Gene Markey, Literary Lights, A Book of Caricatures
Markey, Gene. Literary Lights, A Book of Caricatures. First Edition. 1923. Book is in very good condition; dust jacket is in good plus condition—jacket shows extensive tape repairs to the spine, darkening, and light soiling.
Cary Grant once quipped, “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I’d like to be Cary Grant.” Well, though he is not well remembered today, Hollywood’s real Cary Grant was café society’s Gene Markey, the author and illustrator of this book. He counted among his wives three of Hollywood’s leading ladies—Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamarr, and Myrna Loy. (Only MGM boasted a more impressive reserve of A-list actresses.) Subjects here include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carl Van Vechten, and Donald Ogden Stewart, and he captures them brilliantly.
“Caricature in this country has consisted primarily in the satirizing of political and social subjects. Now comes Gene Markey, alone in his field, portraying the eminent literary lights of our time, just as Max Beerbohm has long done in England.”
--Literary Lights, A Book of Caricatures