The Paradine Case

Cleveland/New York: The World Publishing Company. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1947. 1st printing thus. Hardcover. [light shelfwear, minor soiling to top edge of text block, very slight bumping to lower corners; the jacket is edgeworn, with a tiny bit of paper loss at the top of the spine, a few minor edge-tears]. (photographic dust jacket) Movie tie-in edition of this high-falutin' drama in an English courtroom, one of the publisher's "Motion Picture Editions," fifteen titles of which are listed on the rear jacket flap. This was the source for the turgid 1948 Alfred Hitchcock film, the main virtue of which was a terrific cast headed by Gregory Peck and Charles Laughton. (Peck and co-star Ann Todd are pictured on the front of the jacket, with the rear panel containing three scenes from the movie; there are no illustrations in the text itself.) According to Leonard Maltin, the film was originally 132 minutes in length, and was subsequently cut to 125, and then to 116; they shoulda kept going. A quite uncommon edition of the book, it seems. . (Inventory #: 29430)