Had Robin Maugham been less stubborn, we might not have the director Joseph Losey’s serenely chilling 1963 film adaptation of Maugham’s novella “The Servant.” But Maugham, a nephew of the writer W. Somerset Maugham and later a hereditary viscount, was determined to turn “The Servant,” first published in 1948, into a play and unwilling to sell the movie rights if such a deal also included those for the stage.
At first, it hardly mattered, for “The Servant,” a sly parable of class dislocation and moral rot, was initially considered unfilmable. But by the time Maugham finished his theatrical adaptation in 1958, society had changed enough for a motion picture to be contemplated.
