Agatha Christie's Poirot by Mark Aldridge

Agatha Christie's Poirot by Mark Aldridge

Author:Mark Aldridge [Aldridge, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers


The Alphabet Murders

(Film, 1965)

By early 1963 relations between Agatha Christie and MGM were beginning to break down. The 1962 Hercule Poirot pilot had passed by with barely a murmur (it’s probable that the author didn’t even see it), while Christie had initially held her tongue when she saw Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple in Murder She Said, the 1961 film adaptation of 4.50 from Paddington. In private she revealed that she didn’t care for it, and felt that it looked like a television production (prompting negative comparisons with Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution from 1957, which Christie had liked a great deal), while she also felt that Rutherford was quite unsuitable to play Miss Marple, even though she became friendly with the actress. However, Christie wasn’t surprised that she didn’t care for the adaptations, and so initially restricted her complaints to her usual grumbles about her work being reinterpreted (or, perhaps, misinterpreted), while maintaining an occasional correspondence with the film’s producer Lawrence Bachmann. In part this was in order to discuss Christie’s script for a proposed (but never made) film of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, which she spent much of 1962 working on, and although her finished draft was hugely overlength there was still the expectation that the project would happen, with Collins even preparing to publish the script following its release.

This largely cordial relationship would change when Christie learned that the second Miss Marple film would be called Murder at the Gallop and was to be based on After the Funeral, a novel that had featured Poirot as the detective. She was furious about the change of characters, as well as the sight of Rutherford’s Miss Marple atop a horse in a film that concentrated more on farce than mystery. ‘They always spoil them,’ Christie said of film producers. ‘To say one’s stories would make such marvellous films and then to murder all one’s favourite characters – it’s too much!’[28] Such incidents hardened her resolve against any film adaptations, despite the contract that had been signed. In April 1963 Christie was asked who she would choose to play Poirot on screen, and in a typical response she wrote simply: ‘I would prefer Hercule Poirot not to appear on screen or stage.’[29]

In the spring of 1963 MGM’s plans were continuing to exasperate and upset Christie. Although they had signed a deal for the rights to adapt The ABC Murders and the short story ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’ in March, they were turning to one of Christie’s crown jewels for a forthcoming Rutherford project, which again stepped on Poirot’s toes. MGM requested the rights to base their new film on Murder on the Orient Express, a property that was not part of the main MGM deal. This was difficult enough, even aside from the fact that they wanted to use it for a Miss Marple caper. ‘No,’ responded Christie, ‘I really can’t agree to the transfer of Murder on the Orient Express from the “reserved” subjects. MGM must do without it – they have plenty of other material.



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