The PRESSBOOK for 1973’s The Last of Sheila, a murder mystery co-written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins. The plot for this film drew from a range of games originally designed by Sondheim for private parties in the 1960s.
Excerpt from the book Matching Minds with Sondheim:
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Sheila (the movie) is that, as outlandish as it gets, it could have opened with the tag “based on a true story.” All of the games that populate the first half of the film, as well as the treasure hunts and word puzzles that flesh them out, are adaptations of Sondheim’s own. Just as he would later adapt his Murder Game for Games magazine, it turns out Sondheim had first adapted it for Hollywood.
Sheila was directed by Herbert Ross, a friend of Sondheim’s who had attended his parties. “About two years ago, Steve had invented a new form of Murder, the game of Murder,” Ross explained in the featurette created to promote the film. “It seemed to me a terrific premise for a mystery movie. In the film, there are six people playing the game—they play it over a six-day period. Every night they play the game in [a] different port of the Riviera.”
The featurette turns to Sondheim. “Essentially what I like to do,” Sondheim says to the camera, sitting on a couch in his townhouse, “more than play, is invent games.” He explains the origins of the film: “Herbie Ross called me and asked would I be interested in doing an entire script based on a Murder game.” Sondheim decided he needed a collaborator. He turned to actor Anthony Perkins. Perkins had starred in his TV musical, Evening Primrose, had dated his close friend Grover Dale, and had worked together with Sondheim on a number of treasure hunts. Sondheim respected how his friend’s mind worked, his love of murder mystery novels, and the witty personal letters Perkins would occasionally send (“His letters are treasures,” Sondheim once said about them. “They are the kind of letters you wish you’d written”).
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