Dude Ranch

New York: The Macaulay Company. Very Good+ in Fair dj. (c.1930). First Edition. Hardcover. [moderate wear to bottom edges and extremities, tiny stain on bottom edge of text block, age-toning to edges of text block; jacket has numerous chips and tears, especially on the rear panel]. Comic-western novel about the owner of a failing dude ranch, stuck with "a houseful of bored guests who expect excitement and there are no Indians, cattle rustlers or cowboys to supply it." When a traveling theatrical troupe is stranded nearby, he hires them to "put on some fake Wild Western stuff," but the farce is complicated when a real gang of rum runners inserts itself into the picture and the faux action becomes fo' real. The author was a young go-getter who was soon to go-get himself into Hollywood: first he sold this book to the movies (Paramount filmed it in 1931, with Jack Oakie and Stuart Erwin starring), and before long he was turning out screenplays himself; among his better early credits were THE SISTERS (1938) and CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939), both for Warner Bros. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and his postwar screenwriting career was a little spotty (his most notable credit probably being THE IRON CURTAIN, one of the first anti-communist films of the Hollywood blacklist era); eventually he ended up writing for TV ("Perry Mason," "The Outer Limits," etc.). .