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  remains to Be Seen Witness for the prosecution I would win most of my cases if it weren’t for my clients. They will waltz into the witness box and blurt out things that are better left unblurted. —Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, barrister, in the telefilm Rumpole and the Confession of Guilt Falling in love again, never wanted to. What am I to do? I can’t help it. —Frederick Hollander, “Falling in Love Again” (Marlene Dietrich’s signature song) Witness for the Prosecution began its artistic life as a short story that Agatha Christie published in 1933 in Britain in a volume titled The Hound of Death. The story was published in the United States in 1948 in the collection Witness for the Prosecution. When another playwright sought permission to turn the story into a play, Christie decided to adapt it for the stage herself. The play opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in London on October 28, 1953. “When the curtain came down on my ending,” Christie recalled, the play and its author were greeted with a standing ovation.1 After a run of 468 performances in London, the production moved to Broadway on December 16, 1954. The play was a smash hit there, running for 646 performances; it won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for best foreign play. Independent producer Edward Small, who had produced the classic film noir Raw Deal (1948), purchased the screen rights to Witness for the Prosecution at a high price, since Agatha Christie was a popular and prolific mystery writer whose works were outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible.2 Small hired Billy Wilder to cowrite the screenplay and direct the pic- Some LIke It WILder  ture for one hundred thousand dollars plus 5 percent of the gross profits. Small would act as executive producer; his partner, Arthur Hornblow Jr., was to produce the picture. Wilder very much wanted to work again with Hornblow, who “had given me my first chance to direct.” Hence Wilder did not grumble about relinquishing the producer’s chores to him. As things turned out, Wilder recalled, Hornblow “took a dark load off my shoulders .”3 It was Hornblow, not Wilder, who went to the front office to talk them out of shaving the budget. Wilder was interested in filming a Christie mystery because he had read her work over the years. Asked about the influences on his films, he replied, “If there was any influence on me, it must come from the books and plays I read. . . . My work is not sugarcoated, I don’t use the sugar tongs,” he explained. “But I don’t sit down and say, ‘Now I’m going to make a vicious, unsentimental picture.’” The tone of the film depended on the source story.4 Stephen Farber points out an interesting parallel between Witness for the Prosecution and Sunset Boulevard. The relationship of Leonard Vole, the young fortune hunter, to Emily French, the wealthy widow whom he eventually murders, “is an almost identical, cut-rate version of the same parasitic relationship of Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond,” once again motivated by greed and ending in violence.5 Small said that “Marlene Dietrich made no bones about wanting the role of the German-born Christine Vole, Leonard’s wife.” As she grew older, Dietrich had not been offered many worthwhile parts. She was convinced that this film would give her the opportunity to prove that she was still an accomplished actress and not merely a headliner at Las Vegas, where she periodically entertained. “Billy Wilder, her old comrade from prewar Berlin, endorsed her for the role of Christine,” Small said. Both Wilder and Hornblow recommended Charles Laughton to play Sir Wilfrid Robarts, and Small approved the casting of both Dietrich and Laughton.6 Small himself suggested Tyrone Power for Leonard Vole. Admittedly, Power was no longer the box office knockout he had been in the 1940s, when he played the swashbuckling hero of several costume dramas. Nevertheless, Small was confident that Power’s name still had marquee value. Power at first declined the role, since he suspected that he would be overshadowed by the well-known scene stealers Dietrich and Laughton. “Ty changed his mind,” said Small, “when I offered him a salary of $300,000.”7 Besides, Power, like Dietrich, welcomed the chance to prove by his performance in this picture that he was a serious actor and not just a movie star. “I’m sick of...

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