Norman Krasna
Vintage original FINAL WHITE film script, July 7, 1953, Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 1953. Quarto, brad bound, mimeograph, 89 pp. Script by Norman Krasna for this beloved Christmas musical with songs by Irving Berlin, a number of which were reprised from the 1942 film HOLIDAY INN, for which this film was something of a remake as well as a kind of sequel. The name "Troy" is written in pencil on the title page, which almost certainly refers to Troy Sanders (credited as "music associate"). A number of pages are neatly dogeared, and all of those have penciled notations about musical numbers. The first six pages are bound before the title page. There are some revision scripts on colored paper dated up through 10-21-53 bound after the title page. Distribution page has come loose from brads, overall VERY GOOD+.
Vintage original 11 x 14" (28 x 35 cm.) black-and-white double weight matte print still photo, USA. Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Ian Wolfe, Elsa Lanchester, dir: Billy Wilder, United Artists. Director Billy Wilder turned Agatha Christie's murder mystery into one of the great courtroom dramas, which led to an Academy Award nomination for himself, for the film, for Laughton and Lanchester, for editing and for sound recording. Â Here, he works with Charles Laughton, Ian Wolfe and a hatbox. Flawless oversize still, FINE.
Vintage original 22 x 28" (55 x 70 cm.) half sheet poster, USA. James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochran, dir: Raoul Walsh; Warner Brothers. One of the most popular of all gangster-related films and one that attempted to explore the psychology of the criminal. Very fastly-paced by expert director Walsh, it told the story of Cody Jarrett, a ruthless gang leader who has a mother fixation. The characters were based on real life criminals Ma Barker and her sons. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Motion Picture to lady screenwriter Virginia Kellogg. Many consider James Cagney's performance his finest. Poster has been mounted on heavy paper. There is a crease to the top left corner. The top blank white border has had numerous touch-ups. There has also been touch-up to the fold lines, corners, portions of the bottom white margin and spots in the red background of the title treatment, NEAR VERY GOOD.
Vintage original 22 x 14" (55 x 35 cm.) window card poster, USA. Constance Bennett, Lowell Sherman, Neil Hamilton, Gregory Ratoff, Louise Beavers, dir: George Cukor, RKO. The famous predecessor to the A STAR IS BORN legend, re-made three times and here directed by George Cukor, who would make the 1954 version with Judy Garland. Â In this version, a popular film director whose career is in decline discovers a bright young woman whose career ascends. One thing this version had going for it was the lack of the Production Code, so Bennett was allowed to be saucier than the more wistful Gaynor and Garland characters (in this version named Mary Evans). Lowell Sherman, an actor/director, played a character modeled on himself (he was a known alcoholic), John Barrymore and silent director Marshall Neilan. Â Super 1930s Deco art depiction of Hollywood movie making encircles the Bennett and Sherman characters. Poster is in un-restored original condition. There a numerous nail and pinholes overall including at the top and on the imagery including Bennett's head and hair. Minor waviness. A really outstanding depiction of early Hollywood, VERY GOOD-FINE.
Vintage original 8 x 10" (20 x 25 cm.) black-and-white borderless double weight glossy silver gelatin print still photo, UK. Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, David Hemmings, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Verushka, dir: Michelangelo Antonioni; MGM. The story of a mod London photographer who believes he has photographed a murder. Forever controversial and even hated, particularly when first released, it is Antonioni's comment on society (particularly of the time) and human nature. Â The film was made by MGM in the UK under a newly-created company called Premier Productions. Because this company had no agreement with the Production Code office (as MGM did), the frontal nudity and explicit scenes were allowed to remain in the film. Some of these nude scenes included the famous international models cast in the film. Stars Vanessa Redgrave and David Hemmings also participated in semi-nudity. Â This proved to be very daring for the time and was a large part of the controversy, evidenced in this tasteful semi-nude of Vanessa Redgrave. Still is coded 113-1. Slight crease and pencil mark at lower right corner, ABOUT FINE.
Vintage original 8 x 10" (20 x 25 cm.) program booklet, soft cover, 12 pages, Australia. Mel Brooks, Ron Moody, Frank Langella, Dom Deluise, dir: Mel Brooks; UMC. Mel Brooks filmed his comedy caper in Yugoslavia. Set in Soviet Russia of the 1920s and involved an unlikely trio hunting for jewels which have been hidden in one of twelve dining chairs which were lost during the revolution. The booklet is full of black-and-white photos, biographies of the actors and credits. This booklet was used for a charity evening which benefitted the E. W. Tipping Foundation for Mentally Retarded Children and Adults. Minor soil to cover and minor use. No comparable booklet was issued for the film in the US or the UK, to the very best of our knowledge, and this is surely very scarce, ABOUT FINE.
Vintage original 14 x 22" (35 x 56 cm.) window card poster, USA. Warner Baxter, Catherine Dale Owen, Hedda Hopper, Bela Lugosi, dir: Kenneth Hawks; Fox Film Corporation. A rather obscure early talkie about a woman who marries a wealthy man for his money. He realizes this when she calls him ugly, fakes his own suicide, has his face changed (Bela Lugosi plays the plastic surgeon) and gains a new identity in order to take revenge on his wife. Because he is now handsome though, she actually falls in love with him and all ends happily. The title for the film is a quote from Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR. Director Hawks (brother to Howard) and 9 crew members were killed in an air collision while traveling to their location shoot. Elinor Glyn was the celebrity writer of the day and anything with her name associated guaranteed and audience, as she is prominently mentioned on this poster with its jazz age graphics. Minor handling wear, several pinholes in border areas, otherwise clean, NEAR FINE.
Vintage original pressbook ("Press Sheet and AD-SALES Catalogue"), UK. Pictorial wrappers, 8 pp., 11 1/2 x 9 1/2" (30 x 24 cm.), pages partly coming loose, VERY GOOD+. Â 1933 pre-Code film, based on William Faulkner's 1931 novel SANCTUARY. An extremely rare film, only shown at festivals on occasion since its release, with only one known nitrate print in storage at UCLA. Along with BABY FACE, made the same year, THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE is one of the most notorious of the films from the pre-Code area, so controversial that it was ordered never to be shown again after the Production Code Administration was instituted the following year. The controversy comes straight from Faulkner's source material, wherein a wealthy and neurotic Southern belle is trapped in a hideout with a gang of vicious criminal bootleggers. The leader of the gang, Trigger, lusts after the woman, and her subsequent rape is presented in a manner that was unheard of at the time. George Raft, under contract to Paramount, was assigned the part, but found the part repulsive and went to battle with the studio in a suit that nearly cost him his career. This British pressbook has extensive illustrations of the notorious advertising and poster campaign which eventually made the film's release such a troubled one. Â A rare piece from a film that is legendary in the history of literary adaptation and film censorship. It is very interesting to note a few references to Faulkner in the text, as he was not yet a well-known author, much less in the UK.
Vintage original 11 x 14" (28 x 35 cm.) title lobby card, USA. Mary Astor, Robert Ames, John Halliday, Edward Everett Horton, dir: Gregory La Cava: RKO. A really clever layout on this card with a real 1930s feel. Interesting for those who like Mary Astor, too, as it was her own personal diary which a few years later got her in some real hot water. Â In this pre-Code comedy, Mary is a woman returning from Paris to her husband on Long Island. She discovers that he has been having an affair while she was away caring for her ill mother. He hopes she will be devastated and give him a divorce but, being a modern woman, she decided to fight fire with fire and pretends to be having affairs as well in her attempt to win her husband back. From a Myron C. Fagan play which had 136 performances on Broadway in 1930. The movie opened the Roxy Theatre in New York City. Â Great art of Mary, Edward Everett Horton and Robert Ames. There is a tiny edge tear near the top of the left side border, a;" (2 cm.) tear at the center of the top blank white margin and a tiny bit of creasing near the top and bottom left corners, NEAR FINE.
"SHERLOCK HOLMES FIGHTS BACK" Screenplay by Scott Darling & Edward T. Lowe based on a free adaptation of "THE DANCING MAN" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [released as: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON [Los Angeles: Universal Pictures], 22 May - 17 June 1942. Â [1], 110 leaves plus numerous numbered or lettered revised inserts or appended leaves. Quarto. Original carbon typescript on rectos only of onion skin stock denoted "Contract File Copy" in red. Bradbound in typed wrappers (neatly detached). Production number stamped on upper wrapper, upper wrapper heavily creased, with resulting cracks in brittle stock and small chips, but the typescript itself is FINE (in GOOD-VERY GOOD detached wrappers). Â Vintage original script, a very early revised pre-production script, in highly privileged format, of this adaptation to the screen for Universal's distinguished series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations. This particular copy includes the revisions and "additional changes" by Edmund L. Hartmann that were made over the time span subsequent to the third draft of Darling and Lowe's script, and they are substantial. The film, directed by Roy William Neill, and starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, was released on 12 February 1943, and it is probable that even more alterations were made prior to the final shooting script. Script material relating to any of the pre-1950 Holmes films is uncommon, particularly material from such an early stage of development. Although well over one hundred and fifty adaptations of Sherlock Holmes to the screen are known, beginning with SHERLOCK HOLMES BAFFLED (1903), the Rathbone-Bruce portrayals have become almost canonical, beginning with THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (March 1939), and concluding with the twelfth in sequence, DRESSED TO KILL (1946). Â De Waal 5149.
Vintage original program, 8 x 6" (21 x 15.5 cm.), 4 pp., Ukraine. Ivan Mykolachuk, Larise Kadochnikova, dir: Sergei Parajanov. Extremely scarce original program in Ukrainian (and printed in Kiev) for this Ukranian film of visionary director Sergei Parajanov in which he fully expressed his remarkable poetic vision. Â IMDb: "One of the twentieth century's greatest masters of cinema Sergei Parajanov was born in Georgia to Armenian parents and it was always unlikely that his work would conform to the strict socialist realism that Soviet authorities preferred. After studying film and music, Parajanov became an assistant director at the Dovzhenko studios in Kiev, making his directorial debut in 1954, following that with numerous shorts and features, all of which he subsequently dismissed as 'garbage'. However, in 1964 he was able to make Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), a rhapsodic celebration of Ukrainian folk culture, and the world discovered a startling and idiosyncratic new talent. He followed this up with the even more innovative The Color of Pomegranates (1969) (which explored the art and poetry of his native Armenia in a series of stunningly beautiful tableaux), but by this stage the authorities had had enough, and Paradjanov spent most of the 1970s in prison on 'charges of 'homosexuality and illegal trafficking in religious icons'. However, with the coming of perestroika, he was able to make two further films before succumbing to cancer in 1990." Â Slight creasing at edge of pictorial wrappers, NEAR FINE.
Vintage original 11 x 14" (28 x 35 cm.) sepia-tinted double weight glossy silver gelatin print still photo, USA. Rita Hayworth, Lee Bowman, Janet Blair, Marc Platt, Leslie Brooks, dir: Victor Saville; Columbia.  The title refers to a theatre troupe in London which never missed a performance during the duration of World War II. A LIFE magazine photographer visits from America to do a story on them.  With Jack Cole-choreographed dances, stupendous Technicolor art direction and cinematography (Academy Award-nominated Rudolph Matà , who often photographed Hayworth), costumes by Jean Louis and Marcel Vertes, this was the most spectacular musical Columbia produced for 1945. This film marked the first time that Rita Hayworth's name appeared above the title. Rita became pregnant just as the film went into production and so all of the musical numbers were filmed before she showed (as was this portrait still).  In a sequined and ostrich feathered trimmed 1890s period English music hall style costume (by Jean Louis), Hayworth strikes a glamorous dance pose. There are a few minor dings at corners and a pin whole at each of the four corners and pinhole at center top margin, NEAR FINE.
Vintage original 11 x 14" (28 x 35 cm.) lobby card, USA. Lon Chaney, John Bowers, Blanche Sweet, Barbara La Marr, Elmo Lincoln, Louise Fazenda, dir: Clarence G. Badger; Metro Pictures. A wonderful cast of silent film greats joined the great Lon Chaney for this comedy drama based on a popular novel of the time. Chaney plays crooked lawyer Obadiah Strout, who has stolen bearer bonds. He puts all kinds of obstacles and crazy characters in the way of Quincy Adams Sawyer (John Bowers), who is attempting to solve the disappearance. Chaney proved himself greatly adept at playing both the menacing evil character and the comedy of the story. Today the film is not well remembered, but the participants are: Bowers would come to be remembered for his drowning suicide which became part of the script for A STAR IS BORN, Elmo Lincoln as film's first Tarzan, La Marr for her young death a few years later, and of course Chaney for his great body of work. The various characters (different on each one) are featured on the border art of the cards for this film. Lon Chaney as villainous Obadiah Strout greases the bridge in one of his schemes to throw-off lawyer Quincy Adams Sawyer. The suitors to the town vamp (as described in the text) are present on the borders of the card, FINE.
Vintage original 47 x 63" (120 x 160 cm.) poster, France. Artur Somlay, Miklos Gabor, Zsuzsa Banki, Gyorgy Bardy, dir: Geza von Radvanyi; MAFIRT/Dispa. Stunning and modernistic characterization of a child orphan of war by artist Raymond Gid. The film was produced by Hungary's young Communist party and was a masterful bit of heartfelt propaganda. Taking place during the last days of World War II, it is a tale of war orphans and runaways tortured by Nazis who rampage the country living as they can. When they come into a ruined fortress inhabited by a renowned orchestra conductor, he takes them under his wing and teaches them to be freedom fighters. Â This special poster is for the Jan. 26, 1949, gala premiere benefit opening in Paris at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Painter/illustrator Raymond Gid's (1905-2000) poster art is highly sought after, and this is one of his really rare and most wonderful creations. On linen, a 9" (22 cm.) area in entirely blank left side has been skillfully and unobtrusively filled-in, VERY GOOD.
![SHERLOCK HOLMES FIGHTS BACK [released as SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON] (1942) Vintage original script for Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation](https://rarebookinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/30333116559.jpg)
![SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS [TINI ZABUTYKH PREDKIV] (1965)](https://rarebookinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/30333116556-600x375.jpg)
![QUELQUE PART EN EUROPE [IT HAPPENED IN EUROPE] (1948)](https://rarebookinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/30333116550-600x807.jpg)