"Late Night Final" started its run at the Phoenix Theatre, London on the 25 June, 1931. From the 19 October, 1931, the play was staged at the Kings Theatre, Hammersmith, for 6 nights.
Theatre World August 1931, featuring "Late Night Final", starring and produced by Raymond Massey.
Charles, playing Hinchcliffe, is third from left.
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Charles far left
Charles (left) with Raymond Massey
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Article in the Stage - 3 July 1931
Western Morning News - 2 July 1931.
"Mr Massey is excellent as the editor, as is Mr Charles Mortimer as his proprietor."
"Mr Massey is excellent as the editor, as is Mr Charles Mortimer as his proprietor."
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The Sphere - Saturday 11 July 1931
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Charles Mortimer played Hinchcliffe, in Raymond Massey's production of "Late Night Final" at the Phoenix Theatre, London in 1931.
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Raymond Massey, producer and star of "Late Night Final", at the Phoenix Theatre, in 1931. Raymond Massey played in such Hollwood pictures as "A Matter of Life and Death", starring David Niven, and "Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant.
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An article from The Western Morning News and Mercury on 2 July, 1931.
From The Sheffield Independent of 21 August, 1931.
Godfrey Tearle will next month take over Raymond Massey’s part in Late Night Final " at the Phoenix Theatre. Mr. Massey is going to New York to play the title role in ”Hamlet”. 
From The Stage of 2 July, 1931.
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From The Scotsman, 26 June, 1931.
LONDON THEATRE " Late Night Final " [ FROM OUR LONDON DRAMATIC CRITIC ; London] Thursday Night Tabloid newspapers are American illustrated daily journals of the most sensational kind . This information is supplied by Mr Louis Weitzenkorn , the author of "Late Night Final", presumably in extenuation of his play , which was staged at the Phoenix Theatre this evening. It is difficult to believe that newspapers , even in New York, are run on debased and unscrupulous lines such as prevail on the "Gazette", but, assuming for the purposes of the play that such is the case , the question arises whether the play itself was worth producing. The answer depends upon what the playgoer seeks in the theatre . If he comes for drama or for wit, and for vicarious excitement, he will not find it in "Late Night Final". He will be confronted instead with harrowing and profoundly depressing details of a family driven to self-destruction because the newspaper, in order to increase its circulation, disinters a twenty-year-old story of a typist who kills her betrayer, and serves it up on the morning of her daughter's wedding to a young man who knows nothing about the antecedents of his bride. Miss Louise Hampton as the murderess, depresses with her usual skill before she commits suicide , and Mr Eliot Makeham, as her husband, skilfully adds to the gloom before also taking his life . Good acting is likewise forthcoming from Mr Raymond Massey as the editor who sacrifices his ideals to make money . It is difficult to imagine that the play will appeal to any but the readers of newspapers like the "Gazette", who seek in their favourite journal , not now of informative comment , but sensational "stunts". From the Sheffield Independent 26 June, 1931. “LATE NIGHT FINAL.” NEWSPAPER PLAY OF NEW YORK. From Our Dramatic Critic. London, Thursday. It is hard approach to-night's play at, the Phoenix with an unprejudiced mind. To sneer at the Press is a playwright’s privilege, but if the scene of Late Night Final were laid in London instead of New York it would be possible to say whether this a gross libel upon newspapers. As a play it is interesting to a point. Produced by Mr, Raymond Massey in the modem way of brief, small scenes and blackings out, it moves swiftly to its climax of the suicides, and the production of the special edition which was on sale in the auditorium by real newsboys, There is a large cast, of whom Miss Louise Hampton gives another moving performance as the persecuted woman, and Mr. Allen Jenkins is a funny competition editor. Mr. Massey himself is the editor. 
The Tatler - Wednesday 15 July 1931
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Taken from The Spectator of 3 July, 1931.
The Theatre
" LATE NIGHT FINAL." By LOUIS WEITZENKORN. AT THE PHOENIX THEATRE.
Do not go to the Phoenix Theatre for a quiet evening. Go for excitement. You will not be disappointed.
This is a play, brilliantly produced by Mr. Raymond Massey, which badgers and bludgeons you into agitated sympathy. Fidgeting uneasily in your place, you respond to the restless- ness and clamour convulsing the newspaper office on the stage. You look, here, at the inset scene top left "—as the art editor says—and see the fluffy telephone operator mitigating the strain of unceasing calls with the masticaticn of chewing gum. You look there, top right, and see Ziggie Feinstein (incarnate in Mr. Allen Jenkins's performance) bellowing stunt ideas through his telephone. You look middle, and see the editor of " The Evening Gazette," Randall, whom Mr. Massey manages to make the only active hero of the even- ing, selling his soul for what is described as "not a newspaper but a racket." You look lower right and lower left and sec bits of the public of this frightful rag lapping up its mud—not without occasional expressions of disgust or protest : a just hint to editors like Mr. Randall, and to proprietors like Mr. Hinchecliffe, whose shining room is also, at intervals, top left. At moments you look right and left and middle, assisting, with an agonisingly multiplied consciousness, at three simultaneous scenes. A fearful effort. Andthere the journalist invites the sympathy of less regular patrons of the stalls. It is (says he) not unlike newspaper work. Doing four or five things at once ! 'the others can't believe it.
This quartered or even quinquesected proscenium, shooting into spot-lights in corners and centre, mechanically heightens emotion or quickens nerve storms. The achievement is unique of its sort, which, as I said, is not the insinuating sort. Nerves are further torn by the howls of newsboys distributing a simulacrum of "The Evening Gazette" during one interval ; while, during the others, a stabbing" music "vomits its hurdy- gurdy vibrations. What a world! One admires, one must admire, immensely. There is no time to do anything else. Then one thinks of something, say, like The Cherry Orchard, and sighs.
The plot ? I had forgotten the plot. It is subordinate to the production, yet entirely appropriate to the method of its narration. It is, in outline, old. Mr. Galsworthy gave it us in The Show. M. Brieux gave it us in La Robe Rouge— with lawyers in place of journalists : the story, simply, of a woman with a past whose dramatic murder of her seducer, years earlier, is raked up for the enjoyment of tabloid, readers • she being thus driven to suicide ; her husband also. Her daughter, about to be married, is only just saved by the devotion of her young man. Very beautifully does Miss Louise Hampton give us the scene where the distracted woman telephones to beg mercy of the newspaper hounds whom you see ringing her off at the other end. Beautifully, too, at the close, does Miss Rosemary Ames give the "Mr. Hinchecliffe why did you kill my mother ? " of the wretched girl's call at the office. With great skill does Mr. Massey indicate the breakdown of the editor's resolve to carry on, his remorse, and his revolt against his earlier proclaimed creed that "ideals won't put a patch in your pants." (This, by the way, isn't true : ideals of a sort have quite a lot of dollars in them.) But all moves at such a frantic rate that one cannot fix details in acting.
And though the play begins at 8.4.5, the additional racket of late arrivals in the stalls on the second night was so deafening that I did not catch whether the odious proprietor of "The Evening Gazette" knew that his victim, the murderess, was on the point of marrying her innocent daughter. If not, his suspicion of this news tag ought to be inserted. For an up-to-date "tabloid," it wasn't, surely, a very good stunt to rake up a twenty-year-old murder apropos of nothing.
Nearly all my colleagues have remarked, in summarizing this violent play, that we in England have, thank Heaven, no such Press methods as those exhibited by Mr. Weitzenkorn. Let us be very careful ! We must walk (or print) humbly. Such boasts have a way of falsifying themselves. The pace quickens. Taste descends. New York or Chicago, once at a safe distance, fly nearer every day. " The Evening Gazette" may start its London edition, which may seem quaintly old-fashioned when "The Morning Boar" follows it. Fervently I invite my self-satisfied colleagues to a prayer that the public may some day be educated, may develop delicacy of feeling, and so may refuse " news " of too malignant a brutality. In this is our only hope.
RICHARD JENNINGS.
" LATE NIGHT FINAL." By LOUIS WEITZENKORN. AT THE PHOENIX THEATRE.
Do not go to the Phoenix Theatre for a quiet evening. Go for excitement. You will not be disappointed.
This is a play, brilliantly produced by Mr. Raymond Massey, which badgers and bludgeons you into agitated sympathy. Fidgeting uneasily in your place, you respond to the restless- ness and clamour convulsing the newspaper office on the stage. You look, here, at the inset scene top left "—as the art editor says—and see the fluffy telephone operator mitigating the strain of unceasing calls with the masticaticn of chewing gum. You look there, top right, and see Ziggie Feinstein (incarnate in Mr. Allen Jenkins's performance) bellowing stunt ideas through his telephone. You look middle, and see the editor of " The Evening Gazette," Randall, whom Mr. Massey manages to make the only active hero of the even- ing, selling his soul for what is described as "not a newspaper but a racket." You look lower right and lower left and sec bits of the public of this frightful rag lapping up its mud—not without occasional expressions of disgust or protest : a just hint to editors like Mr. Randall, and to proprietors like Mr. Hinchecliffe, whose shining room is also, at intervals, top left. At moments you look right and left and middle, assisting, with an agonisingly multiplied consciousness, at three simultaneous scenes. A fearful effort. Andthere the journalist invites the sympathy of less regular patrons of the stalls. It is (says he) not unlike newspaper work. Doing four or five things at once ! 'the others can't believe it.
This quartered or even quinquesected proscenium, shooting into spot-lights in corners and centre, mechanically heightens emotion or quickens nerve storms. The achievement is unique of its sort, which, as I said, is not the insinuating sort. Nerves are further torn by the howls of newsboys distributing a simulacrum of "The Evening Gazette" during one interval ; while, during the others, a stabbing" music "vomits its hurdy- gurdy vibrations. What a world! One admires, one must admire, immensely. There is no time to do anything else. Then one thinks of something, say, like The Cherry Orchard, and sighs.
The plot ? I had forgotten the plot. It is subordinate to the production, yet entirely appropriate to the method of its narration. It is, in outline, old. Mr. Galsworthy gave it us in The Show. M. Brieux gave it us in La Robe Rouge— with lawyers in place of journalists : the story, simply, of a woman with a past whose dramatic murder of her seducer, years earlier, is raked up for the enjoyment of tabloid, readers • she being thus driven to suicide ; her husband also. Her daughter, about to be married, is only just saved by the devotion of her young man. Very beautifully does Miss Louise Hampton give us the scene where the distracted woman telephones to beg mercy of the newspaper hounds whom you see ringing her off at the other end. Beautifully, too, at the close, does Miss Rosemary Ames give the "Mr. Hinchecliffe why did you kill my mother ? " of the wretched girl's call at the office. With great skill does Mr. Massey indicate the breakdown of the editor's resolve to carry on, his remorse, and his revolt against his earlier proclaimed creed that "ideals won't put a patch in your pants." (This, by the way, isn't true : ideals of a sort have quite a lot of dollars in them.) But all moves at such a frantic rate that one cannot fix details in acting.
And though the play begins at 8.4.5, the additional racket of late arrivals in the stalls on the second night was so deafening that I did not catch whether the odious proprietor of "The Evening Gazette" knew that his victim, the murderess, was on the point of marrying her innocent daughter. If not, his suspicion of this news tag ought to be inserted. For an up-to-date "tabloid," it wasn't, surely, a very good stunt to rake up a twenty-year-old murder apropos of nothing.
Nearly all my colleagues have remarked, in summarizing this violent play, that we in England have, thank Heaven, no such Press methods as those exhibited by Mr. Weitzenkorn. Let us be very careful ! We must walk (or print) humbly. Such boasts have a way of falsifying themselves. The pace quickens. Taste descends. New York or Chicago, once at a safe distance, fly nearer every day. " The Evening Gazette" may start its London edition, which may seem quaintly old-fashioned when "The Morning Boar" follows it. Fervently I invite my self-satisfied colleagues to a prayer that the public may some day be educated, may develop delicacy of feeling, and so may refuse " news " of too malignant a brutality. In this is our only hope.
RICHARD JENNINGS.
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Taken from The West London Observer of 16 October, 1931
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