Night of January 16th, The

Night of January 16th, The (1935), a play by Ayn Rand. [Ambassador Theatre, 232 perf.] At the trial of Karen André ( Doris Nolan) for murder, it is revealed that she loved her millionaire employer, Bjorn Faulkner, and apparently murdered him after she learned he was bankrupt and had married another woman in return for a large loan. A sense of shock pervades the courtroom when it is announced that the body in question was not Faulkner's after all, and that Faulkner is probably hiding in South America. Karen confesses that she knew Faulkner was preparing to flee. In fact, she was going to join him. But she insists that she knew nothing about the murder. The jury is asked to reach a decision. Since the jury was selected each night from members of the audience, two endings had been written and rehearsed, depending on the verdict. While many critics dismissed the work as claptrap, audiences were seemingly intrigued by the novel way of handling the decision. Ayn RAND (1905–82) was a Russian‐born author who came to this country in 1926 and who was best known for her novels advocating the rights of the individual, notably The Fountainhead. Her only other play to reach Broadway was The Unconquered (1940), an anti‐Communist tract.