Description
REMARKABLE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE THIN MAN,
SCARCE PRE-PUBLICATION EDITION WARMLY INSCRIBED BY HAMMETT TO CLOSE FRIENDS IRA AND LEE GERSHWIN
HAMMETT, Dashiell. The Thin Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in custom clamshell box.
First edition of one of Hammett’s most popular novels, a highly memorable association copy wittily inscribed by Hammett to good friends Ira Gershwin and his wife Lee less than one month before the novel’s publication, “To those Ira Gershwins with that there affection Dashiell Hammett, New York, December 13, 1933.”
In the 1930s Dashiell Hammett’s final novel The Thin Man and the musicals of George and Ira Gershwin evoked a coincident style of easy sophistication, inspired by a Hollywood golden age with parties and personalities as sparkling as their fictional counterparts. It was at one such party on November 22, 1930, held at the home of producer Darryl Zanuck after a movie premiere, that a “leanly handsome bone-thin man over six feet tall, with a surprising shock of white hair? already drunk? allowed a redheaded woman to accost him” (Mellen, Hellman and Hammett, 18, 27). The man was Dashiell Hammett and the woman Lillian Hellman, who had arrived at the party with lyricist Ira Gershwin and his wife Lee, one of Hollywood’s brightest couples themselves. That first legendary meeting between Hellman and Hammett, in the company of the Gershwins, produced one of the literary world’s most tempestuous relationships and ultimately inspired one of its wittiest couples, Nick and Nora Charles of Hammett’s The Thin Man.
“The most important member of the hard-boiled school,” Dashiell Hammett wrote only five novels. In Thin Man, the last of these, “the semi-humorous exploits of Nick and Nora Charles were the most financially successful of all Hammett’s books, inspiring numerous films and a radio and television series” (Steinbrunner & Penzler, 186-87). Hammett also wrote original screen treatments for two of the popular Thin Man sequels. His warm inscription here is to lyricist Ira Gershwin who along with his brother George comprised “arguably the greatest songwriting team in history.” Like Hammett, the Gershwins also stood at the pinnacle of their fame and productivity, distinguishing “themselves in every genre in which they worked, from the revues of the 1920s, to the musical comedies and operettas of the early 1930s” (ANB). Inscribed and dated by Hammett on December 13, 1933, less than one month before the book’s publication on January 8, 1934. Dust jacket variants in either red or green highlights, no priority established. Hubin 190. Layman A6.1.a. Rear inner paper hinge starting but sound; cloth dyed with fugitive dye faded as usual to extremely good book. Very good unrestored dust jacket with some edge-wear and toning, slight chipping to head of spine, lightly affecting text. An exceptionally desirable association copy.
