When Andrei realizes that Kira loves Leo, he helps his rival avoid prosecution, then commits suicide.

Rand sold an option for the adaptation to producer Jerome Mayer and wrote a script, but he was unable to stage the play.

[3] Concerned about her safety due to her strong anti-Communist views, Rand's family helped her emigrate to the United States in 1926.

[7] Shortly after We the Living was published, Rand began negotiations with Broadway producer Jerome Mayer to do a theatrical adaptation.

By January 1937, Rand had completed a script, but Mayer had difficulty casting the production because of the story's anti-Communist content.

Like Rand, Leontovich came from a family that suffered after the revolution; the Bolsheviks tortured and killed her three brothers, who served in the anti-Communist White Army.

[12][13] Abbott decided to produce and direct the adaptation; he hired scenic designer Boris Aronson, who was also a Russian immigrant, to create the sets.

[15] Rand had a bad experience with the Broadway production of Night of January 16th because of script changes mandated by the producer, so she insisted on having final approval of any revisions to The Unconquered.

To facilitate rewrites, Abbott asked experienced playwright S. N. Behrman to work with Rand as a script doctor.

[20] A preview production opened in Baltimore on December 25, 1939, with Leontovich playing Kira alongside Onslow Stevens as Leo and Dean Jagger as Andrei.

[16] The opening night was complicated by a last-minute accident when Howard Freeman, who was playing Morozov, fell from the theatre's upper tier and fractured his pelvis.

[23] After negative reviews for the preview, Abbott cancelled a Broadway debut planned for January 3, 1940, so he could recast and Rand could make script changes.

[25] A final preview performance was staged on February 12, 1940, as a benefit for the Home for Hebrew Infants, a New York orphanage.

Kira begs officials in the railroad office to help Leo go to a Crimean sanatorium for treatment of tuberculosis he contracted while in jail.

Syerov is in charge of the railroad office and conspires with another official, Karp Morozov, to divert food shipments for the black market.

They arrange for Leo, who has just returned from his treatment in Crimea (secretly funded by Andrei's gifts to Kira), to open a store that will sell the stolen goods.

She varied from traditional versions of the plot by making the powerful man an idealist who is in love with the woman and unaware of her other lover, rather than a villain who knowingly exploits her.

[32] The play significantly streamlines the story: Kira's family is omitted, and the plot begins with her living with Leo.

[26] In the Communist Party USA magazine The New Masses, Alvah Bessie said the play was "deadly dull" and called Rand "a fourth-rate hack".

[26] In the Catholic magazine Commonweal, Philip T. Hartung called the play "a confused muddle" and recommended the movie Ninotchka as better anti-Soviet entertainment.

[39] From the right, New York World-Telegram drama critic Sidney B. Whipple complained the play understated the dangers of Communism.

[37] After the play's failure, Rand concluded her script was bad, and it was a mistake to attempt a theatrical adaptation of We the Living; she decided the novel "was not proper stage material".

[40][41] She thought that Abbot was more suited to comedy than drama, and that his efforts as producer and director had made the play even worse.

[42] Biographers of Rand have described the play as "a complete failure",[26] "a resounding flop",[43] and a "critical fiasco and professional embarrassment".