The Leather Pushers [Photoplay Edition]

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Very Good in Very Good dj. [1922] (c.1920-1921). First Edition Thus. Hardcover. [modest wear to top and bottom edges, spine very slightly turned; the jacket is a bit age-toned (slight more at spine) and moderately edgeworn, with some minor chipping at the spine ends]. (4 B&W film stills) Boxing yarns in a hard-boiled vernacular, narrated by a manager/promoter whose big ticket is a fighter named "Kid Roberts," a college man (real name Kane Halliday) who's gotten into the prizefighting game under a pseudonym. Although jacket-blurbed as a "novel," in fact this book is made up of a dozen short stories (all of which had appeared in Collier's magazine between May 1920 and April 1921). The movie series -- not a serial, technically, although it's often referred to as such -- consisted of stand-alone two-reelers ("romances of the ring," as the title page has it), each with its own self-contained story, rather than incorporating serial-style cliffhanger endings. Produced by Universal, the films were issued in four groups of six, over the course of two years (1922); the first three series (of which this book encompasses the first two, i.e. twelve installments) starred Reginald Denny as Roberts/Halliday. Witwer (1890-1929), a prolific author of magazine fiction in the 1910s and 1920s (much of it with either a baseball or boxing background), wrote in a breezy wise-guy idiom; whatever his limitations as a prose stylist, they were more than compensated for by his colorful language and often sarcastic wit. He is more obscure today than he deserves to be; find out why, herein. .