The Front Page

New York: Covici Friede, 1929.

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Hardcover. Fifth printing. Introduction by Jed Harris. A little soiling and foxing to the boards, else near fine in a very good example of the dustwrapper identical to the first edition but for "fourth printing" stated on the front panel, and with very shallow chipping, mostly to the spine ends. Hit comedy about Chicago journalists, filmed in 1931 with Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien, remade by Howard Hawks as the 1940 classic *His Girl Friday* with Cary Grant and Rosiland Russell. Any early copy in jacket is scarce.

Item #92202

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Item #92202 The Front Page. Ben HECHT, Charles MacArthur.

Ben Hecht
birth name: Ben Hecht
born: 2/28/1894
died: 4/18/1964
nationality: USA

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Biography

American journalist, novelist, playwright, and film writer. His play The Front Page (1928), written with Charles MacArthur, influenced the public's idea of the newspaper world and the newspaperman's idea of himself.- Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore

Collecting tips:

In our experience the books of Ben Hecht, with a few exceptions tend to be undervalued. He was successful as a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter (in this capacity he was a particular favorite of Alfred Hitchcock), and his fingerprints are all over the second third of the 20th Century. Most of his books are well within the range of even the modestly funded collector, although his play The Front Page (1928, co-authored with Charles MacArthur) is avidly sought by collectors of both drama, and as a film source book. His earliest books are surprisingly difficult in jacket, but don't (yet) command the premiums of the early books of those of his contemporaries of equivalent stature.more