[Quatermass and] The Pit

N.p. Associated British Picture Corporation, 1963. Original ribbon copy typescript five-page reader's summary and report for the 1963 revised screenplay "The Pitt" by Nigel Kneale. Made for the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) by ABPC reader Barbara Klavir, dated "19/2/63," with a blue rubber stamp stating "RECEIVED / 27 Feb 1963." Unique.

Bound in preceding the report is a two-page carbon copy typescript "Elstree Studios Inter-Departmental Communication," on truncated pages, dated "25th February 1963," with a blue rubber stamp stating "RECEIVED / 27 Feb 1963" on the second leaf. Communication with red copy typescript along the top edge noting copy "to be filed with 'original' reports" and "Copy for Miss K. Leaver," and a manuscript ink annotation of the name of screenwriter "Nigel Kneale" alongside the title. The communication is signed from "G.T. Jones, Elstree Studios" (who worked in ABPC's script department) to "J.R. Wallis, Golden Square" (Managing Director and Head of Production for ABPC), rejecting the screenplay for production and returning a letter from "Colonel Carreras" (James Carreras, British film producer and co-founder of Hammer Films), the "Revised Screenplay," and the reader's summary and report, found here.

One of the most powerful media conglomerates in British cinema history, the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) was founded in 1927 when John Maxwell acquired British National Pictures Studios and its Elstree Studios complex, first named British International Pictures (BIP).

The company was renamed ABPC in 1933 after acquiring British Pathé, enabling the company to become a fully vertically integrated studio capable of producing, distributing, and exhibiting its own pictures. Following Maxwell's death in 1940, Warner Bros. purchased a large stake in the company, allowing ABPC to distribute its films into the lucrative US market, as well as taking an active stake in television by launching the Associated British Corporation (ABC). Amid the downturn in the British film industry by the late 1960s, EMI staged an aggressive takeover of ABPC in 1969, and by 1970 the name was officially retired.

At the height of ABPC's success in the 1950s and 1960s, its readers reviewed nearly everything being published, from established authors to those with recent screen success, to emerging new authors, in search of material for film adaptation. The resulting reader's summary and reports are an extraordinary record of mid-twentieth century literature never intended for public consumption and unseen since their composition.

The five-page reader's summary and report, written in the ABPC house style, includes a breakdown of the source material type and method of receipt (noted as submitted directly by Carreras) at the top of the first page, followed by a summary and a list of characters names and descriptions, then a detailed synopsis on the second through the fourth pages, and finally the reader's comments on the material's quality and filmic possibilities on the fifth page. ABPC reader, Klavir's comments on Kneal's screenplay is largely positive, that "consideration [for production] would seem advisable" with the caveats that it would require "the technical resources of the cinema," and would be "far more impressive and enthralling on film" than its predecessor the original 1958-1959 BBC Television serial "Quatermass and the Pit."

Kneale's highly influential "Quatermass" science fiction television and films series began in 1953 with the live BBC television series "The Quatermass Experiment," followed by the second BBC television series "Quatermass II" in 1955, and "Quatermass and the Pit" in 1958-1959. Hammer Films made three films based on the television series, "The Quatermass Xperiment" in 1955, "Quatermass 2" in 1957, and in 1967 Hammer Films released "Quatermass and the Pit," believed to be the screenplay found here entitled "The Pit," though we found no other references to a screenplay by Kneale without "Quatermass" in the title. The original television series were remade by Euson Films and ITV in 1979 as "Quatermass," and by BBC Four in 2005 as "The Quatermass Experiment."

8 x 13 inches, with a two-page 8 x 10 inch "Inter-Departmental Communication" preceding the report, perforation binding. Near Fine.

[Book #172935]