Live Now origins

News Flash! November 2003—I recently got my hands on the pressbook for the film, and this quote from the "Coverage Story" (intended to be run in newspapers) clarifies what I've previously dug up (below) on this particular point:

"LIVE NOW—PAY LATER" is based on a screenplay by Jack Trevor Story from the novel 'All on the Never-Never' by Jack Lindsay."

So there you have it. The pressbook does not, however, include Lindsay's name in the actual credits list, but simply "Screenplay by Jack Trevor Story".

PLUS: see Kill Now, Pay Later at bottom of page... another possible link!

This is from Brian Darwent's biography of Story, Romantic Egotist (page 130);

"[Story's] own title for the novel was "Jam Tomorrow". "Live Now, Pay Later" was suggested by the actor Laurence Harvey, who was briefly engaged by [director] Jay Lewis... to star in the film. Lewis had first asked Story to adapt a novel by someone else - a tale of a housewife who gets herself into debt and goes on the streets rather than confess to her husband. He turned the job down... but then the tally-boy activities of his friend Bill Johnson gave him the idea for a book on the never-never theme of his own."

Mr Darwent doesn't identify the book which Lewis asked Story to adapt.

The film of Live Now, Pay Later credits Jack Trevor Story as the sole scriptwriter. (At least, my copy - taped from British TV - does.)

The Internet Movie DataBase lists: Writing Credits - Jack Lindsay, Jack Trevor Story. This was something I only wondered about idly, assuming it might be a simple error, until I came across a certain paperback at a book fair in January 2002.

The back cover blurb reads: "The trouble with Iris is that she can't resist buying things on Hire Purchase. She can't meet the payments so she attempts to solve her difficulties by trying to sell her body. She doesn't find it an easy way of balancing the budget."

It seems very likely that All On The Never-Never is the book Jay Lewis originally suggested that Story should adapt. I can only speculate as to how Jack Lindsay comes to have a co-writing credit for the film of Live Now, Pay Later on the IMDB. Possibly he (and his lawyer) asked for a piece of the action, either on the grounds of an original agreement with Lewis, or simply on the basis of similarities between the two stories...?

Jack Lindsay, 1900 - 1990, was a prolific, author, poet, editor of journals, translator of the classics and from the late 1930s a convert to the Communist Party of Great Britain, after which he also wrote about Marxist issues.

You can read more about Jack Lindsay here >>

Here's another intriguing possibility... could Laurence Harvey's choice of name for LNPL have been influenced by the title of this private eye novel?

This is the cover of the 1965 British edition, but the book first appeared in 1960 in the US.

Cover art by the great Robert McGinnis.