2. History of the novel

- in 1944 Graham Greene wrote THE TENTH MAN four years before THE THIRD MAN

- the manuscript was bought by MGM but never filmed.
Greene writes: "The reason I had signed the contract was that I feared when the war came to an end and I left government service that my family would be in danger from the precarious nature of my finances. I had not before the war been able to support them from writing novels alone. I had indeed been in debt to my publishers until 1938, when Brighton Rock sold eight thousand copies and squared our accounts temporarily ...
I had no confidence in my future as a novelist and I welcomed in 1944 what proved to be an almost slave contract with MGM which at least assured us all enough to live on for a couple of years in return for the idea of The Tenth Man....".

- the existence of the novel fell into oblivion
"In 1948 when I was working on The Third Man I seem to have completely forgotten a story called The Tenth Man which was ticking away like a time- bomb somewhere in the archives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in America..."

- it was rediscovered in 1983
"In 1983 a stranger wrote to me from the United States telling me that a story of mine called The Tenth Man was being offered for sale by MGM to an American publisher.
I didn´t take the matter seriously. I thought that I remembered -incorrectly, as it proved- an outline which I had written towards the end of the war under a contract with my friend Ben Goetz, the representative of MGM in London. Perhaps the outline had covered two pages of typescript - there seemed, therefore, no danger of publication, especially as the story had never been filmed..."

- and finally published in 1985
"Then recently came the astonishing and disquieting news that Mr Anthony Blond had bought all the book and serial rights on the mysterious story for a quite large sum, the author´s royalties of course to be paid to MGM.

Graham Greene, The Tenth Man

 

He courteously sent me the typescript for any revision I might wish to make and it proved to be not two pages of outline but a complete short novel of about thirty thousand words.

What surprised and aggravated me most of all was that I found this forgotten story very readable - indeed I prefer it in many ways to The Third Man, so that I had no longer any personal excuse for opposing publication even if I had the legal power, which was highly doubtful.
All the same Mr Blond very generously agreed to publish the story jointly with my regular publishers, The Bodley Head..."
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(the quotes are from Graham Greene´s 'Introduction' to "The Tenth Man")