Rocks On The Roof

G. P. Putnam's Sons. Second Printing. hardcover. Good/Acceptable. 8x5x0. Signed by Author. G. P. Putnam's Sons [Published Date: 1958]. Hardcover, 190 pp. Second Impression. Inscribed (personalized) and signed by both Jim Backus and Henny Backus. Good in acceptable dust jacket. Yellow Paper over Boards with red cloth covered boards and black door with star on front cover. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages lightly aged but otherwise unmarked. Dust jacket has a few 1.5" or less tears and several small nicks, chips and creasing along edges. Light overall scuffing, aging and soiling to jacket as well. NOT price clipped Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Written before his role on Gilligan's Island, Backus provides a wonderfully funny insider's account of his and Henny's arrival and early and ultimately illustrious career in Hollywood. Includes a touching chapter on his relationship with James Dean. Several black and white photos. [From jacket flaps] Jim Backus is known to millions of Americans in his various guises: the voice of that bumbling little cartoon character, Mr. Magoo; the Judge with the uproarious domestic life in the TV show "I Married Joan"; the rich boy of radio, Hubert Updyke the Third. . . Leading lady of Backus's reminiscences and really co-author of this book is, of course, his wife Henny . . . It was she who persuaded Jim to use in an anonymous radio part the voice she described as "that imitation you do right before you put the lampshade on your head and I have to call a cab" which was to become the voice of Hubert Updyke on the Alan Young Show and eventually bring Henny and Jim to Hollywood. After a costly interim there as hotel dwellers and house hunters, they progress from a house resembling a pink stucco igloo in which all the furniture is rigged for curious transformations - to a nine-level house in Beverly Hills where they are visited with mysterious showers of rocks on the roof-to a landed estate with a swimming pool in Bel Air which, in turn, presents its own special problems. There are chapters on Jim's independent-thinking father, his lifelong friend Victor Mature, and James Dean, who played the role of Jim's son in Rebel Without A Cause. There are many lively incidental sketches of famous Hollywood personalities and pointed yet droll off-the-cuff commentaries on such institutions as radio and TV rating systems, telephone answering services, and benefit performances. The great charm of ROCKS ON THE ROOF is a continuous vivid presence of Jim and Henny Backus. It is like their conversation - polished with a professional sense of relevance, wit, and timing - of people who know how to get fun out of life. There is a laugh on every page.