Night of January 16th (sometimes advertised as The Night of January 16th) is a theatrical play by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, inspired by the death of the "Match King", Ivar Kreuger. Set in a courtroom during a murder trial, an unusual feature of the play is that members of the audience are chosen to play the jury. The court hears the case of Karen Andre, a former secretary and lover of businessman Bjorn Faulkner, of whose murder she is accused. The play does not directly portray the events leading to Faulkner's death; instead the jury must rely on character testimony to 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 its innovative audience-member jury and became a hit, running for seven months. Doris Nolan, in her Broadway debut, received positive reviews 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. A film based on the play was released in 1941; the story has also been adapted for television and radio.
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 Woods had diverted a portion of her royalties to pay for a script doctor. Rand disliked the changes made for the Broadway production and the version published for amateur productions, so in 1968 she re-edited the script for publication as the "definitive" version.
History
Background and first production
Rand drew inspiration for Night of January 16th from two sources. The first was The Trial of Mary Dugan, a 1927 melodrama about a showgirl prosecuted for killing her wealthy lover, which gave Rand the idea to write a play featuring a trial. Rand wanted her play's ending to depend on the result of the trial, rather than having a fixed final scene. She based her victim on Ivar Kreuger, a Swedish businessman known as the "Match King" for the matchstick-manufacturing monopolies he owned, before he was found dead in March 1932. When Kreuger's business empire became financially unstable, he shot himself after being accused of executing underhanded and possibly illegal financial deals. This incident inspired Rand to make the victim a businessman of great ambition and dubious character, who had given several people motives for his murder.
Rand wrote Night of January 16th in 1933. She was 28 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 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, actor Frank O'Connor, was getting only minor roles with little pay, leaving 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 rejected the offer from Woods, Rand accepted an offer from Welsh actor E. E. Clive to stage the play in Los Angeles. It first opened at the Hollywood Playhouse as Woman on Trial; Clive produced, and Barbara Bedford played Andre. The production opened on October 22, 1934, and closed in late November.