Hotel Imperial (First Hungarian Edition, photoplay screenplay edition)

Budapest: Singer es Wolfner Irodalmi Intezet, 1927. First Hungarian Edition. Screenplay for the 1927 silent film, a photoplay edition with a photographic image of the film's star, Pola Negri, on the front wrapper. With the logo of the film's Hungarian distributor, Royal Apollo, on the front wrapper at the bottom right corner.

Biro wrote the 1917 play, "Szinmu negy felvonasban," upon which the 1927 American silent film was based. The screenplay was written by Jules Furthman, and this edition, a Hungarian translation of the screenplay by the author of the play, was heretofore unknown to us.

The film was directed by Mauritz Stiller in 1927, and starred Negri, James Hall, George Siegmann, Max Davidson and Otto Fries (whose names appear on the rear wrapper of this edition). It was the final directorial effort of Mauritz Stiller, who returned to Sweden after being rejected in the US by the love of his life, Greta Garbo. This, coupled with the death of Pola Negri's ex-lover Rudolph Valentino during production of "Hotel Imperial," earned the film a reputation as being jinxed.

The jinx continued with a troubled sound version remake, first put into development in 1936 by Henry Hathaway and to have starred Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, which suffered numerous revisions and was finally released in 1939, directed by Robert Florey and now starring Ray Milland and Isa Miranda. It was remade once again, with much greater success by Billy Wilder in 1943 as "Five Graves to Cairo."

In the 1927 version, Negri plays a chambermaid in a small Galician hotel. When World War I erupts, the town in which Pola lives is alternately occupied by both the Russians and the Austrians. As the film's various intrigues play themselves out, we learn that Pola is actually an aristocrat, posing as a maid to find her sister's murderer, which she does with the help of handsome Austrian officer James Hall.

Perfect bound wrappers, with titles printed on the spine. About Very Good, with some fray at the spine ends and shallow creasing at the corners. Still, a tight, clean copy overall.