[The] Young Adam

N.p. Associated British Picture Corporation, 1961. Original ribbon copy typescript four-page reader's summary and report for the 1954 novel by Alexander Trocchi. Made for the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) by ABPC reader Gillian Glew, dated "May 1961," with a blue rubber stamp stating "RECEIVED / 8 May 1961." Unique.

One of the most powerful media conglomerates in British cinema history, the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) was founded in 1927 when John Maxwell acquired British National Pictures Studios and its Elstree Studios complex, first named British International Pictures (BIP).

The company was renamed ABPC in 1933 after acquiring British Pathé, enabling the company to become a fully vertically integrated studio capable of producing, distributing, and exhibiting its own pictures. Following Maxwell's death in 1940, Warner Bros. purchased a large stake in the company, allowing ABPC to distribute its films into the lucrative US market, as well as taking an active stake in television by launching the Associated British Corporation (ABC). Amid the downturn in the British film industry by the late 1960s, EMI staged an aggressive takeover of ABPC in 1969, and by 1970 the name was officially retired.

At the height of ABPC's success in the 1950s and 1960s, its readers reviewed nearly everything being published, from established authors to those with recent screen success, to emerging new authors, in search of material for film adaptation. The resulting reader's summary and reports are an extraordinary record of mid-twentieth century literature never intended for public consumption and unseen since their composition.

The four-page reader's summary and report, written in the ABPC house style, includes a breakdown of the source material and publication information at the top of the first page (here under the title "The Young Adam" and noted as being submitted in proof format by an agent representing Highsmith), followed by a summary, a list of characters names and descriptions, then a detailed synopsis on the second and third pages, and finally the reader's comments on the material's quality and filmic possibilities on the fourth page. The ABPC reader, Glew, unimpressed with the novel, found "the hero most unsympathetic," the "weak" plot "sqalid and unpleasant," and "as for the hero's complicated love life, this is monotonous and boring."

Published in 1954, "Young Adam" chronicles the adventures of a morally bankrupt young Scottish bargeman named Joe (later the subject of Trocchi's 1960 novel, "Cain's Book"), who accidentally kills his young lover and subsequently ignores every opportunity to take the blame for the crime. Basis for the superb 2003 film, made 40 years after the creation of this document, directed by Alexander MacKenzie and starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Mortimer. and Tilda Swinton.

8 x 13 inches, perforation binding. Near Fine.

[Book #172877]