ABSTRACT
Treadwell called upon her background as a court reporter for the basis of her most successful play, Machinal. Produced on Broadway in 1928 starring Zita Johann and featuring a young Clark Gable, Machinal was based loosely on one of the most written-about murder trials of the twentieth century: the SnyderGray case. The New York papers assigned 180 reporters to cover the story, which fed the public’s appetite for details about this seemingly normal housewife turned cold-blooded murderer. Although both Snyder and Gray were found guilty and executed, the media continued to focus mainly on Snyder, typically portraying her as an embodiment of evil or an inhuman monster (see Jones 1980: 251-66). When she became the first woman executed by electric chair in New York State, a reporter for the New York Daily News smuggled a camera into the execution chamber strapped to his leg. His photo appeared in print the next morning in an edition that sold out in fifteen minutes (Pelizzon and West 2005: 211). The curiosity about Snyder’s motives later inspired James M. Cain’s novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, both of which were turned into successful films in the 1940s.
