Crime Fiction and the Grand-Guignol: Natural Bedfellows?

Crime Fiction and the Grand-Guignol: Natural Bedfellows? Michael Wilson Readers of this august journal will no doubt have red-light district of Montmartre. Montmartre itself witnessed a frisson of anticipated pleasure when the had a long theatrical tradition and was the birthplace British Library announced that its publication for of Naturalism when André Antoine founded the September 2019 in the Crime Classics Series was to Théâtre Libre in 1887 and outraged audiences with be John Dickson Carr’s first novel, It Walks By his radical and experimental staging of plays that Night, first published in 1930 as a Harper Sealed were considered too daring for mainstream theatres. Mystery Story. An equally intense shiver of delight Méténier had been one of Antoine’s dramatists and would no doubt have run up and down the same disciples, contributing comédies rosses, short plays spines when learning that Tony Medawar’s third that depicted the underbelly of Parisian life, and volume of “forgotten stories of mystery and when the Théâtre Libre closed in 1896, Méténier suspense”, Bodies from the Library 3 (Collins decided to establish a replacement and established Crime Club, 2020), would include the earlier the Grand-Guignol, the smallest theatre in Paris at novella, from which the novel evolved. “Grand the time, in the following year. Guignol”[1] was first published in two parts in The If the Grand-Guignol began life as a serious Haverfordian, Carr’s former college magazine, in project in radical short-form stage naturalism, then March and April 1929, mimicking the ‘Sealed it didn’t stay that way for long. In reality, the writers Mystery’ format by encouraging the reader to solve of the comédies rosses, which Méténier naturally the mystery before the solution was revealed in the favoured, owed as much to Montmartre’s second instalment. melodramatic traditions as to its naturalist ones, “Grand Guignol” was the second outing for drawing their material from the luridly illustrated Carr’s Parisian detective Henri Bencolin, having popular press of the day, such as Le Petit Journal first appeared in the 1926 short story, “The Shadow and Le Petit Parisien. Furthermore, Méténier was a of the Goat”, also published first in The showman: his day job was as Secretary to the Police Haverfordian and included as a post-scriptural treat in La Tour Saint-Jacques in the 4th arrondisement in the British Library edition of It Walks By Night. and in the evenings he could be seen outside the The date here is significant because it was in 1926, Grand-Guignol, dressed in his cape and top hat, at the age of twenty, that Carr went on a five-month regaling the audience with bloodcurdling stories of European adventure, most of which time he spent in the city’s latest crimes. Paris. That in itself was not unusual: this was the It was, however, the theatre’s next owner, Jazz Age, the Paris of Josephine Baker (who was impresario Max Maurey, who, recognising the draw incidentally born in the same year as Carr), and the of comédies rosses, took over the Grand-Guignol in city was a favourite haunt of Americans in the post- 1899 and set about establishing it as a full-blown war era. In the same year, George Gershwin also theatre of horror. Working with a team of talented made his first visit to the French capital, before writers, actors and designers, Maurey established a composing An American in Paris in 1928. Whilst format that alternated horror plays with sex farces in there is no evidence as to how Carr spent his time in a single programme, in what became known as the Paris, it might be assumed that he took advantage of douche écossaise or ‘hot and cold shower’ of up to much of what the city had to offer a twenty-year old five plays per evening. He promoted the theatre man who was nearly four thousand miles away from through sensationalist (and largely inaccurate) home. The title and format of “Grand Guignol” posters, as well as publicity stunts and gimmicks, strongly suggests that he was a regular visitor to one such as the médecin de service (house doctor), who of Paris’s most (in)famous attractions, that notorious was on hand to administer to audience members who theatre of horror, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol,[2] were overcome by the onstage horrors. He also where the stage blood was reputed to flow by the developed a house performance style that took the bucketful and the special effects were so realistic audience on a journey from naturalism to that the audience would regularly faint with anguish. melodrama (something that can be seen in thrillers Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was established in and horror films to this day). Maurey made such a 1897 by Oscar Méténier (1959–1913) in a former success of the enterprise that when he handed over Jansenist chapel in the rue Chaptal in Pigalle, the the stewardship of the theatre in 1914 to Camille CADS 85 1 Choisy the Grand-Guignol had become a regular Christie would have been permitted to visit the feature on any visitor’s itinerary, as well as Grand-Guignol (not least because of its location in attracting a regular and loyal Montmartrean Pigalle), it is almost certain that she would have been audience, and the term ‘Grand-Guignol’ had become aware of its reputation and notoriety. Furthermore, not just the name of the theatre itself, but a word to it is worth remembering that Christie did not have an describe the particular form of horror theatre that entirely conventional upbringing and, whilst there is took place there. no evidence whatsoever that she attended the rue It had been expected by Maurey, Antoine and Chaptal in 1906, an illicit visit would have been critics alike that the horrors of the Great War would tempting for a theatre enthusiast and when I put an end to the public taste for the Grand-Guignol, discussed this with Mathew Prichard, Christie’s but they were proved spectacularly wrong. The grandson, he imagined that it was just the kind of Grand-Guignol perfectly captured the new thrill- transgressive adventure that the young Agatha might seeking and playful[3] popular culture that swept well have embarked upon. Europe (and of which the growth in crime fiction Nonetheless, there would have been plenty of was a part) and the 1920s saw the Grand-Guignol other opportunities for Christie to have seen Grand- enter its own Golden Age. By the time Carr would Guignol performances. In 1908 the Parisian have visited the rue Chaptal in 1926, the Théâtre du company came to London to present a French Grand-Guignol was ranked alongside the Comédie language programme of plays.[9] This was witnessed Française and the Folies Bergères as one of the most by a young theatre producer called Jose Levy (1884– fashionable theatres in Paris. And whilst Carr’s 1936) who became an enthusiast for the form and novella is bloodcurdlingly worthy of the Grand- who translated two plays from the company’s Guignol, the action does not take place in the theatre repertoire for performance in 1912[10] and also or include any mention of the rue Chaptal. It is, staged three Grand-Guignol plays as part of a French nevertheless, structured, framed and presented as an language season at the Coronet Theatre in 1915. It is homage to the great théâtre de la peur, and to his quite possible that Christie was present at either of own brief, but formative, sojourn in Paris. But the these, but is more likely that she attended Levy’s relationship between crime fiction and the Grand- next attempts to introduce the Grand-Guignol to Guignol neither ends nor begins with John Dickson London audiences. Carr. That particular story lies more probably with In 1920, the same year that The Mysterious the grande dame of crime fiction herself, Agatha Affair at Styles was published, Levy acquired the Christie. lease for the Little Theatre, located in a back street In his excellent and exhaustive Agatha Christie: off the Strand and set about establishing ‘London’s A Life in Theatre, Julius Green tells us that Christie Grand Guignol’ as a permanent venue for horror was a regular and eager theatregoer from an early theatre in England.[11] It was an idea that chimed age[4] and “was passionate about the theatre” (2018, with the spirit of the times and he was joined in his 5),[5] not least because of the collaborative nature of enterprise by, amongst others, husband and wife theatre-making. Whilst her literary reputation rests team Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike, the bright largely on her work as a novelist, Christie herself young things of the British theatrical establishment always rated her dramatic work more highly than her in the early 1920s. They attracted other established prose fiction. Likewise, the novelist John actors, such as George Bealby, Athene Seyler and Lanchester, in his essay “The Case of Agatha Dorothy Minto, whose names are largely forgotten Christie”,[6] identifies an innate theatricality in all today, but were stalwarts of the stage at the time, Christie’s writing, where the novels are written with alongside writers such as H.F. Maltby (who wrote an acknowledgement of their own artificiality and the screenplays for Tod Slaughter’s films of classic the plots are ‘performed’ by a cast of dramatis melodramas in the 1930s), Richard Hughes (who is personae. credited with the first ever radio drama, A Comedy Christie was also a committed Francophile. She of Danger in 1924) and a young Noel Coward.

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