‘I Read My Dickens’: Agatha Christie’s Unproduced Film Adaptation of Bleak House

Abstract

In May 1962 Agatha Christie completed a rough draft of a screenplay that adapted Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. The intention was that the film would be produced by MGM, which at the time was adapting Christie’s own works for the screen. This article looks at the surviving material related to the unrealised project and considers what it tells us about Agatha Christie and film adaptations. The previously unexplored surviving material includes correspondence and the film’s draft screenplays and film treatments, which all offer an insight into how Agatha Christie considered that a novel could be adapted for cinema screens. This is of particular interest because Christie did not write for the screen at any other point in her career, and was also sharply critical of most adaptations of her work. Therefore, this material gives an indication of how Christie felt adaptations should operate. This article looks at the context of the film project, Christie’s screenplay writing process, and finally the contents of the scripts.

Disclosure statement

The author has undertaken some commercial work that has been a partial collaboration with Agatha Christie Ltd.

Acknowledgments

Material quoted from Agatha Christie correspondence and the Bleak House script is reproduced by kind permission of the Christie Archive Trust. Thank you to Mathew Prichard, Lucy Prichard, Joe Keogh of the Christie Archive Trust, and Belinda Smith of the National Trust for their help with my research. Claire Hines and Gray Robert Brown provided helpful feedback on draft versions of this article.

Notes

1 Particularly regarding whether they could rework detective Hercule Poirot to make him more of a romantic hero, and even create mysteries of their own featuring Christie’s characters. See Mark Aldridge, Agatha Christie on Screen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2016), 29–30.

2 Agatha Christie lived until January 1976.

3 Initially serialised from March 1852, but first collected as a novel in 1853.

4 Janet Morgan, Agatha Christie: A Biography (London: Collins, 1984, 1997), 331–332; Laura Thompson, Agatha Christie: An English Mystery (London: Headline, 2007), 432–433.

5 Mark Aldridge, Agatha Christie on Screen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 99.

6 For example, it is presented as a brief bullet point on the official Agatha Christie website’s page 100 Facts about Agatha Christie: https://www.agathachristie.com/en/news/2020/100-facts-about-agatha-christie (accessed December 12, 2021).

7 The paperwork is frustratingly contradictory when it comes to exactly when each script or treatment is completed. For those who (quite understandably) wish to draw their own conclusions about this convoluted timeline, the basic dates are as follows (all 1962): April 5 – Cork writes to Christie, mentioning that her ‘draft screen play’ is 270 pages (confusingly, the surviving copy of the ‘long rough’ draft is 294 pages, while the ‘short rough’ is 236, so we can’t be definitive about which draft this is); May 3 – A letter from Christie to Cork outlines her thoughts about her Bleak House draft, acknowledging that changes are needed (more of which shortly); May 29 – Bachmann writes to Christie to say that he has just received ‘your first rough draft’; June 28 – Cork receives what is stated to be ‘Film treatment of Bleak House by Agatha Christie, pages 1–37’ – it is not clear if this is a misuse of the word ‘treatment’ (as it post-dates at least one full script), or a new copy of an older document, or if Christie simply wrote a new treatment between drafts; July 20 – Typist sends a carbon copy of the first part of ‘Bleak House Film Treatment’ to Christie; July 31 – Christie sends Cork a ‘2nd instalment’; August 16 – Typescript and manuscript of ‘second batch’ of Bleak House sent to Christie by typist (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

8 Agatha Christie to Clara Miller, May 9, 1922 (Christie Archive Trust).

9 I offer some more information about the changes made for this film adaptation in Agatha Christie on Screen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2016), 10–14 and the introduction to the 2017 edition of the film’s novelisation The Passing of Mr Quinn (London: HarperCollins, 2017).

10 Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 2011), 434.

11 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork (her agent), September 17, 1961 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1961).

12 This 1956 typed treatment has been attributed to her, but it is not signed and none of the accompanying correspondence that would help to outline the background appears to have survived (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1956).

13 Agatha Christie, Mrs McGinty’s Dead (London: Collins, 1952), 8.

14 Agatha Christie, Mrs McGinty’s Dead (London: Collins, 1952), 8.

15 Agatha Christie, The Moving Finger (London: Penguin, 1953), rear cover. A similar biography appeared on the rear of other Penguin books by the author published at around the same time, including The Body in the Library.

16 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, September 17, 1961 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1961).

17 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, September 17, 1961 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1961). Christie’s own emphasis.

18 Laura Thompson, Agatha Christie: An English Mystery (Croydon: Headline, 2007), 432.

19 Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 2011), 15.

20 Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 2011), 63.

21 Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 2011), 49 & 147.

22 ‘My favourite Dickens of all was Bleak House, and still is’ she says in Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 2011), 147–8.

23 Patricia D. Maida and Nicholas B. Spornick, Murder She Wrote (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982), 40.

24 Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 2011), 147.

25 Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express (London: Collins, 1934), 26.

26 Regina Barreca, ‘David Lean’s Great Expectations’, in Dickens on Screen, ed. John Glavin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 37.

27 Regina Barreca, ‘David Lean’s Great Expectations’, in Dickens on Screen, ed. John Glavin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 37.

28 Julius Green, Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre (London: HarperCollins, 2018 revised edition), 92

29 J.R. Ackerley to Agatha Christie, December 19, 1930 (BBC Written Archives Centre, RCONT1, ‘Talks’ Agatha Christie 1930–58).

30 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

31 Technically we might also include Towards Zero here, as part of the production was previewed on television the night before its official stage premiere.

32 Lawrence Bachmann to Agatha Christie, January 12, 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

33 Lawrence Bachmann to Agatha Christie, January 12, 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

34 Lawrence Bachmann to Agatha Christie, January 12, 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

35 Christie almost always wrote over winter by this point in her career, using the summer to relax and make any final alterations to proofs. The Mirror Crack’d required more drastic changes than the normal set of small corrections, in order to fix what was perceived to be a ‘serious flaw’ with the story (Lord Hardinge to William Collins, May 16, 1962 [HarperCollins Archive, Glasgow]).

36 Further evidence of this is the extent to which she corrects spellings of names, incorrectly typed by the transcriber, such as ‘Miss Flight’, whose surname is crossed out and corrected to ‘Flite’. There are also gaps in the type for Christie to fill in words that the transcriber was not able to decipher from the tape, such as ‘Jarndyce’.

37 The copy of Bleak House held at Christie’s summer home, Greenway, has been checked but does not include any annotations.

38 This would be the normal system for Christie at this time, as by this stage of her career she dictated her writing on to tape, and then corrected the typescript that was subsequently sent to her.

39 All versions of the script reside in the Christie Archive Trust collection, an archive maintained by her family.

40 Bleak House: Rough draft of treatment, 1 (Christie Archive Trust).

41 Bleak House: Rough draft of treatment, 4 (Christie Archive Trust).

42 Bleak House: Rough draft of treatment, 4 (Christie Archive Trust).

43 Bleak House: Rough draft of treatment, 7 (Christie Archive Trust).

44 Interview with Francis Wyndham in The Sunday Times, February 27, 1966.

45 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

46 See Mark Aldridge, Agatha Christie on Screen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2016), 103.

47 Bleak House: Long treatment, 60a (Christie Archive Trust).

48 Bleak House: Rough long script, 1 (Christie Archive Trust).

49 Bleak House: Rough long script, 4 (Christie Archive Trust).

50 Bleak House: Rough long script, 32 (Christie Archive Trust).

51 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

52 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

53 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

54 In the May 1962 letter Christie calls the accompanying typescript her first draft, which she knows to be overlong, and so it would make sense that the version put together during July and August would be the later ‘final rough’ reduction of this (although if so, she did not implement all of the changes she mulled over in the May letter, as the Badgers are still present). In July, Christie sent the ‘latest instalment’ to her agent, which is acknowledged on receipt as the ‘second instalment’. It seems likely that this was the newly condensed ‘final rough’ draft. In short, it is likely that the ‘long rough’ draft was delivered in May, with the ‘final rough’ completed in July, but we cannot be certain. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

55 The pages are numbered up to 235 (which excludes the cover page etc), but there is both a page 47 and ‘47a’, which brings it to 236.

56 Bleak House: Final rough draft of script, 95 (Christie Archive Trust).

57 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

58 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

59 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

60 Agatha Christie to Edmund Cork, May 3, 1962. (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

61 There is a brief reference to her recovering from the shock of the news about her mother’s death in the longer rough draft of the script, but the piece of dialogue calling it ‘illness’ is crossed out and not present in the final rough draft. Bleak House: Rough long script, 273 (Christie Archive Trust).

62 See Mark Aldridge, Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World (London: HarperCollins, 2020), xxi–xxii.

63 Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 2001), 45.

64 Bleak House: Final rough draft of script, 141 (Christie Archive Trust).

65 Patricia D. Maida and Nicholas B. Spornick, Murder She Wrote (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982), 40.

66 Bleak House: Final rough draft of script, 235 (Christie Archive Trust).

67 Dorothy Olding to Edmund Cork, 3 March 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962). Press examples included the Indianapolis Star of 28 February, 1962, which mentions the plans for the film in a short article: ‘The Dickens idea was Miss Christie’s own suggestion because he happens to be her favourite author.’

68 Edmund Cork to Agatha Christie, 5 April 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962). The idea of publishing the Bleak House script is further mooted in letters including Lord Hardinge to Mark Collins, April 5, 1962 (HarperCollins Archive).

69 Edmund Cork to Agatha Christie, 18 September 1962; Edmund Cork to Anthony Hicks, 29 November 1962 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1962).

70 Edmund Cork to Agatha Christie, 14 February 1963 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1963).

71 Edmund Cork to Agatha Christie, 14 February 1963 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1963).

72 A.L. Rowse, Memories of Men & Women (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980), 85–6. By this stage Christie often misremembered details of her career and work, and so the errors may not be Rowse’s.

73 Agatha Christie to Patricia Cork, March 18, 1964 (Hughes Massie Archive, University of Exeter, EUL MS 99/1/1964).

74 Interview with Francis Wyndham in The Sunday Times, February 27, 1966.

75 See Sarah Street, ‘Heritage Crime: The Case of Agatha Christie’ in Seventies British Cinema, ed. Robert Shail (London: BFI, 2008), 105–116.

Additional information

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Mark Aldridge

Dr Mark Aldridge is Associate Professor of Screen Histories at Solent University, Southampton. His research interests include the works of Agatha Christie and British television history. Recent publications include Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World (HarperCollins, 2020) and Agatha Christie on Screen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Mark is currently working on a new book about Miss Marple for HarperCollins, due for publication in 2024.