Casting Coup Tuesday: Witness for the Prosecution

It's Casting Coup Tuesday, where we dream-cast an imaginary adaptation of a beloved work. All month long, we're celebrating the work of Agatha Christie in anticipation of the November 10th release of Murder on the Orient Express. We've imagined adaptations of a Poirot, of a Miss Marple, even of Tommy and Tuppence - and now, for your approval...

We've discussed at length the history of Witness for the Prosecution, from its beginnings as a short story to its Tony-winning stage production to the Oscar-nominated film of 1957. It is one of the great courtroom dramas of stage and screen, centering on a charming young man accused of murder, his determined defense attorney, and his older wife who seems equally determined...to get him convicted. A remake is currently in the works with Ben Affleck attached, but I'm not 100 percent on board with that. And so I have a cast of my own in mind...

Note that I'm taking my cues from the original stage play, not the film - you'll find no Nurse Plimsoll here. Italicized descriptions are taken directly from Christie's stage directions, as published in the 1954 Samuel French, Inc., edition.

My Witness, after the jump.

Trial and Terror: Witness for the Prosecution, 1957

All month long, we're celebrating the Queen of Crime as she and her works appeared on screen, with a grand finale of five Murder on the Orient Expresses the first full week of November. Today, and all this week, we're focusing on her standalone works. Yesterday, we talked the page to stage to screen transfer that made "Philomel Cottage" into Love from a Stranger; today, a similar trick is performed... 

Witness for the Prosecution began as "The Witness for the Prosecution", a short story published in 1928 in . The story is familiar: Leonard Vole is accused of murdering an older woman, and the star witness for the prosecution...is his own wife! There's a twist, then a turn, then it closes with a shocker of a final line.

The story was popular enough to inspire adaptations on its own, including an episode of Lux Video Theater with Edward G. Robinson. But Christie herself wasn't satisfied with the story as is. A slight spoiler here, but part of the shock in the story involves, of course, the revelation of the true murderer, who gets away with the crime; Christie felt the culprit should not go completely unpunished. She also thought it was quite a good plot (if she do say so herself), and didn't want it completely confined to short fiction. So she set about expanding it, for a medium she had gotten quite good at...

The end result was the stage play, which Christie would later name her personal favorite of her 19 theatre works, and which became a smash hit on the West End and Broadway. Oh, yes, I know I said that about Love from a Stranger, but that show's comparatively limited runs cannot rival Witness for the Prosecution. In the West End, it ran concurrently with Christie's The Mousetrap and Spider's web, making her the only female dramatist to have three shows running simultaneously. The New York production alone ran 645 performances, winning Tony Awards for its leading players, Francis L. Sullivan (a friend of Christie's) and Patricia Jessel.

When you're a hit on the page and a smash on the stage, the next step is obvious: HOLLYWOOD! And boy howdy, did Hollywood deliver....

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

dir: Billy Wilder

A Special Announcement...

It's Agatha Christie's birthday!

The Queen of Crime was born on this date in 1890, 127 years ago! More than 41 years after her death, she is still the world's best-selling fiction author - but, more relevant to what we do here, she is also experiencing a cinematic comeback! For not one, but two films based on her works are coming to the screen this winter. One is the first ever adaptation of her infamous crime thriller Crooked House; the other is the fifth screen version of one of her most famous novels, Murder on the Orient Express:

Mom was right: prayer does work! I've been wishing and hoping for a resurgence of silver screen Agatha Christeries for ages. Sure, we've had the recent Poirot, Marple and Partners in Crime series to keep us company - in addition to the new miniseries of And Then There Were None and The Witness for the Prosecution - but the last time Christie was on the big screen* was 1989's Ten Little Indians, a re-working of her most famous novel that transferred the action from a British island to an African safari. Now...now, we have two!

(*I'm speaking strictly American/British releases. I am well aware that India and France have had a number of theatrical adaptations in the past decade, but none of them seem to leave their respective continents.)

Let us celebrate properly. Throughout the month of October and into the first week of November, we're celebrating the on-screen works of Agatha Christie. Every Tuesday, a Casting Coup, in which we dream-cast adaptations of some of her most popular works. Each week, a set of films to watch so we may explore her characters, interpretations of them, and their international appeal.

The schedule, after the jump: