{
  "title": "AU TELEPHONE",
  "category": "[STAGE-PLAY]",
  "article": "Grand-Guignol play by Andre de Lorde and Charles Foley…\n[The Times, April 4, 1922] “The most thrilling item in the new Grand Guignol programme at the\nLittle Theatre is one that was first produced many years ago, but wears remarkably well. It is At\nthe Telephone, by Andre de Lorde and Charles Foley, and many will remember its story—that of\nthe husband who hears the murder of his wife by robbers over the telephone. He is 30 miles away,\nbut he can hear every sound without being able to avert the final catastrophe. The gruesome little\npiece was in very competent hands last night. Mr. Franklin Dyall gave a remarkable rendering of\nthe husband’s part, and Miss Sybil Thorndike and Miss Barbara Gott also acted admirably.”\nThe ending of Au telephone has produced its horrific effect almost from the moment when it\nwas first written. “At the time I finished writing the part with the fear of the husband,” recalled\nAndre de Lorde, “with the murder of his wife and his child, and with him shouting ‘Help!\nMurder!’, I immediately played the scene out loud and howled so much I could probably be heard\nat the Palais Royal. Suddenly an office boy, trembling with emotion, white with fear, burst into my\noffice and cried, ‘Ah! mon Dieu! What? What is happening?’”\n[Andre de Lorde] “One remembers the subject of \"To the telephone.\" A husband, obliges, on\nbusiness, to go away abruptly from at his place, telephone during his voyage has his wife to have\nhis news; his wife tells him her anguish; only in a country house very isolee, with old a servant\nand his little boy, it comes to hear noises inquietants, steps in the garden... The husband panics.\nVeiled that a hand opens the shutters - a man penetre in the room. The woman pushes a cry - it is\nkilled. And any invisible residence, nothing is watch.\n“With the first act, it is has the tombee day, the departure of the husband, by the bad weather,\nunder the gust; a kid of sinister personage comes to seek the only servant male, under pretexte\nthat his/her mother, domiciliee in another village, is very sick. The woman remains alone with her\ngood old woman, and, malgre they, an instinctive and mysterieuse fear dominates them... The\nwind blows, the walls crack, the dogs bark. There is, for eclairer the part, only the weak gleam of a\nlamp... Nothing terrible occurs, and, however, all is alarming. One should not be dissimulated,\nhowever, that one contributes much, not has to make naitre the fear, but has to increase it by\nwhat is called the plays D scene, effects of light, storm, whistle of the wind, vague cries of valve-\ngrinding tools or rails of wound, etc, stage businesses whose development requires a great skill\nand a great safety.”\nSpeculation on whether Lucille Fletcher was familiar with this play…",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "(FL—EIFFEL TOWER, PARIS)\n[Saturday—8:20-8:56]\nAugust 23, 1930\n“At the Telephone”\n[“…Drama in Two Acts (Lorde)…”]\n(PTT, MARSEILLE)\n[Thursday—\nDecember 21, 1933\n“Au telephone”\n(POSTE PARISIEN)\n[Monday—\nNovember 30, 1953\n“Au telephone”\nGRAND GUIGNOL (FRANCE CULTURE, PARIS)\n[\nApril 25, 1987\n“Au telephone” / “Vers l’au-dela”\nPERSONNEL: Evelyne Fremy (director).\nCAST: F. Bouraly, Jean-Pierre Cassel, S. Clement, Roger Crouzet, Linette\nLemercier, Georges Lucas, Louise Roblin, Andree Tainsy, Danielle Volle.",
  "sources": "De Lorde, Andre. “Au telephone” One-act Plays for Stage and Study (edited by Walter Prichard Eaton).\n1925.",
  "gallery": "Andre de Lorde",
  "images": []
}