AU TELEPHONE
[STAGE-PLAY]
Grand-Guignol play by Andre de Lorde and Charles Foley…
[The Times, April 4, 1922] “The most thrilling item in the new Grand Guignol programme at the
Little Theatre is one that was first produced many years ago, but wears remarkably well. It is At
the Telephone, by Andre de Lorde and Charles Foley, and many will remember its story—that of
the husband who hears the murder of his wife by robbers over the telephone. He is 30 miles away,
but he can hear every sound without being able to avert the final catastrophe. The gruesome little
piece was in very competent hands last night. Mr. Franklin Dyall gave a remarkable rendering of
the husband’s part, and Miss Sybil Thorndike and Miss Barbara Gott also acted admirably.”
The ending of Au telephone has produced its horrific effect almost from the moment when it
was first written. “At the time I finished writing the part with the fear of the husband,” recalled
Andre de Lorde, “with the murder of his wife and his child, and with him shouting ‘Help!
Murder!’, I immediately played the scene out loud and howled so much I could probably be heard
at the Palais Royal. Suddenly an office boy, trembling with emotion, white with fear, burst into my
office and cried, ‘Ah! mon Dieu! What? What is happening?’”
[Andre de Lorde] “One remembers the subject of "To the telephone." A husband, obliges, on
business, to go away abruptly from at his place, telephone during his voyage has his wife to have
his news; his wife tells him her anguish; only in a country house very isolee, with old a servant
and his little boy, it comes to hear noises inquietants, steps in the garden... The husband panics.
Veiled that a hand opens the shutters - a man penetre in the room. The woman pushes a cry - it is
killed. And any invisible residence, nothing is watch.
“With the first act, it is has the tombee day, the departure of the husband, by the bad weather,
under the gust; a kid of sinister personage comes to seek the only servant male, under pretexte
that his/her mother, domiciliee in another village, is very sick. The woman remains alone with her
good old woman, and, malgre they, an instinctive and mysterieuse fear dominates them... The
wind blows, the walls crack, the dogs bark. There is, for eclairer the part, only the weak gleam of a
lamp... Nothing terrible occurs, and, however, all is alarming. One should not be dissimulated,
however, that one contributes much, not has to make naitre the fear, but has to increase it by
what is called the plays D scene, effects of light, storm, whistle of the wind, vague cries of valve-
grinding tools or rails of wound, etc, stage businesses whose development requires a great skill
and a great safety.”
Speculation on whether Lucille Fletcher was familiar with this play…
[CHRONOLOGY]
(FL—EIFFEL TOWER, PARIS)
[Saturday—8:20-8:56]
August 23, 1930 “At the Telephone”
[“…Drama in Two Acts (Lorde)…”]
(PTT, MARSEILLE)
[Thursday—
December 21, 1933 “Au telephone”
(POSTE PARISIEN)
[Monday—
November 30, 1953 “Au telephone”
GRAND GUIGNOL (FRANCE CULTURE, PARIS)
[
April 25, 1987 “Au telephone” / “Vers l’au-dela”
PERSONNEL: Evelyne Fremy (director).
CAST: F. Bouraly, Jean-Pierre Cassel, S. Clement, Roger Crouzet, Linette
Lemercier, 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).
1925.
[GALLERY]
Andre de Lorde