Description

“FOR MAB, WHO?  KEPT IT GOING WHEN THE FIRE BURNED LOW”:
MAXWELL ANDERSON’S OWN COPY OF KEY LARGO, EXCEEDINGLY RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY INSCRIBED TO HIS WIFE,
WITH ANDERSON’S EXTENSIVE MARGINALIA AND REVISIONS,
FROM THE ESTATE OF HIS CLOSE FRIEND, ACTOR REX HARRISON

ANDERSON, Maxwell. Key Largo. Washington, D.C.: Anderson House, 1939. Octavo, original gray cloth, pictorial endpapers, uncut, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of Anderson’s classic noir drama, basis for the film classic starring Humphrey Bogart, Anderson’s own copy, signed by him on the title page and with his extensive margalia and revisions throughout. Anderson also inscribed this rare presentation/association copy on the half title to his wife, “For Mab—who likes it most—critiqued it most intelligently and kept it going when the fire burned low, Max.” Also with exceptional provenance, from the estate of Anderson’s close friend, actor Rex Harrison, with Harrison’s inkstamp.

Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Maxwell Anderson, whose award-winning plays “brought life back to a drying drama, looked upon the theatre as the central artistic symbol of the struggle of good and evil” (New York Times). Anderson’s Key Largo, written in blank verse, premiered on Broadway in November 1939 with Paul Muni in the lead. Set after the Spanish Civil War, the play’s hero, guilt-ridden over abandoning fellow soldiers, “visits the families of the fallen men at a small hotel in Key West. He finds the opportunity to redeem himself by confronting a group of gangsters who have taken over the hotel. Key Largo was one of the earliest productions staged by The Playwrights Company, which Anderson formed in 1938 along with S.N. Behrman, Elmer Rice, Robert E. Sherwood, Sidney Howard and Kurt Weill.” This was the basis for the 1948 Oscar-winning film starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall and Claire Trevor. Director John Huston and Richard Brooks co-wrote the screenplay adaptation during a two-month stay at a remote Key West hotel, shifting Anderson’s timeframe to the post-WWII years. “And although we wrote in Key Largo,” Huston recalled, “it was filmed entirely in the studio” (Johnson, I:8). Hartnoll, 26. Anderson warmly inscribed this copy to his wife, actress Gertrude (Mab) Maynard, who tragically committed suicide in 1953. As Anderson’s own copy, this further contains his extensive handwritten notes and revisions on pages 85, 87 and 90, along with a full-page of his notes (75). In addition, this exceptional copy is from the library and with the inkstamp of actor Rex Harrison, a close friend of Anderson’s who earned a Tony Award for his performance as Henry VIII in Anderson’s 1948 play, Anne of a Thousand Days.

Interior fine; faintest soiling to back panel of bright dust jacket. A near-fine inscribed copy with an especially memorable provenance.