The Great Magoo

(New York: Covici, Friede, 1932).

Price: $45.00

Hardcover. First edition. Illustrated by Herman Rosse. Bottom edge lightly soiled, binding slightly cocked, boards slightly rubbed, about very good, lacking the dust jacket. Advance review copy with publisher’s slip tipped onto the front fly. A play about carnival life; it was the basis for a 1934 Wesley Ruggles film *Shoot the Works*, with Ann Sheridan in a bit part, and then remade in 1939 as *Some Like it Hot*, an early Bob Hope vehicle memorable for showcasing drummer Gene Krupa (and not to be confused with the later Billy Wilder film).

Item #549617

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Item #549617 The Great Magoo. Ben HECHT, Gene Fowler.
The Great Magoo

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