China Seas

(no dust jacket) [light shelfwear, spine slightly turned; M-G-M Script Department label on front endpaper (see notes), beautiful vintage bookseller's label on rear pastedown (Satyr Book Shop, Hollywood and Los Angeles)]. Scarce adventure novel, the basis for the 1935 MGM film starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery -- to which this copy is linked by the presence of a label on the front endpaper, identifying it as once having been the property of the Script Department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Culver City, California. Although not marked as such, this book is from the collection of longtime MGM writer/producer Carey Wilson. Although he received no credit on the final film (the credited screenwriters were James Kevin McGuinness and Jules Furthman), he was on the picture early in its development, and material in the Turner/MGM Scripts and the Jules Furthman Papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library shows that he worked on the script from March through July 1932, and appears to have been the first writer to deliver a full script, in early May of that year. (The film had an unusually long gestation period: the novel was originally submitted to the Production Code Office in 1931, but there were a number of objectionable elements -- including an interracial love affair that resulted in an illegitimate child and references to opium use -- that complicated and extended its adaptation to the screen. The movie didn't actually go into production until mid-March 1935, and was released in August.) The Satyr Book Shop label suggests several possibilities for how this copy might have originally come into (and out of) possession of the M-G-M Story Department and Mr. Wilson; the Satyr shop was a regular source of books for the movie studios, and Wilson himself was an avid book collector.

Product Info

Publisher: Frederick A. Stokes Company

Year: 1931

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

Seller Info

ReadInk

Address: 2261 West 21st St. Los Angeles, California

Website: https://www.readinkbooks.com

Country: United States