WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Old Reliable.

Movie Moguls and Scandalous Secrets

WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Old Reliable. Garden City: Doubleday & Company. 1951.

8vo. Publisher’s tan buckram, spine lettered in red, in the price-clipped first-issue dust-jacket illustrated by Hurst; pp. 217, [1 (blank)]; minor wear to spine ends and corners, top-edge spotted and dusty with the odd spot to fore-edge; very light marginal browning; else very good.

First US edition, first printing, of Wodehouse’s comic novel set in a Hollywood mansion.

In The Old Reliable, trouble ensues when the brother of the movie star Adela Cork attempts to steal her scandalous diary, hoping to profit from its secrets about her fellow actors. The plot developed from Spring Fever (1948), with the setting transferred from an English country house to the glamour of Hollywood.

Following the delayed publication of Spring Fever, amid the controversy surrounding his wartime broadcasts from Berlin, Wodehouse adapted the novel for the stage as a play intended for Edward Everett Horton (1886–1970), reshaping the material for an American audience. Horton’s other commitments prevented the play from being produced, and Wodehouse continued to revise it through several drafts before ultimately reworking its premise and characters into The Old Reliable.

Mcllvaine A71b.

SKU: 2126234