Beast of the City

FIRST EDITION. Octavo, Publisher’s red, black-stamped cloth, top-edge stained red, 218pp (2). Frontispiece from the film featuring the lovely Jean Harlow. A very good copy in a bright dust wrapper which exhibits very little wear or chipping. There’s been minor professional repairs to the rear hinge as it was starting to crack and strain. Otherwise, this is a very collectible copy and notoriously scarce in the ORIGINAL publisher’s Dust-wrapper (not a facsimile) with the striking image of Jean Harlow. The Beast of the City (1932) is a gritty, pre-Code MGM crime drama about a ruthless police captain, Jim Fitzpatrick (Walter Huston), who wages a violent war on organized crime in Prohibition-era Chicago, clashing with mob boss Sam Belmonte (Jean Hersholt) and his girlfriend Daisy (Jean Harlow). The film is known for its brutal violence, cynical tone, and a famously shocking ending, exploring themes of vigilantism and the blurred lines between law and crime, and features a young Mickey Rooney in an early role. It’s also the film which convinced MGM production chief, Irving Thalberg, to buy out Harlow’s contract from Howard Hughes for $30,000. In addition to W.R. Burnett penning the screenplay, he was also assisted by Ben Hecht (uncredited) and John Lee Mahim. W.R. Burnett called it "one of the best crime pictures of all. Hersholt was a greasy, offensive Capone. Really good." He felt it was well directed although Charles Brabin was English. "Everything about it was wrong. Making an American hoodlum picture, giving it to an Englishman. We’d have a story conference, and he’d go to sleep right in your face (McGilligan, Patrick; Mate, Ken (1986). "W.R. Burnett: The Outsider).…