Blind Mouths [*SIGNED* by film producer Walter Wanger]

London: Arthur Barker, Ltd.. Good. 1934. Advance copy. Softcover. (plain brown wraps) [spine roll, modest external wear]. An advance copy of this uncommon politically-themed novel, about a dictator who rules over a confederation of six central European countries, and the messianic faith-healer who champions the region's peasants in their opposition to the dictator's plans for state-controlled farming. The author's previous (and apparently only other) novel was also in a politically-charged vein: published in 1933 in the U.K. as "Rinehard: A Melodrama of the Nineteen-Thirties" and in the U.S. as "Gabriel Over the White House" (by "Anonymous"), it served as the basis for a 1933 film (using the American title) produced by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions. And here's where the provenance of this copy gets really interesting: scrawled on the front endpaper is "W.W. Inc." and the signature of Walter Wanger; Wanger was the producer of GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE, and the film's screenwriter was Carey Wilson, from whose library this book comes (although it's not marked as such). The logical conclusion from these bits of evidence is that Wanger and Wilson, fresh from their collaboration on the adaptation of Tweed's earlier novel, had the inside track on this book and considered it for possible film production. (No film was ever made, though.) This book also had a U.S. publication under a different title, "Destiny's Man" (Farrar & Rinehart, 1935). Signed by Associated .