Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Night Must Fall by Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 65fc7a4d8c91646d • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 65fc7a4d9a232bd6 • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Emlyn Williams. Actor, dramatist and writer Emlyn Williams is famous for works such as Night Must Fall and . George Emlyn Williams was born in November 1905 in Mostyn, Flintshire, and won scholarships to Holywell Grammar School and Christ Church, Oxford. Williams joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, making his acting debut in And So To Bed (1927). He was to become one of Wales' finest stage and screen actors, though won much acclaim as a playwright. Early success as a dramatist came in the form of A Murder Has Been Arranged but it was with 1935 psychological thriller Night Must Fall that Williams found fame. Its success in ensured a spell on Broadway, and it has been adapted into film twice, in 1937 and 1964. In 1937 he was cast as Caligula in an adaptation of Robert Graves's I, Claudius and a year later wrote another of his acclaimed plays, The Corn Is Green. Partly based on his own childhood, the play brought Broadway stage success for Ethel Barrymore and the 1945 film adaptation spurned an Oscar nomination for actress Bette Davis. Williams' plays Yesterday's Magic, The Morning Star and Someone Waiting were also all performed on Broadway, whilst the 1930s also saw Williams work with iconic director Alfred Hitchcock, starring in Jamaica Inn in 1934, and writing additional dialogue for The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1939. From the 1950s onwards he toured on several occasions and in different versions of his hit one man show, Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens. In 1958 he starred in I Accuse, about the life of Emile Zola, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in A Boy Growing Up. Four years later in 1962 he was awarded the honour of CBE. His numerous appearances include The Citadel (1938), for which he wrote additional dialogue; Another Man's Poison (1951); The Deep Blue Sea (1955); Beyond This Place (1959); The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959); The L-Shaped Room (1962); The Great War (1964), in which he voiced the part of David Lloyd George; David Copperfield (1969); Deadly Game (1982); Rumpole of the Bailey (1983) and Past Caring in 1985, his final performance. Williams published two memoirs, George, An Early Autobiography (1961) and Emlyn: An Early Autography, 1927-1935, which was published in 1974. He is credited as giving early encouragement to budding young actor Richard Burton; his stage and screen debuts, in Druid's Rest and The Last Days of Dolwyn respectively, were both written by Williams, and the latter he also directed. By the time of his death in September 1987, Williams had appeared in 41 films and teleplays, scribed 20 plays and written or co-written 20 screenplays. Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams. NIGHT MUST FALL. (director: Richard Thorpe; screenwriters: John Van Druten/based on the play by Emlyn Williams; cinematographer: Ray June; editor: Robert J. Kern; music: Edward Ward; cast: Robert Montgomery (Danny), (Olivia Grane), Dame (Mrs Bramson), Merle Tottenham (Dora), Kathleen Harrison (Emily Terence), Alan Marshal (Justin Laurie), Matthew Boulton (Inspector Belsize); Runtime: 116; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Hunt Stromberg; MGM; 1937) “Stagebound, unconvincing and tedious.” Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz. A British thriller based on the hit play that was staged in London and New York by Welsh-born writer and actor Emlyn Williams. The film version is stagebound, unconvincing and tedious. Richard Thorpe (“Huckleberry Finn”/ “Ivanhoe”/”Jailhouse Rock”) manages to make the hit play into an overlong and dull melodrama that has no real scares, as everything is contrived and languid. Louis B. Mayer, the MGM mogul, disliked the film so much that at its New York opening he had leaflets passed out of his studio disowning the film. The film was that bad. A woman is missing in the English countryside and the police expect foul play. At the same time, the wealthy grouchy wheelchair-bound invalid Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Whitty) becomes nosy about her dim-witted maid Dora (Merle Tottenham) and her trouble getting her big-talking hotel pageboy Irish boyfriend Danny (Robert Montgomery) to marry her and invites him in for a chat to straighten things out so that her servant won’t any longer be distracted while working. During their chat the street-smart Danny senses the churlish lady is a hypochondriac and really doesn’t need the wheelchair, and by charming her and acting solicitous he forms a mother-son relationship which gets him an invite to move into her cottage to be her personal servant. Also staying at Mrs. Bramson’s isolated country cottage is her impoverished poetry-minded spinsterish niece Olivia Grane (Rosalind Russell), who doesn’t like being mistreated with verbal abuse while she performs her nursing duties but stays on because she needs the money. Mrs. Bramson’s lawyer, Justin Laurie (Alan Marshal), an upper-class swell is attracted to Olivia and proposes, but she puts him off without rejecting him. After a few weeks the body of the missing woman is found without its head near Mrs. Bramson’s cottage. Even though Olivia suspects that Danny could be the murderer, she’s attracted to him and keeps mum. Under police inspector Belsize’s (Matthew Boulton) bumbling investigation, this farce continues even though Danny has in his possession a hatbox with the missing woman’s severed head. That no one thinks to examine the hatbox when they search the premise or be suspicious of the stranger to the village when he should be a prime suspect, is mind-boggling. The brazen psychopathic killer now sets his sights on the cranky unlikable Mrs. Bramson after noticing her putting money in her safe, as the creaky mystery drags on in a moribund theatrical fashion until the obvious is played out. Dame May Whitty was 72 at the time and received her title for charity work during WWI, becoming the first actor so honored by the Brits. Surprisingly Night Must Fall was a critical and box-office success. It was remade in 1964 as a blood-splatter film by Karel Reisz. Theater; 'NIGHT MUST FALL': SIMPLE THRILLS. FOR the record, ''Night Must Fall'' dates to the year 1936, when the playwright Emlyn Williams appeared in his own play opposite May Whitty on Broadway. She went on to Hollywood to recreate her role for the screen opposite Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell, with the other roles played by the Broadway cast. Not too long ago, a second but not successful film version was released starring . Looking at ''Night Must Fall'' today in the production directed by Edwin Sherin at the Hartman Theater in Stamford, Conn., what is most surprising about this aging thriller is how few surprises it contains. It is a play of simple construction. Long before the first act is over you will know with a certainty who the psychopathic killer is, and you will be right. The action takes place in the sitting room of Mrs. Bramson's bungalow in Essex. Mrs. Bramson is a childlike, crotchety old tyrant who never lets her niece, Olivia, forget that she lives on Mrs. Bramson's tolerance of her. Mrs. Bramson spends much of the play in a wheelchair, enjoying her hypochondriacal illnesses, though she can walk when the occasion demands. Life picks up for the two women, the maid and the cook, when the nude, headless body of a female guest at a nearby inn is found near the Bramson bungalow. Enter Dan, an employee at the inn, whom Mrs. Bramson has summoned to lecture about doing the right thing by Dora, the maid, who is pregnant by him. Poor Dora is quickly forgotten as Dan proceeds to charm Mrs. Bramson and become her companion. Only Olivia sees through him and suspects this man whom women call ''Babyface'' of dark deeds, but she is too sexually attracted to him to do much. The excitement of the play hangs not on who committed the crime in the woods, but when the killer will strike ag ain and who will be the victim. Because it is an old play from a time when it seems that audiences were more easily thrilled than toda y, a member of the audience must accept a plot structure that is built to work against him. Surely, the second murder is preventable , except that the playwright has rigged his characters so that they don't act for theirown benefit. Each has a reason for either not being aware of the killer's identity or an attitude toward the k iller that prevents action. And so in time night does fall and th e killer does strike. Jan Miner, always an excellent actress, plays Mrs. Bramson. Her interpretation has edges to it, but is more foolish than the vicious tyrant Dame May Whitty brought to the role. Jeanne Ruskin is a proper prig of an Olivia, while Mary Fogarty, as Mrs. Terence, the cook - and the one member of the household who is not cowed by Mrs. Bramson - is a comic joy. The standout member of the cast is Bill Sadler as Dan. He is a lowclass charmer with hidden psychological depths, everything the role calls for, plus a talent that makes it all believable and menacing. While Mr. Sherin's direction has produced a tight production that holds your attention, it is also one that has odd moments of weakness. I think particularly of a scene that ends with Dan fainting. This occurs after Dan has been interrogated by Inspector Belsize - a thankless role nicely played by Richard Merrell. Because Mr. Sadler is such an excellent actor in the role of Dan, why does his fainting come as such a surprise and seem so artificial? The answer would seem to lay in the lack of tension Mr. Sherin has brought to the scene preceding the faint. Also there is the matter of the hat box that is in Dan's room. It is his, and may very well contain the missing head. When the suggestion was made to a guest at the performance, she was unaware of the probability, because there had been no direction to make the audience aware of the hat box as possibly the grisly recipient of the head. But by and large this is a relatively successful revival of an old thriller. One can only guess at what thrills and chills it once contained, but there is enough left to merit attention as a historical curiosity. This ''Night Must Fall'' won't cause you a sleepless night, but it will entertain you enough to make you forget the weather outside. ------''Night Must Fall'' by Emlyn Williams. Hartman Theater, 307 Atlantic Street, Stamford, Conn. Through Feb. 7. Box office: (203) 323-2131. ------