been working together as bookers for the Group's Moss Empires and Howard & Wyndham Theatres, and who had identified a gap in the market for a new production company. Following Tennent's death five years later, the enigmatic Binkie Beaumont had found himself managing director of the fledgling enterprise, and about to launch the most successful business strategy ever conceived by a commercial theatre producer in the UK. The company was linked to the Group through substantial shareholdings by two of its major theatre-owning players, but H.M. Tennent itself had no building-owning interests and Binkie was clearly identified as its boss.

Entertainment tax, a levy on ticket sales, had been introduced in 1916 as a wartime measure. In 1942, at which time the tax typically accounted for over a third of the ticket price, a scheme was set up offering exemption to non-profit distributing theatre companies whose productions were partly educational. The judgement as to whether a play was educational (or, indeed, ‘partly' educational) was put in the hands of three CEMA-appointed ‘experts', who rapidly became known as the ‘three blind mice'. The 1946 Finance Act revised these terms so that the aims of the company itself, rather than necessarily all of its productions, were required to be partly educational, rendering the mice redundant. Crucially, there was nothing to prevent the company itself from trading at a profit, provided such profits were not distributed to investors. In 1942, Beaumont had established Tennent Plays Ltd, a non-profit distributing and therefore tax-exempt company, to run alongside his commercial company H.M. Tennent Ltd. Following a spat with the tax authorities in 1947, this was reconstituted as Tennent Productions Ltd. The
two companies shared an office, staff and board members, many of whom were accountants and solicitors. In a move to lend the company credibility with the newly formed Arts Council – whose endorsement (‘in association with the Arts Council'), though not essential to qualifying for tax exemption, clearly gave its operation kudos and legitimacy – Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud were added to the board of Tennent Productions Ltd.

The tax-exempt non-profit distributing company paid the commercial company £40 per week for managing each of its productions and, unlike its competitors, retained the full ticket price, thereby quickly accumulating cash reserves that could, by definition, only be spent on further productions. At the same time, the commercial company continued to present its own productions. As a motor for the creation of a theatrical monopoly based on volume of work this was an extraordinarily productive model, and the two companies between them soon established complete dominance over the industry, with what appeared to be exclusive access to the best theatres, writers and performers based on their ability to guarantee an unprecedented volume of high quality work. Along with this, of course, went (unproven) accusations of using their cash reserves to pay over the odds for theatre rents, actors' fees and authors' royalties, as well as a widely held perception that the companies operated blacklists and that you either worked for Tennents or you didn't work at all.

The ‘educational' aims of Tennent Productions, as reflected in its repertoire, and the legality of its tax-exempt status were frequently challenged by rival managements, with matters coming to a head over their 1948 production of Daphne du Maurier's
September Tide
, directed by Irene Hentschel and starring Gertude Lawrence, and the following year's
A Streetcar Named Desire
, directed by Laurence Olivier and starring Vivien Leigh. By 1950 they had survived the scrutiny of both an Inland Revenue Board of Enquiry and a Parliamentary Select Committee and, although the Arts Council's increasingly controversial ‘association' had eventually been dropped, the twin companies' dominance of the West End appeared to be unshakeable.

Kitty Black, Tennents' loyal and long-serving office manager and production assistant, in her understandably uncritical book
Upper Circle
, maintains that ‘To all the critics of Binkie's methods and the acrimonious condemnation of the stranglehold he exercised over the London theatres, there is always only one reply. If he could do it, why couldn't anyone else?'
¹
This is somewhat disingenuous. The fact is that by the time other managements fully understood Binkie's business model, his position was unassailable. It was simply too late to mount an effective challenge, even through the application of Binkie's own strategy. The monopoly system works very effectively in theatre, as the Shuberts had demonstrated in New York, largely due to the finite number of buildings available in which it is possible to operate. And once a particular operator is in place, it is very difficult to shake them.

At the centre of all this sat Binkie himself, in his offices at the Globe (now Gielgud) Theatre: the archetypal smooth operator, whose personal charms wooed both the Arts Council and the leading players of the day, and whose management style was characterised as an ‘iron fist in a velvet glove'.
²
In the darker corners of the West End there were mutterings that the industry had fallen under the control of a gay mafia, but from the audience's point of view there had never been a better time to go to the theatre, with an array of immaculately presented, impressively cast productions filling London's best theatres every night. In Kitty Black's words:

While Harry [Tennent] concentrated on the bricks and mortar managements, Binkie used his charm and incredible energy on the stars, male and female, who guaranteed the success of the productions, wooed authors, directors and agents who provided the raw material . . . his diary was crammed with lunch dates and supper engagements . . . I have also heard that he was a dedicated poker player, keeping it up sometimes all through the night. I could well imagine those blue eyes giving nothing away while he treated the card game much as he did the wheeling and dealing he was carrying out in the cut-throat business of the theatre world.
³

Beaumont's
Times
obituary quotes Tyrone Guthrie's comment that he was the person who, ‘more than any other single individual, could make or break the career of almost any worker in the British professional theatre', and concludes that ‘He did not want publicity for himself. He did not want money for its own sake. He wanted power.'
⁴

Although the entertainment tax rate was reduced to around 20 per cent of box office income after the war, this was not a good time to be setting up in business as an independent theatre producer. But that didn't deter former journalist and publicist Peter Saunders, who in 1947, at the age of thirty-five, booked the St James's Theatre in the West End to present his first venture as an impresario,
Fly Away Peter
. Penned by aspiring playwright A.P. Dearsley, with whom he had been posted to Europe in the Intelligence Corps towards the end of the war, it clocked up 183 performances and a modest profit. Working with repertory producer Geoffrey Hastings – who was to remain a close associate – and making the most of the entertainment tax-exempt status of Hastings' company, Saunders went on to produce a successful tour of the comedy
The Ex Mrs Y
, followed by an extremely unsuccessful one of
The Poison Belt
, an Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation.

Saunders' autobiography gives an entertaining and relatively frank account of the fledgling producer's early struggles, as well as treating us to his views on critics, investors and his fellow producers. He does not mince his words on the subject of Tennents, and in a chapter called ‘The Power Game' explains:

theatre was in the astonishing and seemingly immovable grip of H.M. Tennent Ltd, run by Hugh Beaumont and John Perry . . . There was some minor competition from Bill Linnit, of the Linnit and Dumfree firm, but whereas Binkie frequently had ten or twelve shows in the West End, Bill Linnit never aspired to more than four . . . What was worse, from the point of view of independent producers, was the fact that Tennents had virtually first refusal on all the stars, authors and the best West End theatres. And this state of affairs
came about through an altruistic-minded government trying to help the Arts. Binkie Beaumont brilliantly and quite legally exploited this for his own benefit and built himself up into such a power in the theatre that it looked as if nothing could ever topple him . . . when I wanted a certain star to appear in
Spider's Web
she turned down a salary of £300 per week because she said ‘Binkie looks after me.' She then went down to work for Binkie at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, for £40 per week . . . Seldom did other productions get the much sought after Shaftesbury Avenue theatres in the forties and the first half of the fifties . . . Drury Lane, the Haymarket, and His Majesty's Theatres were also his for the asking. Binkie's activities were strangulation to other producers.'
⁵

A Tennent company also operated the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, where it kept star actors busy while finding the next West End vehicle for them. Touring was no easier: ‘if one tried to get a date from Howard and Wyndham, or Moss Empires, the two major circuits at the time, they were usually filled with Tennent shows.' Even once contracted, touring dates were liable to mysteriously ‘disappear' without warning.

Urgently seeking a touring title that would replenish his coffers after the disastrous production of
The Poison Belt
, Saunders cast his eye over the West End. ‘Barry O'Brien was king of the tours and had first refusal on all Tennent shows; even if Barry didn't tour them no-one else could,' he recalls, ‘We had to find a play that (a) wasn't a complete flop, (b) wasn't such a success that the producing management wanted to tour it themselves, and (c) it had to be a play that was shortly coming off.'
⁶
It was February 1950, and
Murder at the Vicarage
was still on at the Playhouse, although clearly not shaping up to be a long runner. Saunders applied to Bertie Meyer for, and obtained, a ‘Number Two' touring licence, sealing the deal by offering to hire the set from him. Saunders was minor league, a new arrival on the scene, and this is reflected in the terms of his licence.
⁷
Thirteen major towns were specifically excluded, including Aberdeen, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol,
enabling Meyer to tour there himself in the future if he so wished. And so it was that Moie Charles and Barbara Toy's adaptation of
Murder at the Vicarage
finally connected Agatha Christie with the man who was to ensure her enduring theatrical success.

Meyer's own deal with Hughes Massie ensured that he would receive a third of the author's royalty for the tour, with Christie herself receiving a third and the two adaptors a sixth each. There was no attempt to cast the production with stars, and Saunders makes much of the fact that he advertised it as ‘Agatha Christie's
Murder at the Vicarage
', in effect making her the ‘star'. (In fact, this was the way the play had been advertised in
The Times
by Bertie Meyer throughout its West End run.) As ever, the actual authorship of the work was deemed less important than the box office outcome. And in this case the outcome was a good one. Business was double what Saunders had expected and the debts from
The Poison Belt
were more than paid off. ‘I suddenly thought of the possibilities of this star writer,' says Saunders, who immediately wrote to Cork boasting of his ‘substantial resources' and expressing his interest in any new work that Christie might have available; provided of course her long-standing producer Meyer, now in his seventies, had no use for it. ‘I assumed, rightly, that I should not have to produce evidence of my substantial resources, which was just as well,' he adds.
⁸

As it happens, Meyer was at that moment toying with Christie's latest dramatic offering, her own adaptation of her 1946 novel
The Hollow
. Like much of Christie's writing for the stage, it is a detailed and thoughtful work that, although ostensibly ticking the boxes for a ‘whodunit', clearly has a lot more to say.

Agatha describes its origins thus in her autobiography: