Movie Adaptation
The movie rights to the play were initially purchased by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in October 1934. They hired Rand to write a screenplay, but the project was scrapped. MGM eventually resold the rights to RKO Pictures, who in turn sold them to Paramount Pictures. Paramount finally produced the movie in 1941. Rand did not participate in the production, and three other writers (Delmer Daves, Robert Pirosh, and Eve Greene) were brought in to write a new screenplay.
The new screenplay altered the plot significantly, focusing on Steve Van Ruyle (Robert Preston), a sailor who inherits a position on the board of a company headed by Bjorn Faulkner (Nils Asther). Unlike the play where Faulkner is already dead, in the movie he appears as a living character who is then apparently murdered. Suspicion falls on Faulkner's secretary, Kit Lane (Ellen Drew), and Van Ruyle takes it upon himself to investigate the crime. Faulkner is discovered hiding out in Cuba after faking his own death. Rand claimed only a single line from her original dialog appeared in the movie, which she dismissed as "cheap, trashy vulgarity". The film received little attention when it was released, and most of the reviews were negative.
Read more about this topic: Night Of January 16th
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