FORBIDDEN PLANET
First printing of the classic film's novelization, signed by its lead actress.
Near fine in near-fine jacket.
Price: $750.00
FORBIDDEN PLANET
"Anne Francis stars in / Forbidden Planet" <br />("Science Fiction/Double Feature," The Rocky Horror Picture Show)<br /><br />"Robby was really the star of the show, so the young man who was working him from the inside was replaced one afternoon after a five-martini lunch. Drunken robots are not to be countenanced!" <br />(Anne Francis)
Novelization of the legendary film, by Philip MacDonald writing as "W.J. Stuart". MacDonald, a prolific detective novelist and screenwriter, wrote under a variety of pen names and worked on the adaptation of du Maurier's Rebecca, among numerous others.
FORBIDDEN PLANET appeared first in this hardcover edition, followed by the release of the film itself, starring Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielsen, and Anne Francis. This copy signed with a flourish by Francis both as herself and as her character, Altaira Morbius. To the extent that the film follows the loose outline of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST, Francis plays the Miranda figure: the beautiful, brilliant, but unworldly daughter of the mysterious Dr. Morbius, whose innocence and beauty troubles the traditionally-minded spaceship commander greatly: bad enough trying to keep his men away from attractive "Martians," he says, without "good-looking human girls" in "clothes like yours". Francis was in fact only the second woman to wear miniskirts on film and would later reminisce about the silver lamé jumpsuit that studio execs and contemporary standards kept out of the final cut for being "just too sexy, too extreme." Though she had no illusions about the flatness of the ingenue role – "I was the sleeping princess—no more, no less" – Francis's talent and presence made herself and her character into an enduring science fiction icon.
Read more: "FORBIDDEN PLANET: Anne Francis Remembers", Starlog Magazine Issue 186.
The Object
New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, (1956). 7.25'' x 4.75''. Original yellow and gray paper-covered boards. In original price-clipped dust jacket. vii, 184 pages. Signed by "Anne Francis / 'Altaira Morbius'" on half-title page. Minor edgewear, light soil to boards. Faint foxing to edges of text block. Mild scuffing to jacket edges, with very faint chipping to spine ends.
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