The Front Page

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (playwrights)
Florence Vandamm (photographer)
George S. Kaufman (director)
Walter Baldwin, Lee Tracy, Frances Fuller, Osgood Perkins (starring)

N.p. N.p., 1928. Two vintage oversize photographs from the first stage production of "The Front Page" in 1928, showing two different trio shots of the reporters who grace the majority of the play. The first photo, a double weight 8 x 10 by Florence Vandamm with her blindstamped name on the recto, shows Lee Tracy (later played by Rosalind Russell onscreen), Osgood Perkins, and Frances Fuller. The second, a oversize 11 x 14, uncredited but by White Studios in New York City, shows the star Walter Baldwin (later played by Cary Grant onscreen), Osgood Perkins, and Lee Tracy. Both photographs with numerous annotations and stamps on the verso.

Excessively rare photographs from the first staging of the play that made Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur famous. The play would be published the same year in book form by Covici-Friede, and was the basis for three films: The Front Page" in 1931 with Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien, "The Front Page" in 1974 with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and most famously, the classic screwball comedy "His Girl Friday," with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in 1940.


[Book #133223]