Movie Catalog, A
2. (ABBEY, Edward). Kirk Douglas Writes to Gary Cooper. Santa Barbara: Santa Teresa Press, 1992. One of 500 copies of this pamphlet issued as a holiday greeting in 1992 and never formally offered for sale. A humorous but powerful letter written in May, 1961, in which Douglas, who starred in the film adaptation of Abbey's The Brave Cowboy, expresses mock dismay and chagrin at the fact that Cooper "should" have been the star of a movie originally to have been called "The Last Hero." He tells Cooper that the way he recognized Abbey when they first met was that, of all the people getting off the plane, Abbey was the one who looked like Gary Cooper -- and he even talked like Cooper. And he recounts that his director's first, and only, instructions regarding Douglas' character were to "just try and play this the way Gary Cooper would." Douglas contributes a short afterword to this little edition, remarking on both Cooper and Abbey. Fine in original envelope.
3. ADAMS, Douglas. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. London: Arthur Barker (1979). The first edition of the first volume in the multi-volume Hitch Hiker's "trilogy," based on the BBC radio series of the same name and faithfully adapted for BBC television. Fine in a fine dust jacket. While the American edition, which came out later, had a large first printing, the true first edition published in England is quite scarce.
4. ADAMS, Richard. Watership Down. London/Australasia: Collings/Angus & Robertson (1974). The first Australian edition of Adams' first novel, winner of the Guardian award for children's fiction and the Library Association's Carnegie Medal for outstanding work by a children's author. A powerful, sad story of a group of rabbits that was adapted into an animated film, which, despite its format, was widely considered too violent for easy viewing by children. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with narrow chipping at the front spine fold. An uncommon edition of a contemporary classic.
5. ADAMS, Richard. The Plague Dogs. London: Allen Lane (1977). The British edition of his third book; like his first an animal story and a serious adult novel using the trappings of children's literature and then of children's film: an animated movie. Still, not for young kids or the faint of heart: Adams was roundly criticized for both this book and Watership Down for his refusal to pull his punches, and for portraying the hardships and terrors of his characters' lives unflinchingly. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
6. ALEXIE, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven. NY: Atlantic Monthly Press (1993). The advance reading copy of his first collection of stories to be published by a major trade publisher; winner of a special citation for the PEN/Hemingway Award as well as the winner of the 1994 Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers' Award. Stories from this collection were the basis of the film Smoke Signals, which won an award at the Sundance Festival. Alexie was chosen as one of Granta magazine's 20 Best Young American Authors on the strength of this collection. Tiny corner crease; else fine in wrappers.
7. ALGREN, Nelson. The Man with the Golden Arm. Garden City: Doubleday, 1949. The first winner of the National Book Award and the basis for the 1955 Otto Preminger film starring Frank Sinatra. Inscribed by the author on the dedication page in 1978. Edgeworn cloth; about very good in a good, sunned and edge-chipped dust jacket with rubbing to the spine and spine folds and a 3" tear at the lower front flap fold. A very scarce book to find signed or inscribed.
8. ALLEN, Woody. The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader. NY: Knopf, 1993. Excerpts from Allen's films, books, and record albums, arranged thematically by the editor, Linda Sunshine. Quarto; heavily illustrated with on-screen and off-screen photographs. Includes Allen's first recorded monologue, from 1964, some of which later found its way into his films. Fine in a fine dust jacket, with a bookplate signed by Allen laid in.
9. (ALLEN, Woody). LAX, Eric. Woody Allen. NY: Knopf, 1991. The uncorrected proof copy of a biography that covers the years up to the film Alice and through his eleventh year with Mia Farrow, "with no end in sight." Fine in wrappers.
10. ALLENDE, Isabel. The House of Spirits. NY: Knopf, 1985. The first American edition of this expatriate Chilean author's first book. A novel in the South American magical realist tradition, which was made into a movie with Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close and Winona Ryder. Fine in a fine dust jacket.
11. ALLISON, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina. (NY): Dutton (1992). Her first book published by a major publisher and her first novel, in part an unflinching account of a daughter's relationship to her mother in the face of abuse by her stepfather. Made into a television movie. A finalist for the National Book Award, reprinted numerous times and scarce in the first printing. Fine in a fine dust jacket and signed by the author.
12. AMADO, Jorge. Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon. NY: Knopf, 1962. The first American edition of the most famous work by Brazil's most well-known author. Adapted into a top-rated Brazilian soap opera, and made into a movie with Marcello Mastroianni two decades after publication. Top stain and top cloth edges a touch faded; near fine in a fine, unfaded dust jacket. A nice copy of a key volume of world literature of the past half-century.
13. ANDERSON, Maxwell. Key Largo. Washington: Anderson House, 1939. A play, memorably filmed by John Huston in 1948 with Bogart and Bacall, as well as Edward G. Robinson and Claire Trevor, who won an Academy Award for her performance. Owner name front flyleaf; else fine in a very good, spine-tanned dust jacket with light chipping at the corners. Quite scarce.
14. (Anthology). Interviews with Film Directors. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill (1967). Edited by and inscribed by Andrew Sarris, longtime film critic for The Village Voice and the individual credited with being the most eloquent spokesman for the auteur theory of filmmaking -- seeing the directors of films as artists in their own right, rather than being simply cogs in the larger machine of the studio system. Directors include Antonioni, Bergman, Bunuel, Eisenstein, Fellini, Godard, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Pasolini, Rossellini, Truffaut, and Orson Welles, among others. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Sarris provides an introduction, in which he lays out his view of the importance of the film director as an artist, making this a landmark volume as Sarris' ideas have largely come to be accepted as conventional wisdom.
15. (Anthology). The Film. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill (1968). A collection of essays on film, edited and introduced by Sarris, and inscribed by him. Includes an afterword by Dwight Macdonald, an essay by Pauline Kael on Kubrick's adaptation of Lolita, an essay by Sarris and a piece by John Simon, among others. Thin quarto; near fine in wrappers.
16. (Anthology). Film 67/68. NY: Simon & Schuster (1968). An anthology of movie reviews by such writers as Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Brendan Gill, Stanley Kauffmann and others, including the co-editors, Richard Schickel and John Simon. The first volume in a series. The films reviewed include In Cold Blood, Cool Hand Luke, Ulysses, Far from the Madding Crowd, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Bonnie and Clyde, Blow-Up, Persona, The Graduate, Marat/Sade, and others. Inscribed by John Simon. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a few scratches to the rear panel.
17. -. Same title, the issue in wrappers. Near fine, and inscribed by Simon.
18. (Anthology). Film 68/69. NY: Simon & Schuster (1969). The second volume in the series. Criticism of some of the films of 1968. Co-edited and inscribed by Andrew Sarris. Films covered include Charly, The Lion in Winter, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Fixer, The Sea Gull, War and Peace, The Green Berets, Rosemary's Baby, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Yellow Submarine and The Graduate. Contributors include Sarris, Penelope Gilliat, Hollis Alpert (the co-editor), Simon, Kauffmann, Schickel and others. This is the hardcover issue; there was a simultaneous issue in wrappers. Fine in a near fine dust jacket.
19. (Anthology). Hollywood Voices. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill (1972). A review copy; edited and inscribed by Andrew Sarris. Excerpted from the book Interviews with Film Directors, and including only the interviews with Cukor, Mamoulian, Preminger, Sturges, Huston, Losey, Ray, Polonsky and Orson Welles, as well as Sarris' influential essay, "The Rise and Fall of the Film Director." Fine in a fine, price-clipped dust jacket.
20. (Anthology). American Film Criticism from the Beginnings to Citizen Kane. NY: Liveright (1972). An anthology of the early years of film criticism -- "Reviews of significant films at the time they first appeared" -- from 1896 to 1941. Edited by Stanley Kauffmann with Bruce Henstell. This is a review copy of the hardcover edition. Inscribed by Kauffmann. Fine in a near fine dust jacket.
21. -. Same title, the uncorrected proof copy. Inscribed by Kauffmann. Tall quarto; fine in wrappers. Scarce.
22. ARNOW, Harriette Simpson. The Dollmaker. London: Heinemann, (1955). First English edition of her best-known novel, which deals with a family uprooted from their native region and relocated to the urban confusion of Detroit during the Second World War. This book was a bestseller upon publication in the U.S. and later became a contemporary classic of feminist literature and a standard on college campuses because of the strength of its central, female character. This copy has a tear at the upper edge of the front endpaper, otherwise very good in an edgeworn pictorial dust jacket, which differs markedly from the U.S. edition. Warmly inscribed by the author "for/ Virginia Patterson/ who in no/ small measure/ was responsible for/ the success of the/ American edition, not/ this poor substitute/ Harriette Simpson Arnow/ Thanks for the pen" [her pen ran out of ink during the inscription]. Laid into the book are two autograph Christmas cards with lengthy notes on them. Signed copies of this book, and autograph material by Arnow, are quite uncommon.
23. AUSTER, Paul. Lulu on the Bridge. NY: Henry Holt (1998). The uncorrected proof copy of the script of Auster's film, which starred Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Vanessa Redgrave and Mira Sorvino. Also includes an interview with Auster. Fine in wrappers.