Shaw Beta (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. (no dust jacket) [spine turned, slight bumping to lower corners, front endpaper removed with consequent weakening of front hinge; "Cecil B. De Mille Library" bookplate on front pastedown]. A novel of New York and Broadway, about a beautiful young woman who arrives in the Big Apple with ambitions to become a writer. She succeeds in doing so, but is enticed into going onto the stage (for "research") in a revue called "Frivolics"; her subsequent success as a showgirl turns her head, and romantic complications ensue as she dumps her agent (who's in love with her) and marries a purportedly rich guy (who turns out to be a fraud). Things eventually turn out all right, as usual in fiction of this sort, which was written largely for the rental-library trade. A contemporary review of the book gives this background on the author: "Miss Shaw writes with authority about the stage. She has been in vaudeville under the name of Billy Shaw for four years, then was the senior member of the Shaw-Dupree team, giving dance recitals in London, Paris and in clubs in New York and Florida." According to OCLC -- which records only a single library holding of the book, by the way, at Harvard -- her full name was Mrs. Carrie Louise Shaw Seabury. In any event, she appears to have never written another book, and probably the closest she ever got to Hollywood was to have this particular copy end up (at least for a time) on the shelves of producer-director Cecil B. DeMille's library, as attested to by the attractive bookplate on the front pastedown.