The Burns Mantle Best Plays of 1947-48 and the Year Book of the Drama in America
New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1948. First Edition.
Octavo (8 1/8 x 5 5/8 inches; 217 x 145 mm), viii, [2], 494 pages, black cloth, paper titles to upper board and spine. Lacking the scarce dust jacket.
INSCRIBED by Tennessee Williams on the front end paper: "To Aiden- / best /Tennessee Williams." A compilation of the best plays of the 1947-48 theatre season, notably featuring an excerpt from Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire." This is the play's first appearance in an anthology, published one year after the original book by New Directions.
Directed by Elia Kazan, the play's first Broadway production starred Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden and won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Kazan also directed a 1951 Academy Award-winning film adaptation of the play starring Brando, Malden, Hunter, and Vivien Leigh (as Blanche).
The other plays appearing in this volume include: "Mister Roberts" by Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan, "Command Decision" by William Wister Haines, "The Winslow Boy" by Terence Rattigan, "The Heiress" by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, "Allegro" by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, "Eastward in Eden" by Dorothy Gardner, "Skipper Next to God" by Jan de Hartog, "An Inspector Calls" by J.B. Priestley, and "Me and Molly" by Gertrude Berg.
The book also includes overviews of the theatre seasons in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Southern California. There is also detailed information about the plays and the actors as well as overviews of Off Broadway and Dance Drama. A good reference work for the 1947-48 theatre season.
Signed copies of this volume are scarce, especially those signed by Tennessee Williams. SCARCE.
CONDITION: Top edge a bit dusty, rubbing to cloth, especially lower corners, where the cloth has been rubbed away, some fraying to spine ends, spine label toned, paper of rear paste down split at hinge. Internally, page edges lightly toned, with some small stains on a couple of pages. About Very Good overall and lacking the scarce dust jacket. Item #2224
Price: $875.00