Paperback 1123: Popular Library G464 (1st ptg, 1960)
Title: Miss America
Author: Daniel Stern
Cover artist: [Mitchell Hooks]
Condition: 8/10
Value: $20
- Now that's a redhead. That hair's so orange it's pink.
- Wow, this lady really likes stationery.
- This is a movie tie-in. I've never heard of this movie. What's more, I cannot find any proof that this movie exists, or ever existed. Nothing by this name appears in Carroll Baker's filmography, and nothing she made in this general time period seems to have been based on this novel. I have no idea why they'd say there was a movie when there is no movie. I feel like I've uncovered a mystery. Possibly a very boring one, but still. Mystery!
Best things about this back cover:
- OK, not to be that guy, but ... well, I am that guy, so ... it's The Beautiful and Damned, not The Beautiful and the Damned, dammit. This blurb is not up to the lofty editorial standards I expect from the ... [squints] ... Lansing State News.
- "Her most intimate statistics were common knowledge." What could her "most intimate statistics" be? What are anyone's "most intimate statistics?" Number of sex partners? Bra size? Cholesterol?
- This back cover copy tells you precisely nothing except that there's some hot celebrity "goddess" and she ... has a life ... not covered by the press. You don't say!
Page 123~
Just before we rang the bell, Cathy turned to me and said, "I've got a confession to make. You know that first night, when you played those quartets? I came expecting to hear jazz quartets. I thought I'd fall down when you started taking out the string instruments."
String instruments!? Well, sure, that's enough to make anyone fall down. I'm writing this from the floor right now, and that's just from hearing about it.
~RP
4 comments:
That's not an uncommon hair color these days. Not so much in 1960.
On the movie front, Daniel Stern (a fairly well-known author in the mid-twentieth century) doesn't seem to have any writing credits at IMDB. My best guess it the book was optioned and got far enough along to get Carroll Baker's name attached to the project, but then it got caught in development hell and died somewhere along the way. The copy writer must not have known that only a very small percentage of optioned works ever make to the screen.
I especially like the 'Originally published at $3.50 by Random House, Inc.' — and we're practically giving it away at 35¢! Take that, Random House!
The October 26, 1958, issue of Publishers Weekly, at 44, notes that Bennett Cerf had recently served as a judge in the Miss America contest, finding it "natural" that Random House would soon publish Stern's Miss America in the spring. The notice also mentions that "[m]ovie rights have been purchased by Carroll Baker, who's played 'Baby Doll,' and her husband, director Jack Garfine [sic]."
As anticipated, Random House published Miss America in early 1959, according to the Weekly Record, Publishers Weekly, Mar. 2, 1959, at 101. This edition is available for temporary checkout at the Internet Archive. The "About the Author" section at the end of the novel states that Stern's "last trip to California was in connection with the film sale of MISS AMERICA, the rights to which were purchased by Carroll Baker and her husband, Jack Garfein, to star in and direct, respectively."
Additionally, the March 1, 1959, issue of the N.Y. Herald Tribune has an advertisement for the novel, at E13, exclaiming that it's "[s]oon to be made into a movie starring Carroll Baker (of Baby Doll fame)." The Popular Library $.35 edition you've got here is noted for publication in the Summer Book Index, 1960, included within the August 4, 1960, issue of Publishers Weekly. That's where the trail seems to run cold, indicating it probably never made it to the screen, though there might be more information in the Daniel Stern Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Container 7 there has records for Miss America that include the following: "review, 1959; typescript / screenplay version, correspondence, 1971, undated."
Incredible research, thx
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