The Go-Between (1971 film) envisaged Alec Guinness and Margaret Leighton in the leads and employed Nancy Mitford to write a script. L.P. Hartley later claimed Korda had no real intention to make a film of the book - he kept the rights hoping to re-sell them at a profit. Hartley says "I was so annoyed when I heard of this that I put a curse on him and he died, almost the next morning." Joseph Losey was interested in filming the novel. He tried to get financing for a version in 1963 after "The Servant" and says Pinter wrote "two thirds of a script".
The Go-Between to sell at first. However, it was greeted with favourable reviews. "The New York Times" called it "a triumph of literary architecture", while two articles were devoted to it in the "Los Angeles Times". Joseph Henry Jackson commented on its skilful presentation as “a many-leveled affair; perhaps only the author knows how much there is in it of symbol and reference." A month later Milton Merlin described it as "a superbly composed and an irresistibly haunting novel” characterised by “the author's beautiful and ingenious style, his whimsy, irony and humor, and, most of all, the powerful wallop of a deceptively