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. In was a fluent French speaker, had spent time in spite of continually running into trouble with the France as a child and had had a French chaperone, Lord Chamberlain’s Office, the enterprise was a Marie, with whom she had made theatrical great success and it was the highlight of the London performances.[7] In 1906, the sixteen-year old Theatre scene. Christie was living in London at the Christie attended finishing school in Paris, studying time with her first husband, Archie, who was singing and piano. By this time the Théâtre du working as the financial adviser to the Overseas Grand-Guignol was already well-established and Mission of the British Empire Exhibition and when had become a regular feature on the tourist trail. In they left for ‘The Grand Tour’, travelling to South the same year, one of the plays performed at the Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Canada theatre was Eugène Héros and Léon Abric’s La to promote the exhibition, which was planned for Veuve[8] which features a group of comic English 1924, we do know that she had Horror on her tourists. Whilst it is unlikely that a young, mind.[12] respectable, middle-class Englishwoman such as

2 CADS 85 On May 9, 1922, the Christies were in constructed one-act play that delights in many of the Melbourne and in a letter to her mother, Agatha, Grand-Guignol tropes. It is written by someone who somewhat tantalisingly, wrote the following clearly understood the genre she was working in. In sentence: “I’ve been rather idle — but have written adapting the play into a short story Christie appears a Grand Guignol sketch and a short story.”[13] The to have made very little effort and the story still short story that she is referring to here is most likely bears hallmarks of its origins as a stage play. In this “The Wife of the Kenite” which was written whilst respect I would agree with Julius Green that it still in South Africa.[14] It is certainly horror fiction, works much better as a play. He complains that the rather than detective fiction, and is a revenge story “dialogue, which simply appears to have had speech that culminates in the victim having a nail hammered marks put around it, works well when spoken, but into their skull. The story, which was first published not when read, and the highly theatrical in Home Magazine in Australia in September denouement, when briefly described on the page, 1922,[15] was later adapted by Christie into the radio goes for nothing”.[17] play Butter in a Lordly Dish which was broadcast by My own speculation as to why the play was the BBC in 1948 as the first in a series of six plays never performed is that Christie probably wrote it in the series Mystery Playhouse Presents The with the express intention of submitting it to Levy Detection Club. for production at the Little Theatre in London, no The Grand-Guignol sketch was in fact a one-act doubt with Sybil Thorndike in the leading role. Even play entitled The Last Sèance. It was never with a growing reputation as a novelist, that would performed or published as a play, although it may be have been quite a calling card for a budding familiar to some readers, as Christie later turned it dramatist. There is no evidence of any into a short story that was first published in correspondence between Christie and either Levy or November 1926 in the American pulp magazine Casson, but when she sailed from England in Ghost Stories as “The Woman who Stole a Ghost”, January 1922, London’s Grand Guignol was at the and then later in 1933 in The Hound of Death, this height of its success and about to embark on its sixth time under its original title. As a play, the script season. Most likely Christie intended to submit the appears to have gone through three iterations. In the playscript to Levy upon her return at the end of the first instance, it exists as a brief handwritten year. Unfortunately for Christie, by the summer of synopsis along with some examples of possible 1922 the constant battles with the Lord Chamberlain dialogue in one of Christie’s famous exercise books over the licensing of horror plays had seen Levy’s (Number 34), and is titled The Mother. The second bold experiment run out of steam, and Casson and version, renamed The Last Sèance and with some of Thorndike moved onto other, more profitable the character’s names changed, is also handwritten projects. By the end of June London’s Grand in a notebook, but this time it exists as a full script. Guignol had closed its doors for good and we shall From the gradual deterioration of both Christie’s never know what the Lord Chamberlain would have handwriting and the sharpness of her pencil, it would made of The Last Sèance and its particularly bloody appear to have been written in one single, ending. With no specialist Grand-Guignol theatre in uninterrupted burst of creative energy. Not only that, London any more, there would have been very but it also produced a near perfect script, as the limited opportunity for a one-act horror play of this differences between it and the third, final typescript kind and the script appears to have been put aside version are minimal. until it was brought back into service for a short For those unfamiliar with the short story, the story commission four years later. action takes place in the rooms of a professional Notwithstanding the aforementioned Butter in a spiritual medium in Paris. She has been persuaded Lordly Dish, Christie did not write any further by her fiancé to perform a private sitting for a Grand-Guignol plays, but the form continued to bereaved mother, a regular client who has previously have an influence. Most notably, forty years later used the medium to contact her dead daughter with Christie wrote The Rule of Three, a set of three one- increasing success, but with ever greater danger to act plays, that were performed on a single night at the medium herself. As each apparition has become the Duchess Theatre in London on 20th December progressively realistic, the medium has become ever 1962.[18] Whilst not promoted as such, The Rule of more frail and frightened. This will be her last Three takes the form of a typical Grand-Guignol séance before retirement, but on this occasion there douche écossaise: a thriller then a comedy, then is a physical manifestation of the dead girl and the another thriller. The Rats, described by C.D. Heriot, mother and her daughter flee, leaving the medium the Reader from the Lord Chamberlain’s office in collapsed on the floor, dead and “literally ‘awash his report as “quite a good Guignol”,[19] concerns a with blood’ ”,[16] and her fiancé distraught. pair of lovers trapped in a room with a trunk that Whilst the Grand-Guignol did not generally deal contains the body of the woman’s husband. Julius with the supernatural, choosing instead to focus on Green suggests that this draws from Maurice Level’s the real-life terrors abundant in contemporary play Le Crime, which played at both the Grand- society, The Last Sèance is otherwise a well- Guignol in Paris in March 1918 and at the Little

CADS 85 3 Theatre in London in October 1921.[20] It is also US who are openly drawing inspiration from the redolent of Eliot Crawshay-Wiliams’s play, The théâtre de l’épouvante. The full extent of the Nutcracker Suite, which played at London’s Grand relationship between the Grand-Guignol and writers Guignol in April 1922. It concerns a couple who of detective and crime fiction has arguably not been become locked in a room and are then crushed to previously appreciated, but its influence on some of death by a descending ceiling that has been the greatest writers of the form is clear. As we enjoy engineered by a vengeful ex-husband.[21] The the current revival, we might wish to reflect that, like Patient, the other thriller, is a more straightforward our grandparents in the 1920s, we are all currently whodunnit, complete with detective. It tells of a in need of a good thrill. woman who has fallen into a deep trauma and is paralysed and unable to speak, following an attempt on her life. Nevertheless, the doctor under whose Notes care the victim is recovering has designed an 1. Grand-Guignol (with a hyphen) is the common experiment whereby she is now able to usage in France, whereas Grand Guignol communicate by lighting up a bulb through the (without the hyphen) is more commonly found smallest muscle movement. The police inspector in the anglophone world. With this in mind I assembles the suspects so that the culprit can be generally prefer to adopt the hyphenated usage identified. The Patient is inarguably a crime drama, unless specifically talking about anglophone but there are nonetheless distinct echoes of Richard imitations. Hughes’s The Sister’s Tragedy, featuring an invalid 2. Not to be confused with ‘Guignol’ which is a mute being strangled by his sister, a play that form of puppet show, originating in the city of appeared in the eighth and final season of plays at Lyon and closely resembling what in Britain London’s Grand Guignol in 1922. Perhaps would be recognised as ‘Punch and Judy’, with somewhat poignantly, The Rule of Three opened a characters developed from the Italian Commedia mere few weeks after the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol dell’ arte. Grand-Guignol, therefore, whilst in Paris finally closed, having ultimately found itself being largely untranslatable, might be out of fashion in modern times and unable to understood as a puppet show for grown-ups. compete with the cinematic horror offerings of 3. The Grand-Guignol was not only a theatre of Hitchcock at one end of the scale and the Hammer horror, but also a theatre of playfulness. See House of Horror at the other. Richard Hand and Michael Wilson: Grand- It was, however, not just British crime writers Guignol: French Theatre of Horror who were attracted to the Grand-Guignol as a form. (University of Exeter Press, 2002) pp.69–72. The French crime writer Frédéric Dard (1921–2000) 4. Julius Green: Agatha Christie: A Life in became the chief writer at the Théâtre du Grand- Theatre (HarperCollins, revised edition, 2018) Guignol between 1953–55, working principally with p.33. the director Robert Hossein. His successful play Les [22] 5. Ibid. p. 5. Salauds vont en enfer (Hellbound Bastards) 6. John Lanchester: “The Case of Agatha Christie” which was staged as a play in 1954, was made in the London Review of Books (December 2, subsequently into a film by Hossein in 1955 and then 2018) pp.5–8. published as a novel in 1956. Whilst Dard made a 7. Julius Green, ibid, pp.34–5. few significant changes between the play and the 8. Translated as Chop-Chop in Hand and Wilson, novel (not least changing the setting from America ibid, pp.121–40. to France), large sections of the play’s dialogue 9. Such performances were permitted by the Lord appear unchanged in the novel. Dard, always a Chamberlain, the official theatre censor, because popular commercial writer at heart with an it was felt that they would only be understood by astonishingly prolific output (he wrote over 300 the educated and less morally corruptible novels, plays and screenplays under his own name middle-classes. or pseudonyms, including 173 stories featuring his 10. Lucien Descave’s L’Atelier d’Aveugles (Seven popular series detective Antoine San-Antonio), was Blind Men) was staged in September, 1912 and no doubt capitalising on the success of the play at C. de Vylars and Pierre Mille’s L’Angoisse (The the rue Chaptal with the film and novelisation. Medium) in November, both at The Palladium. During his two years at the rue Chaptal Dard wrote 11. Without a hyphen. For a fuller history of six plays for the Grand-Guignol, including London’s Grand Guignol, see Richard Hand and adaptations from Robert Louis Stevenson and James Michael Wilson: London’s Grand Guignol and Hadley Chase. the Theatre of Horror (University of Exeter So whilst the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol has long Press, 2007). since closed its doors, it has been enjoying a revival 12. Agatha Christie: The Grand Tour: Letters and in recent years, alongside the revival of interest in Photographs from the British Expedition Golden Age crime fiction, and there are now a 1922 (HarperCollins, 2013), edited by Mathew number of theatre companies in both the UK and the Prichard.

4 CADS 85 13. Quoted in Green, ibid, p.48) 20. Julius Green, ibid, p.502. 14. The story was included in the first volume of 21. See Hand and Wilson (2007), ibid, pp.198-218. Tony Medawar’s series, Bodies from the 22. The film was released in the UK with the Library: Lost Tales of Mystery and Suspense relatively tame title of The Wicked Go To Hell by Agatha Christie and Other Masters of the and the same title was used when Pushkin Golden Age (Collins Crime Club, 2018) Vertigo published an English translation of the pp.313–322. novel by David Coward in 2016. I have chosen 15. Medawar, ibid, p.322. to reflect the brutality of the original French, 16. Julius Green, ibid, pp.558. with thanks to my colleague Dr Fred Dalmasso 17. Julius Green, ibid, p.50. for his advice on this. The play, edited by Hugues 18. Agatha Christie: The Rule of Three (Samuel Galli, Thierry Gautier and Dominique French, 1961) Jeannerod, was published by the Editions 19. Quoted in Julius Green, ibid, p.503. Universitaires de Dijon in 2015. 

Mike Wilson will be speaking about Grand-Guignol theatre and Agatha Christie’s contribution to the genre at the International Agatha Christie Festival, which will take place in Torbay, South Devon, from 11 to 18 September 2021. The Festival programme will be announced around Easter and tickets will go on sale in May. For further details follow @AgathaFestival on Twitter and Facebook, or subscribe to the Festival Newsletter at www.iacf-uk.org

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