Some Faces In the Crowd.

SCHULBERG, Budd.

$1,250.00

Item Number: 75877

New York: Random House, 1953.

First edition of this collection of short stories, including the story Your Arkansas Traveler, which was the basis for the film A Face in the Crowd. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author to Hollywood producer, director and screenwriter Jerry Wald, “For Jerry, with my admiration and warm regards Budd March 15, 1954.” An exceptional association copy; Schulberg acknowledged late in his career that Wald was one of his inspirations for the composite character Sammy Glick in his 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket by Riki Levinson. From the library of Jerry Wald. An exceptional association linking two giants of Hollywood.

Despite growing up among Hollywood’s most powerful producers and movie stars in the 1920s and ’30s, Budd Schulberg was always a populist at heart. In this collection of his best short fiction, Schulberg takes readers from the halls of privilege in Los Angeles to smoky dives and dockyard slums in New York. His eye for detail and nose for trouble render characters as vividly as a Weegee photograph. These stories also represent the great clash of people and ideas in mid-century America. The story “The Arkansas Traveler,” was adapted into the influential, prescient 1957 film A Face in the Crowd starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau, directed by Elia Kazan. In 2008 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".