Today is Tonight

8vo., 271pp., Publisher s original patterned boards with a gilt-stamped spine. A fine copy in a fine unclipped ($5.00) dustwrapper. Very scarce in hardcover with the jacket. Today Is Tonight is a novel written by Hollywood actress Jean Harlow (1911-1937) in the mid-1930s but not published until 1965. Harlow's friend Ruth Luise Hamp inherited the rights to the unpublished manuscript, Today Is Tonight, when Harlow's mother died, and then published the novel. Film critic Ezra Goodman wrote the introduction. Harlow's agent, Arthur Landau wrote the foreword. According to Landau, in his foreword to the novel, Harlow had expressed interest in writing a novel as early as 1933 1934 and completed a manuscript before her death in 1937. During her life, Harlow's stepfather Marino Bello shopped the unpublished manuscript around to a few studios. Louis B. Mayer had prevented the book from being sold by putting an injunction on it, using a clause in Harlow's contract that her services as an artist can't be used without MGM's permission. After her death, Landau writes, her mother sold the film rights to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and retained the publication rights, but no film was made and the novel itself remained unpublished until the mid-1960s. It was published in condensed form in the July 1965 issue of Mademoiselle, in hardcover in July 1965 by Grove Press and in paperback later in 1965 by Dell Publishing. At the time of publication, press coverage stated that screenwriter Carey Wilson assisted Harlow with the book. The novel is set in the 1920s, amongst the opulent living of the Hollywood wealthy elite, and focuses on one couple, Peter and Judy Lansdowne (Wikipedia).