Way Down South

Hollywood: David Graham Fischer, 1932. 1st ed. Hardcover. Fair. Blanding Sloan. Woodcut illustrations (including 7 on colored paper) by Blanding Sloan, 146p. Original pictorial boards, punch-tied with black ribbon. 27 cm. Cover edges rubbed. Minor cover soil and wear. Tears along inner lower edge of first 20+ leaves which will probably contain to split and became completely detached -- some repairs with adhesive archival paper tape are visible but seems to have failed to stop the splitting of this rather brittle pages. One early illustration on orange papaer and a text leaf [39-40] are already detached. Copy No. 964 of an edition with a stated limitation (truncated) of 1000 copies (although we have had copies with numbers greater than 1000). INSCRIBED by on limitation page by Muse ("Sept. 21, 1930 To Mr. Eddie Sutherland. Troupers, good old sincere troupers here. You'll know them. I do hope they relax you after a day a [sic] Concentration in your exacting progession. Artist I salute you. Clarence Muse"). Muse, an African American actor and entertainer, wrote this book with David Arlen about whom we know little. This book is a fictional account about an African American vaudeville troupe. [James] Blanding Sloan was a white American artist, filmmaker and puppeteer -- some of his work was strongly anti-war and anti-nuclear.As to Eddie Sutherland, he was an American film actor (1916-1924) and director (50 or more films between 1925 and 1956 including "One Night in the Tropics," the first Abbott & Costello film). Sutherland appears to have signed the first interior page. We don't know if Muse appeared, credited or uncredited, in any films directed by Sutherland. (Inventory #: 93786)