Reference

Though the main purpose of the book is to list and describe the author's large collection of photoplay books and magazine fictionalizations from the beginning of the movie industry to 1970, there is also a substantial and entertaining introduction that explains what a photoplay edition is - a novel illustrated with stills from a movie version, either a work the movie was based on or a novelization of a story first on film - as well as reasons to care about them, some of which were a surprise to me. One, they're a useful record of films because in some cases they are the only record of films that are otherwise lost. They become an important record of vanished culture. Two, they're an invaluable primary source for getting a sense of attitudes, anxieties, interests, language, and in general the historical milieu in which they were produced.

Mann offers samples of texts that give the reader (particularly the non-collector) a nice sense of what these publications are like and provides several versions of the opening of different books based on The Mummy to show how differently they sometimes treated the same material. And he even describes and analyzes some of the markings people made in the books - the author's training as a private investigator and document examiner coming into play. As a bonus in an appendix, there's a novelization of a very silly 1927 movie, "The Gorilla" that is now lost except for this textual version and a few stills.

All in all, this book offers a lovely sense of these popular culture artifacts being lovingly preserved by someone who knows how to read them contextually and enjoys the heck out of them. For someone who is a collector, this is a treasure. For someone who never really thought about photoplay editions, this is a real eye-opener.

And how can you resist that cover?