UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT ON ILLUSION AND HOLLYWOOD
1940s. Manuscript. A 21-page handwritten UNPUBLISHED ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT in pencil on unlined 8-1/2" x 11" paper, most pages about one-third to one-half full, and none numbered. There is no title, and it appears to be a collection of beginnings rather than a completed essay. At the very top of one page, Agee has written, "good illusions: mailing hook in THEY WON'T FORGET. [?] in BANK DICK." The first reference is to a famous scene in the 1937 film THEY WON'T FORGET that, instead of showing a lynching, depicts a mail sack hanging from a trackside crane violently snatched up by the train's mechanical mail hook. About the 1940 film BANK DICK, Agee wrote in his collection AGEE ON FILM: "The talkies brought one great comedian, the late, majestically lethargic W. C. Fields, who could not possibly have worked as well in silence; he was the toughest and most warmly human of all screen comedians, and It's a Gift and The Bank Dick, fiendishly funny and incisive white-collar comedies, rank high among the best comedies (and best movies) ever made." Here he might be referring to the fake, chintzy outdoor movie set representing the frozen Yukon in the film, where the artificiality and low-budget illusion of Hollywood filmmaking are openly mocked. Agee then writes, "Hollywood is devoted to the manufacture of illusions on a scale … which have never been approximated in any other community." Thus Agee begins this lengthy manuscript, written with a small hand in pencil, with pages varying from being completely filled to one page with only a few lines; most pages at least half filled. Each page of this working manuscript seems to represent alternate attempts at a beginning of an essay on Illusion in film. Agee discusses different types of illusions, uses examples to illustrate his points, but seems never to be able to complete his thoughts on the subject. First page with a few smudges slightly affecting readability; two pages with wrinkling not affecting legibility. Mostly clean and Near Fine. Item #022614
Agee is best known for his movie criticism and for two books: LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, an important work in the history of 20th-century photo-documentary illustrated by Walker Evans, and the posthumous A DEATH IN THE FAMILY which won the Pulitzer Prize. He is one of the credited screenwriters on two of the most respected films of the 1950s: THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951) and THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955). He died from a heart attack in a New York taxi at the age of 45, in 1955. From the William A. Strutz Library via Hamill & Barker, Chicago.
Price: $7,500.00