Night of January 16th - History

History

Rand wrote the play in 1933 under the title Penthouse Legend. Her agent submitted it to several theatrical producers in New York, but it was repeatedly rejected. She finally accepted an offer from E.E. Clive to produce the play at the Hollywood Playhouse in Los Angeles. It opened in October 1934 under the title Woman on Trial. Rand later described the production as "badly handicapped by lack of funds" and "competent, but somewhat unexciting." However, it was modestly successful and got some positive reviews.

At the end of the run in Los Angeles, producer Al Woods offered to put the play on Broadway, provided that he could make changes to it. Rand reluctantly agreed to his terms. One of the changes was to the title, which became Night of January 16th. Rand disliked this title, but when the play became a success she decided the name was too famous to change again.

Rand arrived in New York at the beginning of December 1934, in anticipation of the new production opening in January. However, the financing for the play fell through, delaying the production for several months. Woods eventually arranged new financing from theater owner Lee Shubert. As work resumed on the play, Rand's relationship with Woods quickly soured as he demanded changes that she later derided as "a junk heap of worn, irrelevant melodramatic devices". Frustrated by Rand's refusal to make some of his changes, Woods hired two additional writers to make them. He gave a portion of Rand's royalties to them without her permission. Rand subsequently won an arbitration against Woods over the royalty diversion. Their disputes did not prevent the play from opening at Shubert's Ambassador Theatre in September 1935 and running for seven months with 283 performances.

The element of selecting a jury from the audience created concerns among many of the producers that had considered the play and even for the director that Woods had hired. They thought it would destroy the theatrical illusion and feared that audience members might refuse to participate. After the play became successful, it was famous for its "jury gimmick" and this criticism dissipated.

The play was first published for use by amateur theater organizations in 1936, using a version edited by Nathaniel Edward Reeid, which included changes so it would be "cleaned up" (as Rand later described it) to eliminate elements such as swearing and smoking. Rand disowned this version due to the changes. In the 1960s, Rand revised the text to eliminate most of the changes and had the "final, definitive version" published in 1968 with an introduction discussing the play's history. She made several dozen further small changes in language for a production of the play in 1973.