" LAURA" SCREENPLAY BY....
Lardner, Ring, Jr., and Jay Dratler:
[Los Angeles]: Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 29 November 1943. [2],133 leaves. Mimeographed typescript, printed on rectos only. Bradbound in somewhat used studio binder (recycled from an earlier 1943 film and bearing the typical wartime "Save Film" admonition, here applied to script binders as well -- but also bearing routing stamps, signatures and dates tying it definitively to this particular script as well). Script checkout coupon clipped, small receipt date stamp in corner of cover-leaf ("Nov 30 1943"), a couple of leaves lightly frayed at extreme fore-margin, light offset to a couple of leaves from previously laid in material, small section of binder spine chipped away, but very good. Denoted the "Final" draft of this superb adaptation by Lardner and Dratler of Vera Caspary's otherwise nondescript novel, and the source for one of the classic films of the 1940s, starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price. Ring Lardner's participation in the screen adaptation was uncredited, though self-evident in this draft, and the final film credited Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein and Elizabeth Reinhardt (the latter two having evidently stepped in at a point later than that represented by this draft). Rouben Mamoulian started as the film's director, but Otto Preminger took over and is the director of record. Scarce.
(Item ID: WRCLIT41970) $5,500.00
Film Noir Classic