The 39 Steps

Alfred Hitchcock (director)
John Buchan (novel)
Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll (starring)

London: Gaumont, 1935. Original UK Pressbook for the classic 1935 film, based on the 1915 novel by John Buchan. A rare and blazingly beautiful artifact from one of the foundational espionage thrillers of the twentieth century.

Hitchcock's adaptation of Buchan's novel proved, as usual, to be an improvement on the source material, adding two key female characters and removing a couple of serious plot implausibilities. Of nearly inestimable importance is that Hitchcock found in "The 39 Steps" a theme that would become his favorite, and one whose variations he would virtually exhaust: an innocent man on the run, clever and resourceful but surrounded by a conspiracy he doesn't understand.

Card wrappers with a color lithograph design, saddle stapled, 12 x 18 inches, faint horizontal fold as issued. Newsprint pages Very Good plus with some minute nicking at the edges, lightly toned, wrapper bright and Near Fine.


[Book #122276]