What was the first movie adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel?
Agatha Christie spent more than half the 20th century making the murder mystery genre of fiction writing almost entirely her own. After publishing her first novel in 1921 at the age of 30, she proceeded to write 65 more alongside 14 additional short-story collections. Most of them, of course, featured the inimitable moustachioed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot or the wily private eye of St Mary Mead Miss Marple.
Since appearing in various cinematic and televisual guises via esteemed actors like Peter Ustinov and David Suchet, Poirot has experienced a resurgence in popularity thanks to Kenneth Branagh’s affectionate interpretation of the character in three recent big-screen outings. Given the relative success of 2023’s A Haunting in Venice, it’s likely we’ll see Branagh donning that famous moustache again before too long.
Miss Marple, meanwhile, has the distinction of being the protagonist in Christie’s final novel published in her lifetime, Sleeping Murder. She’s also been the subject of seven cinematic adaptations, as well as not one but two television series and a further radio show.
It may come as a surprise, then, that neither Poirot nor Marple feature in the first-ever screen adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. Given the sheer volume of books she published, though, there’s more about her work than these two characters alone, as appealing as they are. She is one of the most adapted literary authors in history, after all.
So, what was adapted first?
Instead, the first of Christie’s protagonists to appear on screen was the mysterious Mr Quin. That is, the rogue Derek Cappel posing as Mr Quin in the film The Passing of Mr Quin, which is an adaptation of Christie’s 1924 short story ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’. The film was a silent feature released in Britain in 1928, directed by Leslie S Hiscott and Julius Hagen.
The first English-language movie adaptation of a full-length novel by Christie was 1931’s Alibi, which is based on her most celebrated work The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Love from a Stranger then became the first Christie-based film to be distributed in the United States in 1937.
The cinematic version of And Then There Were None, Christie’s biggest commercial success and one of the best-selling novels of all time, was the adaptation of her work to be produced in the US. It still starred actors playing British parts, including John Huston’s father Walter as Dr Edward G Armstrong.
Ironically, this work is one of the few big-selling Christie novels not to include either Poirot or Marple. The film wasn’t quite as successful as the book, however, just about breaking even at the box office due to its $1 million budget, which was quite an expense on a movie at the time. For most Christie fans, it takes screen production of considerable quality to match the writing of the author herself.
