The Taxi Dancer

New York/Chicago: A.L. Burt Company. Very Good. (c.1931). Reprint. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [modestly shelfworn book, spine very slightly turned, slight bumping to corners of front cover (a touch of fraying to lower corner), some fading/mottling to spine cloth, short rip in cloth at top of spine, vintage price sticker at upper corner of rear pastedown (from San Francisco department store The White House)]. This novel about a rural Southern girl, trying to make it in on her own in New York, who can only find work as a paid dancing partner in a "dancing academy" -- which leads to her getting involved with (successively) a gambler, a dancer, and a millionaire -- was first published as a syndicated newspaper serial beginning in May 1926. M-G-M knew surefire movie material when they saw it, and by the beginning of June it had already been synopsized by the studio's story department; a full scenario was completed by September, and the resulting movie was ready for release by the following March. It was the first film in which a young Joan Crawford received top billing (it was early enough in her career that at the time the story was acquired by the studio, she was still being carried on the payroll under her original name, Lucille LeSueur). It may not have been entirely coincidental that Crawford was cast in a role in which dancing played such a central part: according to many accounts of her career, frustration at her lack of progress towards stardom under her early M-G-M contract led her to embark on her own self-publicity campaign -- a major feature of which was entering (and winning) numerous local dance competitions. The film may have been a major career boost for Crawford, but for the studio it was just a programmer: her co-stars were undistinguished, ditto the director (Harry Millarde, then at the tail end of an unremarkable career), and the movie was clearly not important enough for the issuance of an accompanying "photoplay edition" -- so apart from its original newspaper serialization, the only other time this novel appeared in print was four years after the movie, in an edition by the minor publisher Edward J. Clode, of which this A.L. Burt edition was a cheap reprint. (And just so we're clear: this is *not* a photoplay edition, and in fact makes no reference at all to its earlier publication or to the existence of the movie; I guess it's possible there was some link to it provided on the dust jacket, but alas it ain't here.) So when you look at the entry for the film in the AFI Catalog, and wonder how a 1927 movie could have been based on a "1931" novel -- now you know. Oh, and by the way, the book in any edition is quite scarce: as of this writing, OCLC records only three institutional copies of the Clode edition, and just two of the Burt printing. .