James and the Giant Peach

N.p. Associated British Picture Corporation, 1968. Original ribbon copy typescript six-page reader's summary and report for the 1961childdren's novel by Roald Dahl, made for the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) by ABPC reader Kathleen Connors, dated "June 17th/68," with a blue rubber stamp stating "RECEIVED / 19 Jun 1968." 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 six-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 (noting it was submitted directly for consideration by Dahl's literary agent Laurence Pollinger), followed by a summary and a list of characters names and descriptions, then a detailed synopsis on the second to fifth pages, and finally the initial reader's comments on the material's quality and filmic possibilities on the sixth page. The ABPC reader Connors found the material as a "Walt Disney kind of Fantasy story" with "plenty of material here to adapt into a Children's Television Serial."

Dahl's second novel for children following his 1943 novel "Gremlins." It was adapted into a musical fantasy live-action and stop-motion animation film in 1996, directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi, and starred Paul Terry as James.

8 x 13 inches, perforation binding. Binding separated between the fourth and fifth leaves, else Near Fine.

[Book #172932]