The Broadway Melody

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Very Good in Poor dj. (c.1929). First Edition. Hardcover. NOISBN . [minor wear at extremities, light dampstain surrounding base of spine; jacket heavily worn, with a big chunk missing from top of front panel, plus various tears, scrapes and whatnot]. (8 B&W film stills) Photoplay Edition (and true first edition, a G&D original), a novelization of the backstage musical film that won the year's Academy Award as Best Picture. Depicting a thinly-veiled Ziegfeld Follies (the book's impresario is named "Joseph Zanfield," changed to "Francis Zanfield" in the film), this version of the yarn benefits from author Lait's (truncated) breezy, proto-hardboiled prose style, which ages a little better on the page than the early-talkie creakiness of the film has on the screen. Illustrated with eight black-and-white stills from the M-G-M movie, which starred Charles King, Anita Page and Bessie Love, with the ever-popular Jed Prouty (later father "John Jones" in the Jones Family series) in support. . (Inventory #: 18741)