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Mark Twain (source) TOM SAWYER (1930) Lobby card

[Hollywood]: Paramount Pictures, 1930. Vintage original 11 x 14″ (28 x 36 cm.) lobby card, light overall toning, else in excellent condition, just about fine.

A portrait of Tom Sawyer (Jackie Coogan) and Becky Thatcher (Mitzi Green) in this feature film directed by John Cromwell. Although there were many silent films adapted from Twain going all the way back to 1907, this version of Tom Sawyer was the very first talking film adapted from any of his writings.

Mark Twain (source) LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI (ca. 1956) TV script adapted by William Robert Yates

[Hollywood: KNXT, ca. 1956]. Vintage original television script, brad bound, mimeograph, quarto, 35 pp. Near fine.

An early television adaptation of Mark Twain for a local live dramatic series on KNXT, which was then the West Coast flagship of CBS. This script has Mark Twain and Huck Finn alternate as narrators.

TOM SAWYER (Jul 20, 1930) First white script adapted from Mark Twain

[Hollywood: Paramount Pictures], July 20, 1930. Vintage original film script, folio, self-wrappers, 143 leaves, printed on rectos only. Mimeograph, pages near fine in very good wrappers, detached at punch holes, with closed tears and light soiling, side with three staples. Housed in a custom quarter leather clamshell box.

The third film adaptation of Tom Sawyer — preceded by a silent short in 1907 and a silent feature in 1917 — and the very first talking film adaption of any of Mark Twain’s works.

As was the practice at Paramount, the script has an odd pagination, as it is divided up into nine alphabetical sequences. It is complete, with the following pagination: [title page], [cast list], A-1 – A-37; B -1 – B-21; C-1 – C-12; D-1 – D-19; E-1 – E-15; F-1 – F-7; G-1 – G-9; H-1 – H-15; J-1 – J-6.

Tod Browning (director), Lon Chaney (actor) WHERE EAST IS EAST (Dec 31, 1928) Film script

[Los Angeles]: MGM, 1928. Vintage original film script. Tan titled wrappers, 12 x 8 3/4″ (31 x 22 cm.), dated Dec. 31, 1928, with credits for producer Irving Thalberg. Title page integral with the first page of the text, with credits for story writers Tod Browning and Harry Sinclair Drago, and screenwriter Waldemar Young. 75 leaves, with last page of text numbered 75. Mimeograph, pages near fine in good+ wrappers (with usual chipping to yapped edges), brad bound.

Where East is East (1929) was the last of the ten films actor Lon Chaney made with his favorite director, Tod Browning. While the two of them were renowned for their work in the horror and crime/mystery genres, Where East is East is none of the above. It would be more accurately described as an exotic melodrama. The film’s title comes from a poem by Rudyard Kipling: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…” (The Ballad of East and West). Except in this film, East (represented by Chaney’s Eurasian daughter) and West (represented by the young American who falls in love with her) do meet and eventually marry.

Most of the film’s story takes place in Southeast Asia, specifically Laos. Chaney plays Tiger Haynes, a heavily-scarred hunter of wild animals, which he captures live and sells to circuses in America and Europe. Tiger has a close, rambunctiously affectionate relationship with his teenage half-Laotian daughter Toyo, played by Lupe Vélez (later known as “The Mexican Spitfire”). Enter the young American Bobby Bailey (Lloyd Hughes), the son of a circus owner who is instantly attracted to Toyo, and she to him. Tiger is suspicious of Bobby at first, but warms to him after the two of them join forces in capturing an escaped tiger. The film is silent but has a synchronized music and sound effects track that particularly emphasizes the roaring of the wildlife (which must have thrilled audiences in 1929).

Bobby has to leave temporarily in order to deliver some of the captured animals and, while on a boat, runs into an exotically beautiful dragon-lady type, Madame de Sylva (Estelle Taylor), who makes up her mind to seduce him. Chaney’s character, Tiger, regards Madame de Sylva with anger and suspicion. And with good reason! She is the mother of Toyo, who deserted Tiger and his daughter when the latter was a baby girl. With nothing but evil on her mind, she follows Bobby when he returns home to Toyo. However, Tiger saves the day, and his daughter’s romance, by turning loose a wild gorilla — one that Madame de Sylva had been cruel to many years earlier — who mauls Madame de Sylva to death (off-screen) and mortally wounds Tiger in the process. Tiger watches as Bobby and Toyo are married and leave on their honeymoon, not knowing that Tiger is dying. That final note of pathos in the otherwise-happy final scene was something of a Chaney specialty.

Where East is East is an unusual entry in the Chaney/Browning canon in the way it accentuates eroticism and romance more than mystery and the macabre. The screenplay by Waldemar Young and E. Richard Schayer, based on a story by Browning and Harry Sinclair Drago, does, however, relate to Browning’s background as a carnival performer, insofar as both of the male leads are circus people.

PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, THE (1937) Errol Flynn and the Mauch twins

[Los Angeles, Warner Brothers, 1937].. Vintage original 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm.) black-and-white single weight glossy silver gelatin print still photo. Attached paper credit blurb on verso. Minor soiling, about fine.

Exquisite presentation of Mark Twain’s story. Though he does not appear until 52 minutes into the film, the large budget afforded this production called for a star name, so Errol Flynn took on the role of Miles Hendon. Warners bought the property from MGM when they failed to film with Freddie Bartholomew in a dual role, giving the Mauch twins an excellent vehicle. Still is coded “PP 199”.

TOM SAWYER (1917) Lobby card

Mark Twain (source) [Hollywood]: Paramount, [1917]. Vintage original 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm.) lobby card. With small single pinholes in each blank margin, near fine or better.

From the second screen adaptation of Tom Sawyer (a 1907 short film is recorded, although it is not clear that the film exists) and the first feature film adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel. The caption of this scene (where Tom Sawyer is speaking to Becky Thatcher) is “Dast I see you home?” Jack Pickford played Tom Sawyer and Clara Horton played Becky Thatcher.

MAN WITH A MILLION [IL FORESTIERO] (1954) Italian locandina poster by Olivetti

Rome: Rank, [1954]. Vintage original 27.25 x 13″ (69 x 33 cm.) Italian locandina poster. Folded once along middle (as issued), with a printed theater snipe at top, and a small hole in blank area at bottom, near fine.

A British film adapted from Mark Twain’s story “The Million Pound Bank Note”, directed by Ronald Neame and starring Gregory Peck. Poster art by Olivetti.

HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1920) Pressbook

Mark Twain (source), Julia Crawford (screenplay) New York: Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, [1920]. Vintage original pressbook, printed wrappers, stapled, 16 x 11″ (41 x 28 cm.), 12 pp. Folded once across the middle (as issued), there are two distributor stamps at the top and bottom of both covers, with some smudges and scuffs scattered on the front cover and small separation at the right end of the horizontal fold, very good.

An extremely scarce promotional book (the OCLC records no known copy) for the first film adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Director William Desmond Taylor had previously helmed the film productions TOM SAWYER (1917) and HUCK AND TOM (1918).

HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1920) Half sheet poster

[Los Angeles]: Paramount Artcraft Pictures, [1920]. Vintage original 22 x 28″ (56 x 71 cm.) half sheet poster, This poster was backed with archival conservation paper; at the time, various primarily marginal tears and wear to the extreme edges were conserved, overall very good-.

This was the third of three feature films directed for Paramount by William Desmond Taylor, whose 1922 murder remains one of the most famous Hollywood scandals (and unsolved mysteries). Lewis Sargent and Gordon Griffith portrayed Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

This was the first screen adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel. Many would follow. This is an exceedingly scarce poster — the only one which I have ever seen, and, in fact, the only poster in any format which I have ever known to exist.

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, THE (1939) Lobby card

Mark Twain (source) [Hollywood}: MGM, [1939]. Vintage original 11 x 14″ (28 x 36 cm.) lobby card, JUST ABOUT FINE.

Nice close-up of Mickey Rooney as Huck Finn in this MGM production directed by Richard Thorpe.

PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, THE (1937) Errol Flynn and Mauch brothers

Mark Twain (source) [Hollywood]: Warner Brothers, [1937]. Vintage original 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm.) glossy black-and-white print still photo, with mimeographed studio text in label affixed on verso, JUST ABOUT FINE.

A portrait of Errol Flynn with Billy and Bobby Mauch. After a couple of years of obscurity, he burst into prominence when he starred in Captain Blood (1935). The Prince and the Pauper was only his fourth starring role in Hollywood.

PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, THE (1916) Promotional flyer

Mark Twain (source) Hollywood: Famous Players Film Co., 1916. Vintage original 8 x 6″ (20 x 15 cm.) promotional flyer, 4 pp. USA, NEAR FINE. Marguerite Clark, a great film star of the 1920s, starred as both the Prince and the Pauper. This appears to be the earliest film adaptation[…]

ALEXIS SMITH (1943) Glamour portrait by Bert Six

Vintage original 10 x 8″ (25 x 20 cm.) black and white single weight glossy silver gelatin print still photo, USA. Original paper snipe on the verso and the ink stamp of Bert Six, Warner Bros. Slight edge wear at the top, slight corner creasing. ABOUT FINE.

Found in drama school by Warner Brothers scouts in 1940, Alexis Smith paid her dues at the studio for 3 years playing bits and roles in shorts. By 1943 she had been dubbed the “dynamite girl” and was moved to roles as leading ladies. She felt this label held her career back, but Warner’s sometimes cast her in rewarding roles which ran the gamut of comedy, melodrama, musicals, noir and costume pieces.

Portrait photographer Bert Six photographed her in the most glamorous of 1940s modes to promote her in THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN, the period biography which did allow her to show her acting range.