Anna Lucasta

Beverly Hills, CA: United Artists, 1958. Vintage publicity photograph from the 1958 film, showing actress Eartha Kitt leaning against a lamppost, smoking a cigarette. Layout annotations in manuscript ink and pencil on the verso.

Based on Philip Yordan's 1936 play. A young woman returns to her family home hoping to escape life as as prostitute, after being driven into destitution years before by her overbearing, puritanical father. Yordan originally set his play in the Polish American community, but failed to find backers. The script was subsequently offered to American Negro Theatre director Henry Wagstaff Gribble for an all African-American cast in 1944. It became a critical and commercial success, running for 957 performances, touring the United States and Europe, and twice being adapted into film, first in 1949 with a white cast, directed by Irving Rapper and starring Paulette Goddard, and again in 1957, restoring the all-Black cast and starring Kitt and Sammy Davis Jr.

8 x 10 inches. Lightly toned and creased on the margins, else Near Fine.

[Book #168498]