50 Fun Facts About An Inspector Calls

Because every British theatre was booked for the season, in which country did An Inspector Calls premiere?

The Soviet Union staged it first, at Moscow's Kamerny Theatre and Leningrad's Comedy Theatre, months before any London audience saw it.

Which liner does Arthur Birling, in a play set in 1912, insist is 'absolutely unsinkable'?

The Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, so a 1946 London audience heard Birling's boast as proof of how wrong the confident Edwardian was. Priestley plays the same trick with his line that 'there isn't a chance of war'.

An Inspector Calls is set in 1912 but was first staged in which year, as the Second World War ended?

1945 was the year Labour swept to power promising a welfare state, and Priestley's inspector preaches the same collective responsibility. The 33-year gap lets the audience judge the Birlings with hindsight.

How long did Priestley take to write An Inspector Calls, a speed that still left no London theatre free for it?

A single week was all Priestley needed for the script, yet every British stage was booked for the season, so the play opened abroad first.

What do the Birlings conclude about Goole after learning no such officer serves on the local force?

He was a hoax, the family decide, and Gerald and the elder Birlings celebrate in relief while Sheila and Eric still rue what they did. The call that follows punctures the relief.

What news ends the play, arriving by telephone just as the Birlings celebrate Goole's exposure?

A policeman is on his way, the caller says, because a girl has just died on her way to the infirmary in a suspected suicide. The curtain falls before anyone can explain Goole.

Which actor, fresh from the Old Vic, played Eric Birling in the play's 1946 London premiere at the New Theatre?

Alec Guinness took the part of the drunken son in October 1946, fresh from the Old Vic and more than thirty years before Star Wars.

Which actor played Inspector Goole, opposite Ken Stott's Arthur Birling, in the BBC's 2015 television film?

David Thewlis played Goole in Helen Edmundson's adaptation, first broadcast on BBC One on 13 September 2015, opposite Ken Stott as Arthur Birling.

Priestley's 1940 BBC Postscripts drew 16 million listeners, second in popularity only to whom?

Winston Churchill alone outdrew him, and the Sunday talks were cancelled amid complaints that they were too left-wing.

In which fictional industrial city in the north Midlands do the Birlings hold their engagement dinner?

Brumley is Priestley's invention, described as 'an industrial city in the north Midlands', which lets the Birlings stand for any provincial manufacturing family.

Why did Arthur Birling sack Eva Smith from his works, the first link in the chain of events?

Leading a pay strike got Eva Smith dismissed: she had asked for higher wages, and Birling still denies any responsibility for what followed.

Which department store dismissed Eva Smith after Sheila Birling complained while trying on a dress?

Milwards let Eva Smith go at the customer's insistence, costing her a job she had found after a spell unemployed. Sheila later admits the complaint was spite.

What does Sheila Birling admit was her real motive for having Eva Smith sacked from the shop?

Jealousy of her looks is the confession: Sheila had seen the dress look better on the assistant and caught her smiling. It is the first real remorse the Inspector draws out.

Which name did Eva Smith adopt after losing her shop job, a name that makes Gerald Croft start?

Daisy Renton is the alias Gerald recognises at once, and Sheila watches him give himself away before the Inspector has even asked a question.

Where does Gerald Croft admit he first met Eva Smith, by then driven to prostitution?

The Palace Bar is also where Eric later met her after a drinking spree, so the same seedy venue links both young men to her fall.

In what capacity did Sybil Birling refuse help to a pregnant, destitute Eva Smith?

Patron of a women's charity, Sybil used her influence to turn the girl away because she had called herself 'Mrs Birling', a name Sybil took as a lie.

How much money did Eric Birling take from his father's office to support the pregnant Eva Smith?

£50 was roughly £5,000 in today's money, and she refused to take any more once she realised it was stolen. Birling's first worry is getting it back.

Whom does Arthur Birling ring after the Inspector leaves, to check whether a Goole is on the force?

The chief constable, an old friend, confirms there is no Inspector Goole, which is all Birling needs to declare the whole evening a fraud.

What does Gerald Croft suggest the Inspector may have shown each family member separately?

A different photograph for each confession would mean several girls, not one, and Gerald's call to the infirmary seems to prove nobody died at all.

What document does Inspector Goole say led him to the Birlings, naming members of the family?

Her diary, Goole claims, records the Birlings by name, and he works through them in turn as if he already knows every answer.

Which maid announces Inspector Goole's arrival at the house, interrupting Arthur Birling's after-dinner lecture?

Edna, the family's maid, shows the stranger into the dining room just as Arthur Birling has finished preaching that a man must look after himself.

Which honour does Arthur Birling boast he expects in the next list, a hope scandal would wreck?

A knighthood is the prize Birling thinks is coming, which is why his first thought after the Inspector leaves is the scandal, not the dead girl.

Which actor played the Inspector in the 1954 British film, with Jane Wenham as Eva Smith?

Alastair Sim took the lead in the 1954 film opposite Jane Wenham as Eva Smith, a role the stage play keeps entirely unseen.

In the 1954 film, the Inspector's surname was changed from Goole to what?

Poole replaced Goole on screen, dropping the ghostly pun, and in the film it is Gerald who discovers no such officer exists in the town.

Priestley's opening stage direction says the lighting should change to what once the Inspector arrives?

Brighter and harder replaces the 'pink and intimate' glow of the dinner, a cue that the Inspector's questioning will strip away the family's comfortable illusions.

Which 'sharp' sound cuts off Arthur Birling mid-speech as he praises every man looking after himself?

The doorbell's 'sharp ring' announces the Inspector at the exact moment Birling dismisses community, so the interruption is itself an argument.

Which word completes Goole's final speech: 'We are members of one ___. We are responsible for one another'?

Body is the word, and the image of society as one organism is the moral of the play, delivered before Goole walks out.

Goole warns that if men ignore the lesson they will be taught it 'in fire and blood and' what?

Anguish completes the line, which a 1946 audience heard as a prophecy of the two world wars that followed the play's 1912 setting.

Birling scoffs at the idea of community 'as if we were all mixed up together like' what?

Bees in a hive is the image Birling mocks seconds before the Inspector arrives to prove the opposite, that every life in the hive touches the rest.

Arthur Birling repeatedly describes himself with pride as what kind of 'business man'?

Hard-headed is his boast, and Priestley uses the hard-headed businessman as the vehicle for his attack on capitalism and the arrogance of the wealthy.

The Inspector says Eva Smith 'lies with a burnt-out inside' on what, in his most brutal description of her death?

A slab is where the Inspector places her, and the mortuary image is his answer whenever the family try to keep the dead girl abstract.

Sheila warns her family not to 'build up a kind of' what 'between us and that girl'?

Wall is Sheila's word, and she adds that the Inspector 'will just break it down', the first sign she grasps his method before anyone else.

Who directed the 1954 film of An Inspector Calls after Alexander Korda sold Dial M for Murder to Hitchcock?

Guy Hamilton got the film only because Alexander Korda sold Dial M for Murder to Hitchcock and handed him Priestley's play instead.

Both the 1954 and 2015 screen versions differ from Priestley's one-room play by adding what?

Flashbacks let both films show Eva Smith herself, a character the stage play never lets the audience see. The 2015 version even follows the Inspector after he leaves.

Birling's confident 1912 claim that 'there isn't a chance of war' is a classic example of which device?

Dramatic irony works because the audience knows what Birling cannot: two world wars were coming, and the ship he praised would sink.

Inspector Goole is usually read as the mouthpiece for which of Priestley's own political views?

Socialist is the label: Priestley co-founded a left-wing party in 1942, and the Inspector's insistence that we are responsible for one another is his creed.

In which Yorkshire city, whose lost Victorian arcades he mourned, was J. B. Priestley born in 1894?

Bradford gave him his first job in the Swan Arcade, a building he later watched developers demolish, and a statue of him now stands outside its media museum.

Which left-wing party did Priestley help found in 1942, chairing it for only a few months?

Common Wealth grew out of the 1941 Committee, and Priestley stepped down as chairman because he could not stomach Sir Richard Acland's politics.

Which protest movement, launched in 1958, counted the 63-year-old Priestley among its founders?

CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, gained the 63-year-old Priestley the year it launched, a late flowering of the politics behind the Inspector.

Having declined a life peerage and a Companion of Honour, which award did Priestley accept in 1977?

Order of Merit membership was the one honour the old radical would take, twelve years after turning down a seat in the Lords.

In Daldry's famous revival, the Birlings' Edwardian house stands on what before it collapses?

Stilts hold the house precariously above rubble in a landscape evoking bombed-out London, and the structure built in 1992 was still touring decades later.

Priestley's 'time plays' drew on which aeronautical engineer's 1927 book An Experiment with Time?

J. W. Dunne, a pioneer aircraft designer who believed dreams could glimpse the future, gave Priestley the idea that past and present coexist.

Which 1929 novel about a touring concert party first made Priestley famous and won a James Tait Black prize?

The Good Companions earned him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the money to turn to the theatre, where Dangerous Corner followed in 1932.

Which Priestley play jumps from a 1919 birthday party to 1937 and then back to 1919 seconds later?

Time and the Conways shows a prosperous Yorkshire family's decline over nineteen years, then returns to the hopeful night when the seeds were sown.

Which actor, knighted in 1947, played Inspector Goole in the play's first British production in 1946?

Ralph Richardson led the 1946 New Theatre cast, with Margaret Leighton as Sheila and Harry Andrews as Gerald, months before the 1947 New Year Honours made him Sir Ralph.

Daldry's production won the inaugural Best Revival of a Play prize at which American awards in 1994?

Tony Awards voters also gave Daldry Best Director of a Play, and the Broadway run at the Royale Theatre lasted 454 performances.

Which actor played Inspector Goole when the play opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre in October 1947?

Thomas Mitchell opened at the Booth Theatre on 21 October 1947 for a run of 95 performances, a year after It's a Wonderful Life.

Who played Goole in Daldry's 1992 revival, earning an Olivier nomination he would not convert until 2016?

Kenneth Cranham waited 23 years for the Olivier itself, finally winning for Florian Zeller's The Father. Horror fans know him as Hellraiser II's Dr Channard.

Daldry's revival of An Inspector Calls opened in September 1992 at which London theatre?

Lyttelton audiences saw it first; the collapsing house went on to play the Garrick, the Novello and Wyndham's across three decades of tours.

Which actress played Eva Smith, a character the stage play never shows, in the BBC's 2015 An Inspector Calls?

Sophie Rundle gave the unseen girl a face, since the television version adds scenes of Eva's life that the stage play only describes.