Apocalypse Now, and Then: Earliest Known Script Surfaces

by Stephen J. Gertz

A very early draft shooting script, the earliest known, dated December 5, 1969, of Francis Ford Coppola's Viet Nam epic, Apocalypse Now, has come to market.

The screenplay was the property of actor Lee Marvin, who Coppola  solicited to portray the role of "Colonel Karnage," a character that would be renamed "Colonel Kilgore" and ultimately played by Robert Duvall in the classic film that was eventually produced, and released in 1979 - a full ten years after this draft was written.

Accompanying the script, ultimately co-written by Coppola and John Milius, is Coppola's handwritten note to Marvin:

"Mr. Lee Marvin / We'd like you to play the part of Colonel Karnage in Apocalypse Now. We're an independant [sic] company in San Francisco financed by Warner Bros. It's a good script. / Sincerely / Francis Ford Coppola."

Coppola was working on the project before writing and/or producing or directing THX-1138, American Graffiti, Patton, The Godfather, Godfather II, and The Conversation; he conceived it in the founding year of American Zoetrope, his ambitious production company. Indeed, the script is bound in an American Zoetrope wrapper, possesses the corprorate logo on the title page, and the accompanying note was written on the company's embossed stationary. Milius is given sole credit here; he later  shared credit on the final script with Coppola, and Michael Herr would receive a separate credit for his narrative dialogue. Coppola loosely based the film upon Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, presumably tossing out Milius's original idea and title: The Psychedelic Soldier.

"If I say it's safe to surf this beach, then it's safe to surf this beach...
Charlie don't surf!"

While it is difficult to imagine anyone other than Duvall in the role of Kilgore - he wholly possessed it - it must be admitted that Lee Marvin, an ex-Marine wounded during the Battle of Saipan in WWII, would have been equally commanding in the role as the napalm- and surf-lovin' Lt. Col. Kilgore, though, granted, Marvin, in his mid-fifties at the time of the film's production, would have been a senior, silver-haired surfer.

The movie received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best, Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

The script is being offered at $15,000 by Royal Books of Baltimore, MD.
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[MILIUS, John]. Apocalypse Now. San Francisco: American Zoetrope, Dec. 5, 1969. Earliest known draft. Quarto. ALS is 11 x 8.5 inches on Zoetrope letterhead.

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Image courtesy of Royal Books, with our thanks.
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Hansom Cab Murder Is First Blockbuster Crime Novel

 A Hansom Cab Stand by P. Stahl, 1889.

The author was a law clerk who wanted to be a playwright. When he failed miserably at it, he decided to write a novel instead. But he had no idea what to write so,

"I enquired of a leading Melbourne bookseller what style of book he sold most of. He replied that the detective stories of Gaboriau had a large sale; and as, at this time, I had never even heard of this author, I bought all his works — eleven or thereabouts — and read them carefully. The style of these stories attracted me, and I determined to write a book of the same class; containing a mystery, a murder, and a description of low life in Melbourne.

"Having completed the book, I tried to get it published, but everyone to whom I offered it refused even to look at the manuscript on the grounds that no Colonial could write anything worth reading."  

Undeterred, he finally had it privately printed.

First edition, Melbourne, 1886.

The book, published in 1886, was The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. An instant best-seller, it is considered to be “one of the most successful crime and mystery stories ever to be published” (Quayle). Its first printing of 5,000 copies sold out within weeks. Three subsequent printings, each of 10,000 copies, sold out, as well. It should have been a cash cow.

Yet it was a cash clunker for the author. 

 Fergus W. Hume.

After the initial 35,000 copies sold, Fergus W. Hume (1859-1932), born in England, raised in New Zealand, and living in Australia, sold the copyright for £50 to a character of dubious ethics, who then hot-footed it to London, established the Hansom Cab Publishing Company, had as many copies printed each month as possible, and within eighteen months of the book’s initial publication sold 250,000 books. 

In 1889, the Hansom Cab Publishing Company changed its name to Trischler & Company, Trischler being the shepherd who fleeced the lamb of his copyright. From 1889 through 1895, Trischler printed and sold 5,000 copies every month before selling the copyright to Jarrold & Son. By the turn of the century, it had been translated into twelve languages. It is the first crime novel to achieve international blockbuster status.

 First U.K. edition, 1887.

What’s the big deal?

Hume knew how to write a page-turner. The book begins as if you’ve just tuned into an episode “ripped from the headlines,” of Law & Order, the basic facts known about the crime indeed laid out as an extract from a Melbourne newspaper: Hansom cab with murder victim inside pulls up to a police station. The victim has a chloroform-soaked silk handkerchief tied around his mouth. The assassin is unknown. Time for Samuel Gorby, of the Detective Squad, Melbourne Police, to solve the crime.

Hume wrote as if he were afraid that readers, if given an opportunity, might flee when they reached the end of each paragraph. The result was a novel that dared readers to get a snack, use the bathroom, feed the kids, go to bed.

When he learned of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab’s success in England, Hume immediately raced to London. Steamship travel being what it was, the race took a few months during which he wrote another two novels. And what did he do when he finally reached London? A fool once, a fool again: He sold the books to Tischler.

 Later edition.

He had better financial luck after getting Tischler out of his life. He made money from Madame Midas (1889) and its sequel, Miss Mephistopheles (1890) but they were tales of the Australian Gold Rush  and they, as well as everything else that Hume wrote, never achieved the fantastic success of ...Hansom Cab.

An unsolvable murder. A brilliant detective. And a novel that would lead crime fiction into the future.  Not a great book, though highly readable, its importance lies in providing a model for the modern detective  novel. “The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was published at the end of we may term the pre-Holmesian era. It appeared only a year before the first printing of A Study in Scarlet” (Quayle).

Only two copies of the first edition, first printing are known to exist. Both are at Mitchell Library,  in Sydney, Australia.

The book was adapted to film three times, in 1911, 1915, and 1925.

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HUME, Fergus W. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Melbourne: Kemp & Boyce, 1886. First edition. Octavo. Pictorial wrappers.

Quayle, Eric. Collector's Book of Detective Fiction, pp. 51-54. Clymer & Greene, Victorian Detective Fiction pp. 123-124. Hubin p. 210. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone volume.

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Image of Stahl's Hansom Cab Stand courtesy 1st Art Gallery.
Image of the first edition of 1886 op. cit. Quayle.

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Two Experts Talk Literature In Film

Our colleague, Kevin Johnson, of Royal Books in Baltimore, recently participated in a video about literature in film produced by Walter Reuben, the highly respected Los Angeles-based movie poster dealer-scholar. It deserves to be seen by anyone even remotely interested in the intersection of the written word and celluloid.

Kevin has been, and continues to be, one of the most respected rare book dealers in the world specializing in cinema-related volumes and books into film. He is also the author of the acclaimed The Dark Page: Books That Inspired American Film Noir, in two volumes covering 1940-1949 and 1950-1965, respectively. Beautifully produced, it has become an essential reference.

Walter Reuben, with whom Kevin shares the spotlight in the video, has been involved in the trade in movies posters since Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery was released in 1903, or so it seems. He appears to have been doing it longer and better than anyone else in the world. His name invariably comes up when movie posters are discussed. He's The Man.

I recently moderated a panel discussion on this subject at the 43d California Antiquarian Book Fair. Kevin was one of the panelists, along with another noted cinema book specialist, the highly knowledgeable and esteemed James Pepper, and Los Angeles Times and NPR Morning Edition film reviewer, Kenneth Turan. An excellent seminar, its themes are picked up and expanded upon in this video.

This is a very fluent and fluid discussion, highlighted by to-die-for vintage movie posters and other cinema rarities, between two masters who stand at the top of their fields.

Books Into Best-Picture Oscar® Winners To Highlight 2010 California Antiquarian Book Fair

LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION! BOOKS!

Embracing great books into great movies, the 43d California International Antiquarian Book Fair promises to be the most exciting yet. We in the Southern California chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the Fair’s sponsoring organization, have been working overtime to present Fair-goers with an exhibit to knock socks - or bindings - off.

From Author to Oscar® is the theme for this year’s Special Exhibits, highlighting great books that became great Best Picture Academy Award®-winning films. We’ll be exploring the journey a book makes to the big screen, focusing on the important role that literature has played in providing Hollywood with strong, interesting plots and characters to draw upon. The majority of Best Picture Oscar® winners have been based upon literary works, and rare, first edition copies of each volume will be showcased in the exhibit, along with a selection of unique associated items from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ (AMPAS) Margaret Herrick Library.

The ABAA routinely works with distinguished libraries across the country but this is the first time we’ve had the pleasure of making the Margaret Herrick Library’s acquaintance. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was most gracious in accepting our request for assistance, and generous: There are items on loan from the Academy’s archives that have never been seen by the general public, each item focusing on the symbiotic relationship between books and film.

As the guy who spent six hours sifting through photos and documents with the Library’s acquisitions archivist I can tell you that, while there may not be any shock, there will definitely be awe in those who attend the Fair and see the exhibit. Afterward, I required an ice-pack over my peepers to get the goggle-eyes back down to size.

A few highlights:

• Photos of the cast of From Here To Eternity (Best-Picture 1953) posing with novelist James Jones, a copy of the book in his hands.

• Photo of Alfred Hitchcock at his desk, working on his screenplay for Rebecca (Best-Picture 1940), his copy of the book opened for reference.

• Letter from Lost Weekend novelist, Charles Jackson, to Lost Weekend (Best-Picture 1945) screenwriter, Charles Brackett, damning him and director, Billy Wilder, for changing the ending of the book, then proffering his own five-page re-write.

• Letter from Raymond Chandler to Charles Brackett congratulating him for his great script for Lost Weekend (Chandler knew a thing or two about drinking).

• Numerous examples of how during its Golden Age Hollywood relied on the source book to sell the movie to audiences.

• And much more.

I could go on but the Fair’s publicist is looking over my shoulder with a Glock .45 pointed at my ear lest I spill to much too soon. (Somewhere, a publicist is smiling. I hope.).

Rare poster for Rebecca on exhibit. Note how a book is used
in the design to promote the movie.

Why the emphasis on books into film? Simple. All movies begin on a page of paper, whether an original screenplay or one adapted from a book. From the early days of silent films, movie studios routinely adapted great novels to the screen to capitalize on their classic or best-selling status and familiarity with audiences. Classic dramatic and adventurous plots and characters from novels were brought to life on the silver screen, prose into pictures in motion that moved.

Indeed, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, movie studios - as will be demonstrated in the exhibit - exploited the original book for all marketing and advertising purposes: At the time, though movies were more popular, books were the most prestigious medium in American culture and studios sought to exploit that prestige for the gloss of class it provided. It was an era when novelists were at the apex of their importance in the cultural landscape. It is an era that has vanished.

But while studios no longer depend upon the original book to spearhead their promotional efforts, novels and great non-fiction works continue to be adapted to film simply because there is no substitute for a great story, well-told, with complex, flesh-and-blood characters. Whether ultimately Best-Picture winners, nominees, or otherwise, all movies begin with the word, and the word, as often as not, is Books.

The exhibit can be viewed throughout the entire weekend of the Fair, February 12-14, 2010 at the Century Plaza hotel in Los Angeles.

To accompany the exhibit, on Saturday, February 13 at 3PM, the book fair will host a panel discussion featuring esteemed Los Angeles Times film critic, Kenneth Turan; rare cinema and books -into- film dealer-specialist, James Pepper; and Kevin Johnson of Royal Books, whose lovingly produced, two-volume book, The Dark Pages: Books That Inspired American Film Noir, has become an essential reference.

The Writer’s Guild of America - West is assisting us in recruiting a screenwriter to join the panel discussion. We hope to have word soon.

The Book Fair Committee scraped the bottom of the barrel to find someone to moderate the panel and succeeded: I’ll be your host for the discussion. My qualifications? I was sick a lot as a kid and read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies on TV. This eventually led to my becoming Executive Story Editor at a major production company during the early 1980s. That company is now defunct. Draw your own conclusions.

The California International Antiquarian Book Fair is now the largest rare book fair in the world. This year, we have 180 dealers from around the globe exhibiting some of the best, rarest, and just plain coolest books on the planet, across every imaginable subject area.

If you love books and you love movies don’t miss the Fair this year.

But if you can’t make it, stay tuned to Book Patrol for the most comprehensive coverage of the 2010 California International Antiquarian Book Fair. We’ll be devoting all our attention to reporting on what’s going on, book highlights, exhibit and panel activities, etc.. And we have a secret weapon, a mole within the SoCal chapter of the ABAA, one of its officers, exhibit organizers, and firm exhibitors to pass along insider info.

The mole is half-blind, furry, prefers the underground, and avoids direct sunlight: I’ll be passing along the shhhh!, strictly confidential, exclusive scoops to myself. Then to you.

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For full schedule and hours, ticket information, and more, log on to the 43d California International Antiquarian Book Fair website.
Hot line: (800) 454-6401.
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Important Notice: The opinions expressed by me on Book Patrol are not those of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, nor should I be considered its spokesperson.