THE GREEN SHADOW by Grant, James Edward - 1933

The Hartney press, 1935. Hardcover. Good/Fine. First printing. Covers worn, with a gouge taken from the side of the spine. In a facsimile dust jacket.

New York:: The Hartney Press,, 1935.. First edition.. publisher's cloth.. Front free endpaper lacking; shelf-slanted with some rubbing and use to the cloth along the extremities.. 8vo,. Hollywood literary agent H. N. Swanson's copy, with his stamp on the top and bottom edges and the title page. Cordially inscribed to Swanson by the author.

New York: The Hartney Press, 1935. Very good plus in very good minus jacket.. First edition of this crime story with panache in the spectacular original dust jacket, the only novel by Chicago racketeering journalist James Edward Grant, now best known as the screenwriter for twelve John Wayne films. Grant's hard-drinking, hard-boiled novel, narrated by "a sloppy, slouchy egg," is set in crime-raddled post-Prohibition Lakeside (an "industrial city" not unlike his native Chicago), amid a teeming mass of blackmailers, coarse yeggs, screwy clowns, and tough customers. Written with great gusto - too much gusto for some critics: "Out-hams Hammett," said the SATURDAY REVIEW; "completely uninhibited," said THE NEW YORK TIMES. THE GREEN SHADOW was adapted into a film the following year entitled MUSS 'EM UP, directed by Charles Vidor. Grant devoted much of his subsequent career to writing for the movies, where he found great success with Westerns in particular, as John Wayne noted: "He had great talent as a… Read More

New York: Hartney Press, 1935. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. First edition. Fine in a lightly worn, near fine and attractive dustwrapper designed by Charles B. Gilbert with a few short tears and some rubbing. The jacket has an unusual design with the tops and bottoms of the flaps extended, folded inward and glued (as issued) to make pockets that hold the jacket on. Very hardboiled private eye novel. The Chicago-born author was a newspaper journalist who wrote a column on rackets and racketeering, and later became a successful screenwriter. Among his produced scripts were *The Great John L., The Angel and the Bad Man, Sands of Iwo Jima, Flying Leathernecks, Hondo, The Alamo*, and *Donovan's Reef*. This particular novel was the basis for the fast-paced and very entertaining 1936 Charles Vidor film *Muss 'em Up*, with Preston Foster as detective "Tip" O'Neil.