WATKINS, Maurine Dallas.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Chicago. First edition of the playwright's satire on the glamorization of celebrity crime. This is an exceptional copy in the scarce, well-preserved dust jacket.Watkins first wrote an early version of the play, The Brave Little Women, as a class assignment while attending the Yale School of Drama. She based the work on two murders she had reported on while working for the Chicago Tribune in the mid-1920s. The play premiered on Broadway on 30 December 1926 and ran for 172 performances, before touring for two years (during which time a then-unknown Clark Gable appeared as Amos Hart in Los Angeles).Watkins's play was filmed twice, first as a silent film in 1927 and again in 1942, starring Ginger Rogers as Roxie Hart. It was adapted into the Bob Fosse-directed Broadway musical in 1975 and, subsequently, into the Academy Award-winning musical film in 2002.This copy is from the theatre collection of Clive Hirschhorn (b. 1940), the film and theatre critic for the Sunday Express for over three decades, with his 2007 ownership inscription on the front pastedown.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.