Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [49]
In spite of her conscious use of tiers of meaning, Rand found this critical oversight hard to bear. From her teenaged years onward, if not from childhood, she had expected “superlatives or nothing,” she later confided to a friend. “I wanted raves that raved about the right things. The reviews [of the play] were not intelligent.”
It is baffling to discover that Rand’s predominant feelings at the moment of her earliest public triumph were of discontent. She had wanted to leave Russia and become a famous writer in a culture and language she hardly knew. In a mere eight years, she had taken a big first step, while some of her favorite movie stars looked on. Why couldn’t she celebrate? For this deeply driven woman, who paid tribute to human achievement and worked ceaselessly to be its avatar, her own triumphs were never quite enough. This was the nature of her drive, and the stakes kept getting higher.
Woman on Trial had a limited though successful run. In October 1934, MGM bought an option on the film rights and paid Rand an unspecified amount to write the screenplay for Loretta Young. MGM wanted the script to be funny in places, and Rand, who could occasionally crack an uproarious joke, wasn’t able to write comedy to order. When the work was finished, she wasn’t happy with the result; perhaps the studio wasn’t, either, because the screenplay was ultimately shelved. Film rights to The Night of January 16th would later be passed, at rising valuations, from MGM to RKO and finally to Paramount. The play would not be filmed until 1941 and would be based on a new treatment commissioned by Paramount and created without Rand’s participation or approval.
Meanwhile, she began to contemplate moving to New York as the next logical step in her career. She had come to despise Hollywood’s taste for overly sweet stories and its intellectual timidity in pursuit of commercial success. After a few years, she had even lost her high regard for Cecil B. DeMille, who she said was a box-office chaser. Living in the publishing capital of the nation would be advantageous to her as a writer, she wrote to a New York literary agent in the summer of 1934, especially as she was nearing the completion of her Russian novel.
At the time, O’Connor’s acting career was slowly gaining momentum. In 1933 and early 1934, he had small parts in six or seven films, including the sequel to King Kong. But he wasn’t earning much money, and he wasn’t getting major roles. Rand began to chafe under the impression that he was being passed up for the romantic leads she thought he had been born to play. She later described as heartbreaking the experience of seeing her handsome husband portraying characters who were clumsy or foolish. That she communicated her distress to O’Connor is likely, since years later she spoke of it openly, in his presence, usually adding soothingly that he was very good in the parts he got. If O’Connor had another view of his work, he didn’t publicly express it.
Woman on Trial closed in late November 1934. As she was looking around for what to do next, her prospects for a move to New York brightened considerably. An offer came from a well-known East Coast theatrical producer named A. H. Woods to take her play to Broadway. That he was the man who had successfully produced The Trial of Mary Dugan made the offer especially compelling. The contract he offered permitted him to make script changes, and he demanded a new title, The Night of January 16th. Somewhat warily, she agreed: here was her ticket to New York, and possibly to fame and fortune.
Later, she often proclaimed that O’Connor was at least as happy to leave Hollywood and the film industry as she was.