Between the Covers

Softcover. Quarto. 106 mimeographed leaves printed rectos only. Brad-bound in blue wrappers with a Hollywood agent's printed name. Small corner of front wrap lacking, a little smudging on the wrappers, very good or better, internally fine. A fully realized and unpublished screwball comedy novel set around Broadway, presumably prepared for distribution in anticipation of being converted into a film script. Both Mayer and Garrett were successful screenwriters, and they collaborated on at least one other screenplay (*Underground*, 1941). Both of their careers spanned the silent and talkie eras, and both seemed to have a penchant for, but were not limited to, romances or screwball comedies.

Mayer wrote original screenplays or adaptations for *To Be or Not to Be, Desire, So Red the Rose, A Royal Scandal, The Buccaneer, They Met in Bombay, Merrily We Go to Hell,* and many others. Garrett wrote original screenplays or adaptations for *Duel in the Sun, The Hurricane, Manhattan Melodrama, A Farewell to Arms, Night Flight, The Story of Temple Drake* and *Gone with the Wind* (albeit uncredited), and many others.

Novels such as this were often written on spec and used as extended treatments: mimeographed and then circulated in Hollywood in order to interest a studio in buying the property, commissioning a screenplay, and producing a movie. In this case, we cannot connect it to any specific production, although it might have been changed or adapted. *OCLC* locates no copies, but the Edwin Justus Mayer papers at the New York Public Library hold a version of something with this title. An interesting "novel script."

Item #411338