“Murder” and Me: The Journey to My New Book

By Richard Weill / Katonah, N.Y.

Playwright Frederick Knott at the desk in West Sussex, England, where he wrote Dial M for Murder (1952)

“A disease: thrilleritis malignis,” Ira Levin called it in his play Deathtrap—an endless fascination with the stage thriller as a unique and ingenious theatrical form.

I don’t know exactly when I caught the bug, but I know I got it from my father, who would tell me all about stage thrillers from the 1930s like Riddle Me This and Whistling in the Dark (where the murder weapon was poison inserted into the end of a tube of toothpaste). Regrettably, I missed Sleuth on Broadway in the early ‘70s, but I was a law student in Boston in 1978 when Deathtrap came through, heading to New York, and knew to order tickets for an early performance at the Music Box Theatre.

From then on, I couldn’t get enough of stage thrillers. I watched them, read them, collected them, collected books and articles about them—and then tried writing a few of my own. In 2016, my legal thriller, Framed, premiered in suburban Los Angeles to excellent reviews (“engaging, entertaining, highly credible, and well worth your time”), standing-room-only performances, and a run extended by popular demand. Two years later, I wrote a book about the experience: We Open in Oxnard Saturday Afternoon. Another thriller of mine, Imperfect Alibi, is currently under contract for promotion in Poland with Agencja Dramatu i Teatru, a theatrical agency in Warsaw.

The playwright with the original London stars of Dial M for Murder at London's Cafe de Paris: They were there to celebrate Knott’s imminent departure to New York for the Broadway production. (from right) Frederick Knott, Jane Baxter, Emrys Jones and his wife Pauline Bentley. (1952)

I have a personal Mount Rushmore of great stage thrillers: Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth, Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution, and Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder. Shelves of books have been written about Dame Agatha, including several specific to her works for the stage. Ira Levin is the subject of a book written in 1988. Shortly before his death in 2001, Anthony Shaffer completed his memoirs. Other stage thriller playwrights, like Rope and Angel Street author Patrick Hamilton, are the subject of biographies or memoirs. But to my astonishment, there were no books on Frederick Knott.

It’s not as if Knott was a one-hit wonder. He wrote three hit Broadway thrillers: Dial M, Write Me a Murder (for which he became the first playwright to win a second “Best Play” Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America), and Wait Until Dark. A few brief articles had been written about him, but nothing substantial.

And then I learned that Knott’s papers were in the hands of Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library—only 43 miles from my home. But there were exacting procedures for requisitioning boxes and folders and making appointments to view them.

Maurice Evans, who played leading man Tony Wendice in the Broadway production of Dial M, with playwright Frederick Knott (1954)

In April 2024, I took a shot in the dark and emailed the Beinecke Library, asking if I could obtain remote access to portions of the Frederick Knott Collection. In response, I was told: “We can send you the digitized files.” Not only that, but the Beinecke would digitalize and send me other Knott material as well. In other words, I could get copies of any papers in the collection, direct to my home computer.

But what to request? The answer came when I stumbled upon a book by Charles Dennis entitled There’s a Body in the Window Seat!: The History of Arsenic and Old Lace. Why couldn’t I do something similar with Dial M for Murder?

Thus began my deep dive into one of Broadway’s greatest thrillers. Soon I was surrounded by drafts, notes, “scribbles” (as Knott called them), correspondence, diaries, and notebooks, struggling to master Knott’s barely legible handwriting. A lot of these papers were out of order; To organize Knott’s piles of Dial M notes, I had to sort them according to the main character’s ever-changing name: Henry Storm, Paul Lime, Max Lesgate, Henry Lime, and finally Tony Wendice.

But one note in the pile, with no character names, stood out. It looked different. It was written on different paper. It screamed: this is where Knott’s idea for his play began:

Husband gets X to kill his wife. She kills X. Husband fixes things to make it appear that she had murdered X. Wife arrested for murder. or Wife convicted and about to be hanged.

About a month after he first hatched Dial M in October 1949, Knott wrote and registered a synopsis with Britain’s Screenwriters Association. It contains about 90 percent of the ultimate story. Obviously, the remaining 10 percent was harder to crack. It took another 17 months for Knott to complete it. I wanted to determine why. What was the impediment? I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out. I think I did.

The story of how Dial M for Murder reached the stage is as dramatic as the play itself. There weren’t just bumps in the road; at various points in the journey, there was no road. Dial M itself was “about to be hanged” more than once. But, like the play’s heroine, it survived—and thrived.

In late November 2024, I took a second shot in the dark. I found what looked like the email address of Frederick Knott’s son, Dr. Anthony F. Knott. I knew he controlled the rights to his father’s papers on behalf of his father’s estate, and I needed his permission to use material from the Knott collection in my book.

What happened next knocked my socks off. No one could have been friendlier, more cooperative, and less intrusive about what my book would say. Tony Knott also shared with me additional papers and photos that, for one reason or another, never made it into the Yale collection. He so appreciated the scrutiny his father’s work finally would receive. (He believes his father would, too, even though Frederick Knott was very protective of his privacy.) When I asked Tony if he would write a foreword to the book, he graciously agreed.

Frederick Knott with Grace Kelly on the Warner Brothers set of Dial M. In the film, the actress played Margot Wendice, whose husband Tony plots to have murdered (1953)

In a few days, my book, Frederick Knott and Dial M for Murder: The Creation and Evolution of an Iconic Thriller, will be published by McFarland & Company, Inc. It tells the whole story of Dial M. First, its difficult birth: the play’s creation, rejection, the premature sale of its film rights, and its fortuitous first production. Then its charmed life: success in London and New York, the Hitchcock film, and appearances on stages worldwide. Finally, its controversial afterlife, culminating in Jeffrey Hatcher’s 2022 adaptation of Knott’s play. Knott’s other writing is covered as well. And Knott’s complete, original draft of Dial M for Murder is an added bonus.

Frederick Knott’s last words of Dial M stage dialogue are: “He’s remembered.” Indeed, he is.

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Richard Weill began writing plays the summer between college and law school and continued throughout his 40-year career as a New York prosecutor and civil litigator.  A member of the Dramatists Guild, his 2016 play Framed was a success with both critics and audiences. Weill wrote three books prior to this year’s Frederick Knott and Dial M for Murder: his account of Framed’s eight-year journey (We Open in Oxnard Saturday Afternoon) and two novels: Last Train to Gidleigh, a mystery set in World War II London; and Panic!, about Thomas E. Dewey and Orson Welles.