The Beauty Part

New York: Simon and Schuster. Very Good+ in Very Good+ dj. 1963. First Edition. Hardcover. [only minor shelfwear to book, but there's a partially-removed bookplate on the front endpaper (see notes), and at some point the front endpaper was slightly stuck to the following page and some minor damage has resulted from separating them; the jacket is nice and clean, with some very slight damage at the top of the spine and one tiny closed tear at the bottom edge of the front panel]. (B&W photographs) "A Perelman's-eye view of the way of the world in the 1960's. [The play's] hero is a Candide-type young man who wanders through today's most chic and successful culture factories, yearning to become an artist, an editor, a writer, a creator -- when all he is fitted for is to be a millionaire. Fortunately for him, he is. Fortunately for everybody, this questing youth keeps bumping into one of the happiest of S.J.P.'s many happy inventions -- Bert Lahr -- who, as Broadway audiences noted with glee, appears variously disguised as -- our hero's tycoon father, Milo Leotard Allardyce DuPlessis Weatherwax; and movie mogul Harry Hubris; and devoted Birch disciple Nelson Smedley; and pulp mag queen Hyacinth Beddoes Laffoon; and TV Judge Herman J. Rinderbrust; and a fake Cambodian. The original Broadway production, which ran for just 85 performances in the 1962/63 season, was among the more prominent victims of the concurrent New York newspaper strike, with its depressive effect on both reviews and advertising. Lahr and one of his co-stars, Alice Ghostley, were both nominated for Tony Awards (neither won), and Perelman met with Peter Sellers about the possibility of Sellers starring in a film adaptation, which never happened. .