Henry James as playwright? Get me rewrite!

I have to laugh when read - as in the bio notes from Peter Straub in the Library of America "American Fantastic Tales" - that Henry James tried to write for the theater and was crushed by his failure. That's like my saying I tried for years to become a matador and was crushed by my failure (the bull might have been more direct in his disapproval than the critics). Is there a writer in the history of literature less suited to the theater than Henry James? Anyone - among serious, intelligent writers - less skilled at getting a story moving and at building dramatic conflict (other than interior, psychological conflict)? Anyone who writes worse, or at least less credible dialogue? Just imagine any - ANY - of the dialogue on The Jolly Corner, the "ghost" story included in American Fantastic Tales, and you, too, will laugh. The story itself is okay, hardly one of James's masterpieces, but unlike many others of the genre there's some psychological depth to it. James's hero (Sidon? don't remember his name) sees a ghostly figure, haunting his childhood home (now vacant), and imagines it as another version of himself, what he might have become had he never left home. His lady friend - unlike in most James stories they actually do fall in love at the end of the story, which ends in an embrace - at least that's theatrical! - sees the same vision, and instead of its pushing her away from him, it draws her to him. She loves both versions of the man. This is a very good theme and maybe only James could have come up with it, but his strange, tortured writing style ca 1908 makes the story almost impenetrable. In other hands, maybe it could be...a movie. Hey - get me rewrite! Next story in the anthology, Golden Baby, by Alice Brown, is a sort of Conrad knockoff, but strangely haunting, not bad at all.