Blondie Iscariot - James Cagney s Copy - Edgar Lustgarten 1948 - Charles Scribner&rsquo, New York - First Edition Legendary crime actor James Cagney’s copy, donated to ‘The Motion Picture Country House’ of Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. This was a retirement home and hospital set up in the 1940’s for those working in the film industry, it is still in operation today.

A fine copy with final few pages unopened and uncut, in a fine example of the graceful Gitanes’esque illustrated dust jacket.

‘A grim, sardonic story of London’s underworld, of gang rivalry for control of such profitable enterprises as dope-peddling, the dogs, and “protection“’.
  Released in the U.K. a year later by Museum Press, London.

Reference: Reilly, ’
Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers’ (1980), 972.

Thin octavo (book size 19.2x13.8cm), pp. [6] 214 [4]. In publisher’s grey cloth, spine lettered in blue, front panel lettered and with vignette of arrow in blue, fore-edge untrimmed others trimmed. Dust jacket priced ‘$2.50’ to upper corner of front flap.
  Condition: Fine in fine dust jacket   Ref: 110418   Price: HK$ 3,000