Jim is quite correct in all his history. The movie tie-ins go
all the way back to the silent era with "Photoplay editions"
illustrated with stills from the movie. Sometimes these were
reprints and sometimes originals produced after the
screenplay. I have one somewhere by the pioneer woman
screenwriter Frances Marion that she wrote based on her
screenplay for the 1931 gangster movie starring Wallace Beery
and Clark Gable.
Jim is also right about the role of Whitman Publishing Co.,
based out of Racine, Wisconsin. They began publishing Big
Little Books in the early 1930s featuring popular radio and
comics heros as well as shortened versions of popular
literature. Dick Tracy, Tarzan, Little Orphan Annie, Red
Ryder, and etc. all had their Big Little Books. Later they
dropped that name and commissioned full print adventures of
movie, radio and television characters.
To go back to Dragnet, the first paperback tie-in for Dragnet
was CASE NO. 561 by David Knight published by Pocketbooks in
1956. Knight was a penname of Richard S. Prather. Somewhere I
heard that Jack Webb was not pleased with Prather's version
of Joe Friday. I have a couple of books on Jack Webb but
naturally not where I can put my hands on them.
Webb was quite particular about how dialog was handled as
Robert Bloch reported in his autobiography. Bloch did one
script for Webb and he rewrote all of the dialog into
Dragnet-speak, even though the script was not for Dragnet.
Bloch got a little revenge when Webb proudly ushered him to
the case containing all of Webb's awards from police
departments from around the country. Bloch surveyed the many
trophies for a bit and turned to Webb and said something on
the order of "You must be a very good bowler."
In 1957, a year after the David Knight/Prather Dragnet book,
Whitman Publishing published a book of Dragnet short stories
written by Richard Deming. The six stories were written from
the original television scripts (which were often based on
earlier radio scripts).
Deming then got the assignment to do two adult Dragnet books:
DRAGNET: THE CASE OF THE COURTEOUS KILLER (Pocketbook 1958)
and DRAGNET: THE CASE OF THE CRIME KING (Pocketbook 1959). I
have read both and they are very well done.
Richard Moore
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, JIM DOHERTY
<jimdohertyjr@...> wrote:
>
> Ed,
>
> Re your question below:
>
> "The TV tie-in books then go back to 1959-60. Was
this
> concept used when TV became popular, earlier in
the
> 1950s? Just curious."
>
> Itr predates television, in fact. Whitman, a
midwest
> publisher that printed quite a few TV-tie-in books
for
> the juvenile market in the '50's and '60's,
published
> radio show tie-in books in the '30's and
'40's.
>
> Grossett & Dunlap, a hardcover publishr
specializing
> in reprints, would often do "movie editions" of
books
> that had been filmed, with stills from the film on
the
> cover and, if the film used a different title,
the
> title of the book changed. Hence, there are
editions
> of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY that were published under
the
> title MURDER, MY SWEET, with Dick Powell on the
cover,
> and editions of THE HIGH WINDOW, published under
the
> title THE BRASHER DOUBLOON (ironically the
title
> Chandler wanted to use) with George Montgomery on
the
> cover.
>
> There's even a book about crime-solving
> photojournalist Jack Casey, by an author OTHER
than
> George Harmon Coxe, that specifically ties in, not
to
> Coxe's books and stories, but to the radio show
CASEY
> - CRIME PHOTOGRAPHER that was loosely based on
those
> books ans stories.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
>
>
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 05 Nov 2007 EST