Lilac Time [Photoplay Edition]

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Very Good+ in Good dj. (c.1928). First Edition. Hardcover. [a good sound copy with modest shelfwear, very slight bumping to lower extremities; the jacket is heavily edgeworn, with a number of small tears and nicks, and small bits of paper loss at most corners]. (13 B&W film stills) Novelization (and thus a true first edition) of the 1928 movie, a World War I drama about "a wistful little French girl who is both mother and sister to the seven young sky fighters of the Royal Fighting Corps quartered on her mother's farm near the French front." Colleen Moore (to whom the book is dedicated) played the girl, and the handsomest of the sky fighters was portrayed by Gary Cooper, at the time just on the cusp of becoming a major star. The picture was originally released with a Vitaphone score and music effects, but no dialogue, so for all intents and purposes it was a silent film. The number and placement of the stills illustrating the text (in three groups of four, printed on both sides of the plates) is somewhat unusual for a G&D Photoplay Edition of the era. The original stage production had a 176-performance run on Broadway in 1917, and was written by Jane Cowl (who also starred in the play) and Jane Murfin .