Beschreibung:

BARRIE, Sir JAMES M. Typescript scenario for the silent film Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, (scenario by Josephine Lovett Robertson) WITH NUMBEROUS ADDITIONS, REVISIONS AND DELETIONS BY BARRIE in red ink on some 40 pages, totalling approximately 330 words, an inscription at the top of page 1 (in an unidentified hand) reading: "Titles by J.M. Barrie Script prepared by Mrs. J.L.R.," n.p., n.d. [early 1921]. 108 pages, small folio, typed on rectos only on good-quality bond paper, a very few corners slightly creased, otherwise in very good condition. BARRIE'S IDEAS FOR THE FIRST FILM OF "PETER PAN" A remarkable record of the first attempt to translate Barrie's classic tale of childhood to the cinema. The silent film, from an original scenario by Josephine Lovett (based on Barrie's stageplay of 1904), was to have been made in America by the noted Canadian-born director John S. Robertson (Lovett's husband) for the Vitagraph Company. Clearly the Lovett-Robertson collaborative project had Barrie's approval, although only two letters from their correspondence regarding the preparation of the extensive scenario survive (see lot 6) along with a part of Barrie's very carefully crafted subtitles (printed narrative text, as opposed to the dialogue), which, in an unusual touch, were to appear onscreen in the author's own handwriting (see preceding lot). (One wonders how successful this feature might ultimately have proven, given Barrie's minute and often difficult-to-read left-handed script.) Barrie's manuscript changes, which adeptly focus and shape telling details of the scenario, are of great interest in showing the novelist and playwright's ready acceptance of the conventions and techniques of what was, to him, an entirely new medium. On page 4, he makes an important change in subtitle 9: "The fairies taught him [Peter Pan] how to fly, and he made his home on an island called Neverland, which has everything a boy needs, except perhaps a mother." Scenes 10 and 11, which depict the infant Peter, are virtually rewritten by Barrie; in Scene 11, "An empty London street at night with Kensington Garden Gate at far side," Peter, "the baby is seen crawling across the deserted street. He should be seen in the light of a policeman's lantern." In Scene 34, depicting the Indian encampment, Barrie emphatically deletes what he thought an uncharacteristic action by Tiger Lily, adding the comment "This should be a rather comic episode. The brave goes on his knees pleading his suit. She suddenly gives him a kick and he departs sadly. She yawns as if this were an everyday occurence." Occasionally, Barrie gives entirely cinematic directions: on page 13, in a scene where Peter sits on the windowsill of the Darling nursery, poised for flight, Barrie changes the "semi-close up," to, "Long shot"; the same change he directs on the next page, and on page 21, in other nursery scenes. In scene 257, Barrie, deleting a shot of Captain Hook's nemesis, the crocodile, notes that the animal should remain unseen. Later a proposed sequence of scenes featuring Wendy and Tootles (one of the Lost Boys) is bracketed by Barrie, who writes in the margin: "Queried by J.M.B." and "This scene 466 should be taken out if 464 and [4]65 are." When the inside of Captain Hook's cabin ("largely furnished like a boy's room at Eton....arranged in the eccentric Eton way") is to be shown, at scene 468, Barrie instructs that it should include "a bed that folds up against wall." Further on, when the combat between Tiger Lily's redskins and the pirates takes place, at scene 510, Barries advises that "probably the whole fight should be seen in the distance as the later one on ship is. This would make it more realistic." When Captain Hook and his crew listen fearfully with drawn cutlasses while several pirates are dispatched by the unseen Peter in the darkened cabin, Barrie makes it clear that Hook is only startled by a sudden noise: "but he is never a coward except about the crocodi