I WAKE UP SCREAMING
New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1941. First Edition. Item #680
First Printing. Near Fine in a Near Fine, unclipped Second Printing dustjacket. Two small rubbed spots on the cloth at spine and rear panels, with a bit of faint even toning to the pastedowns and endpapers, else a sharp copy with an even red topstain. The jacket is an impressive example, the best we've seen for this title, with minute rubbing to the front corner tips and flapfold, some pinpoint rubbing at the spine ends, and three very small, unobtrusive surface scrapes at the spine panel. The $2.00 price is unclipped, with 'Second Printing' printed in red at the upper edge of the front flap. 'I Wake Up Screaming' was a major hit for Fisher, who until its publication was writing for pulp magazines and minor publishing houses. In addition to being a quintessential Hollywood novel, the book is a hard-hitting and desperately dark piece of crime fiction; Fisher, in fact, based the novel's corrupt detective on fellow crime novelist Cornell Woolrich. The book is seldom encountered in any sort of jacket, much less one this attractive, and while this is a Second Printing jacket, we predict you'll get over it. The last copy in the correct jacket sold at auction (2010) was a tape mended nightmare of a copy. A genuine rarity within the genre, and the basis for two films noir: the 1941 version directed by H. Bruce Humberstone, starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable, and Laird Cregar, and the 1953 remake entitled 'Vicki,' directed by Harry Horner and starring Elliott Reed and Jeanne Crain. A stunning copy of key film noir source book. (The Dark Page, 98).
Price: $3,500.00