Pal Joey.

O'HARA, John.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 121992

New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940.

First edition of this classic novel, basis for the 1957 film starring Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Sally Cooke, with every confidence and all good wishes for success in her new undertaking (and no cracks about undertaking). Sincerely, John O’Hara, Quoque. August 29, 1943.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket with a small chip to the spine.

Pal Joey was written as a series of letters—or short stories—in the magazine The New Yorker in the late 1930s.[4] O'Hara's stories tell of Joey Evans, a second-rate nightclub entertainer in 1930s Chicago, in which he meets and falls in love with the woman "Linda." In a series of letters to "dear Pal Ted" from "Pal Joey," he reveals himself to be an amoral, calculating heel whose venality is cloaked by an amiable persona. the basis of the 1940 stage musical comedy and 1957 motion picture of the same name, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, starring Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak.