China Seas

New York/Chicago: A.L. Burt Company. Very Good in Good dj. [1935] (c.1930). Reprint. Hardcover. [a bit of wear at spine ends, moderate bumping to lower corners, age-toning to edges of text block; the jacket is edgeworn, with bits of paper loss at spine ends; the wrap-around paper band is a little bit tattered, stained on the spine, and is missing its front flap (held in place nicely by the mylar cover)]. Adventure novel that was the source for the 1935 MGM film starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery -- promoted here with a wrap-around band depicting the movie's three stars (with excellent likenesses of Gable and Berry, but with Harlow looking a bit more like Mae West than herself). The novel itself is scarce in any printing, the wrap-around band ever so much more so. Such movie-promotional add-ons were almost unheard of for A.L. Burt and Grosset & Dunlap reprints -- usually there would just be a new, film-specific jacket made for the "photoplay edition" -- and their survival rate must be somewhere in the low .0% range. (Let's just say that I've never seen a single other example of one on a Burt book, period.) The film had an unusually long gestation period: the novel was originally submitted to the Production Code Office in 1931, but there were a number of objectionable elements -- including an interracial love affair that resulted in an illegitimate child and references to opium use -- that complicated and extended its adaptation to the screen. The movie didn't actually go into production until mid-March 1935, and was released in August. .