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| place = | orig_lang = English | subject = | genre = Courtroom drama | web = }} ''Night of January 16th'' is a theatrical play, inspired by the death of the "Match King", Ivar Kreuger, written by Ayn Rand. It takes place entirely in a courtroom during a murder trial. An unusual feature of the play is that members of the audience are chosen to play the roles of jury members. The court is hearing the case of Karen Andre, a former secretary and lover of businessman Bjorn Faulkner, of whose murder Andre is accused. The play does not directly portray the events leading to Faulkner's death; instead the jury must rely on character testimony and decide whether Andre is guilty. The play's ending depends on the verdict. Rand's intention was to dramatize a conflict between individualism and conformity, with the jury's verdict revealing which viewpoint they preferred. The play was first produced in 1934 in Los Angeles under the title ''Woman on Trial''; it received positive reviews and enjoyed moderate commercial success. Producer Al Woods took it to Broadway during the 1935–36 season and re-titled it ''Night of January 16th''. It drew attention for use of a jury and became a hit, running for seven months. Doris Nolan, in her Broadway debut, received positive criticism for her portrayal of the lead role. Several regional productions followed. An off-Broadway revival in 1973, under the title ''Penthouse Legend'', was a commercial and critical failure. Rand had many heated disputes with Woods over script changes he wanted for the Broadway production. Their disputes climaxed in an arbitration hearing when Rand discovered he had diverted a portion of her royalties to pay for a script doctor. Because of the changes, Rand disliked the Broadway production and the version published for amateur productions, so in 1968 she re-edited the script for publication as the "definitive" version. A movie loosely based on the play was released in 1941; the story has also been adapted for television and radio. ==History== Rand drew inspiration for the play from two sources. After seeing ''The Trial of Mary Dugan'', a 1927 melodrama about a showgirl prosecuted for killing her wealthy lover, Rand decided to write her own play featuring a trial. Rand's play would have no fixed ending; the ending could vary depending on the result of the trial. She based her victim on Ivar Kreuger, a Swedish businessman known as the "Match King" who held monopolies on the manufacture of matches. When Kreuger's business empire became financially unstable, he shot himself after being accused of undertaking underhanded and possibly illegal financial deals. From this incident, Rand was inspired to make the victim a businessman of great ambition and dubious character, who had given multiple people motives for his murder. Rand wrote ''Night of January 16th'' in 1933. She was 28 years old and had been in the United States for seven years after emigrating from the Soviet Union, where her strong anti-Communist opinions had put her at risk. Rand had never written a stage play, but had worked in Hollywood as a junior screenwriter for Cecil B. DeMille, and later in RKO Studios' wardrobe department.〔; 〕 In September 1932, Rand sold an original screenplay, ''Red Pawn'', to Universal Studios and quit RKO to finish her first novel, ''We the Living''.〔; 〕 She wrote the stage play with the hope of making money from it while she was finishing her novel. By 1934, her agent was trying to sell the play and the novel, but both were repeatedly rejected.〔; 〕 ''Red Pawn'' was shelved and Rand's contract for rewrites on it expired. Rand's husband, an actor, was getting only minor roles with little pay, putting the couple in financial difficulties. With the last of her money from ''Red Pawn'' exhausted, Rand got an offer for her new play from Al Woods, who had produced ''The Trial of Mary Dugan'' for Broadway. The contract included a condition that Woods could make changes to the script. Wary that he would destroy her vision of the play to create a more conventional drama, Rand turned Woods down. Soon after, she accepted an offer from Welsh actor E. E. Clive to produce the play in Los Angeles. It opened in October 1934 under the title ''Woman on Trial''. At the end of the play's run in Los Angeles, Woods renewed his offer to produce the play on Broadway. Although he was a renowned producer of many famous plays in a career of more than three decades, Woods had lost much of his fortune after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and had not produced a hit in several years. Being refused by a neophyte author shocked him and increased his interest.〔 Woods still wanted the right to make script changes, but he made adjustments to the contract to give Rand more influence. She reluctantly agreed to his terms. Rand arrived in New York at the beginning of December 1934 in anticipation of the opening in January. The play's financing failed, delaying the production for several months until Woods arranged new financing from theater owner Lee Shubert. When work resumed, Rand's relationship with Woods quickly soured as he demanded changes she later derided as "a junk heap of worn, irrelevant melodramatic devices".〔 Woods had made his success on Broadway with low-brow melodramas such as ''Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model'' and risqué comedies such as ''The Demi-Virgin''. Woods was not interested in what he called Rand's "highfalutin speeches", preferring the dramatic conflict to focus on concrete elements, such as whether the defendant had a gun. The changes to Rand's play included the creation of a new character, a gun moll played by Shubert's mistress.〔〔 The contract between Woods and Rand allowed him to hire collaborators if he thought it necessary, and pay them a limited portion of the author's royalties. He first hired John Hayden to direct, paying him one percent of Rand's 10-percent royalty. Although Hayden was a successful Broadway director, Rand disliked him and later called him "a very ratty Broadway hanger-on".〔〔 As auditions for the play began in Philadelphia, Woods demanded further script changes and was frustrated by Rand's refusal to make some of them. He engaged Louis Weitzenkorn, the author of a previous hit, ''Five Star Final'', to act as a script doctor. Rand's relationship with Weitzenkorn was worse that those with Woods or Hayden; she and Weitzenkorn argued over political differences as well as his ideas for the play. Woods gave Weitzenkorn another one percent of Rand's royalties without informing her. Rand filed a claim against Woods with the American Arbitration Association. She objected to Weitzenkorn receiving any portion of her royalties, telling the arbitration panel Weitzenkorn had added only a single line to the play, which was cut after the auditions. Upon hearing this testimony, one of the arbitrators responded incredulously, "That was ''all'' he did?"〔 In two hearings, the panel ruled that Weitzenkorn should receive his agreed-upon one percent, but that Woods could not deduct the payment from Rand's royalties because she had not been notified in advance.〔〔 Despite the disputes between Rand and Woods, the play opened at Shubert's Ambassador Theatre in September 1935 and ran for seven months.〔; 〕 ''Night of January 16th'' was the last theatrical success for either Rand or Woods. Rand's next play, ''Ideal'', went unsold, and a 1940 stage adaptation of ''We the Living'' flopped. She achieved lasting success and financial stability with her 1943 novel, ''The Fountainhead''. Woods produced six more plays; none were hits and when he died in 1951, he was bankrupt and living in a hotel.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Night of January 16th」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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