Otto Penzler ranks, analyzes, & celebrates the 106 greatest crime films of all-time. Catch up on the series and find new installments daily here.
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And Then There Were None (1945)
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TYPE OF FILM: Detective
STUDIO: Twentieth Century-Fox
PRODUCER: Harry J. Popkin
DIRECTOR: René Clair
SCREENWRITER: Dudley Nichols
SOURCE: And Then There Were None, novel by Agatha Christie
RUNNING TIME: 98 minutes
PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:
Barry Fitzgerald…………………………………………………………………Judge Quincannon
Walter Huston……………………………………………………………………….Dr. Armstrong
Louis Hayward……………………………………………………………………..Philip Lombard
Roland Young……………………………………………………………………………..….Blore
Aubrey Smith………………………………………………………………..…General Mandrake
June Duprez……………………………………………………………………….Vera Claythorne
Judith Anderson………………………………………………………………….…….Emily Brent
Mischa Auer………………………………………………………………….Prince Nikki Starloff
Richard Haydn………………………………………………………………………..……..Rogers
Queenie Leonard………………………………………………………………………………….Mrs. Rogers
Harry Thurston…………………………………………………………………………..Fisherman
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DID YOU KNOW?
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There were almost as many different titles and endings for And Then There Were None as there were victims. Agatha Christie’s most famous book was originally titled Ten Little N—– (1939) in England and And Then There Were None in the U.S. There were also alternate titles for the 1943 play version, called Ten Little N—– in England but the title was changed to Ten Little Indians for the U.S. stage version. The working title for the film version was Ten Little Indians, but Christie retained control of that title for dramatic purposes, and so it was changed to And Then There Were None.
There were also several different endings. In the book, all ten characters are guilty of the crimes of which they have been accused, and at the end, Vera shoots Philip, after which she hangs herself and the judge commits suicide.
In the play, Vera and Philip are innocent, but Vera, convinced that Philip is guilty and that he plans to murder her, shoots at him but misses. Philip then kills the judge, who is trying to hang Vera.
In the original version of the screenplay, Vera and Philip are guilty of murder but survive, a situation that seldom was tolerated by Hollywood censors, who also would be displeased that the judge kills himself in order to evade prosecution. He was allowed to commit suicide only when it was clear that he did so to incriminate Vera.
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THE STORY
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Eight strangers arrive by boat on remote Indian Island, the guests of Mr. Owen, whom none of them has met. They are greeted by the butler and cook, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, who admit that they, too, have not met their employer. At dinner, the guests notice a centerpiece of ten little Indian statuettes, causing them to recite the nursery rhyme in which all the little Indian boys die. After dinner, Rogers, the butler, plays a phonograph record, as he was instructed to do. A voice on the record recites the crimes of the guests, all of whom are accused of having caused the death of others while escaping punishment themselves. When the guests realize that Mr. U.N. Owen is really “unknown,” they decide to leave the island but are informed that the next boat won’t arrive for three days.
Soon after, Prince Starloff, having casually admitted to running down and killing two people while drunk, suddenly keels over—a victim of poison; meanwhile, one of the centerpiece Indians has been broken.
In the morning, Mrs. Rogers fails to awaken because of an overdose of sedatives. She and her husband have allegedly been responsible for “helping to end the suffering” of their former employer. Soon after Mrs. Rogers’ death, the others find that a second statuette has been broken from the centerpiece.
The eight people remaining determine that the island is otherwise deserted and one of them must be responsible for the deaths. When they arrive back at the house for dinner, General Mandrake, who has been accused of causing the death of his wife’s lover, is missing and later found stabbed in the back. As has happened before and will continue to happen, another statuette is smashed.
That evening, the drunken Rogers locks himself in the woodshed overnight and is found dead the next morning—killed with an axe. Miss Brent, who had sent her nephew to reform school where he hanged himself, becomes the object of suspicion, but she is found murdered by a hypodermic needle.
Later on, after being drawn away from the dinner table, the group returns to find Judge Quincannon, who allegedly sent an innocent man to the gallows to discredit the defense attorney, with a bullet hole in the head.
The next morning, Blore, a detective whose testimony sent an innocent man to prison, where he was killed, is searching for the missing Dr. Armstrong and spots something with his binoculars. At that moment, a load of bricks falls onto him, crushing him to death. Vera and Lombard find Blore’s crushed body; later, the doctor, who admitted to operating while drunk and killing his patient, is found dead on the beach.
Only Vera—who had confessed to a crime committed by her sister—and the man called Philip Lombard remain alive. It turns out that Lombard is actually Charles Morley, who came in place of his friend Lombard, who had committed suicide when threatened by Mr. Owen. Neither believes the other to be guilty. Then Lombard/ Morley orders Vera to shoot him, and he collapses as if hurt. When Vera returns to the house, Judge Quincannon is waiting for her to admit that he was the real killer, seeking justice that had been denied earlier and explaining how he faked his death. Quincannon has prepared a hangman’s noose for Vera, telling her that she will be found guilty and publicly hanged anyway, so she might as well just hang herself privately. He swallows poison and dies, just as Morley enters the room. The fishing boat arrives and the two survivors happily board together.
***
While the novel is memorably suspenseful, the motion picture is much lighter, with many moments of comedy—notably from Rogers the butler—interspersed to lessen the tension. The greatest suspense lies in waiting to see who will be murdered next and in what fashion.
An original plan for casting was to have as many members as possible from the Broadway stage production recreate their roles for the film. ZaSu Pitts had been signed, but the delay in making the film removed her from the cast. John Ireland, too, had been case at one time.
There were three other film versions of Christie’s novel and play. Curiously, all four pictures have different settings. After the remote island in the first—and best—version, future locales were: a lodge in the Swiss Alps with guest arriving by cable car, a hotel in the middle of the desert of Iran with a helicopter delivering the guests and, finally (one hopes, since the quality of each succeeding film has deteriorated chillingly) an African safari camp. All three remakes were titled Ten Little Indians. The 1966 version starred Hugh O’Brian and Shirley Eaton, the 1975 remake (described by The New York Times as a “Global Disaster in Iran”) had an international cast that starred Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer, and the 1989 regurgitation starred (if that is the correct word) Donald Pleasence, Frank Stallone and Sarah Maur Thorp.
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BEST LINE
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Three people have been killed within twenty-four hours, and Rogers, preparing the evening’s dinner, snidely inquires, “How many will you be for dinner tonight?”
