Mission to Moscow
signed first edition
1980 · Madison, WI
by CULBERT, DAVID (ED.)
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980. First Edition - Paperbound. Signed and inscribed by the author / screenwriter, Howard Koch: “For Bill MacAdams, with best wishes, Howard Koch.” Introduction by David Culbert, ‘The Feature Film as Official Propaganda.’ Illustrated. The shooting script for the 1943 film Mission to Moscow, written by Howard Koch from the novel by Joseph E. Davies, directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Walter Huston, Ann Harding, Oskar Homolka, George Tobias, Gene Lockhart, and Eleanor Parker. Including the final shooting script, with notes, full cast and crew credits, and extensive appendix. Fine in printed wrappers. From the notes on the rear cover by the editor, David Culbert: “Mission to Moscow is a notorious classic among propaganda films produced in the United States. Never has another feature film been made with such explicit direction from the federal government, although the result failed to persuade every viewer...Mission to Moscow purports to be a documentary account of the career of Joseph Davies, American ambassador to the Soviet Union during 1936-38. What it actually does is rewrite the internal history of Soviet Russia, justifying the purge trials and evading unsavory details about Soviet foreign policy between 1939 and 1941. It also includes an all-out assault on American isolationists.” Howard Koch was the co-writer of Casablanca, and Mission to Moscow helped get him blacklisted in the 1950s. (Inventory #: 16789E)