Four Jills in a Jeep.
Cleveland: World Publishing Company, [1944]. First collected edition. First serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the same year. “This is a rollicking and uninhibited story of what happened when four Hollywood ‘glamour girls’ set out to entertain American fighting forces in Bermuda, Britain and Africa…They played in chilling rainstorms and under a burning desert sun, before wounded fighters and the crowned heads of Europe. In the midst of it all, Miss Landis even found time to fall in love and get married” (from the dust jacket). With two double-sided photo plates (including frontispiece) capturing stills from the Twentieth Century Fox film Two Jills in a Jeep (1944) and about two dozen charming text vignettes by Lily Cushing. Contemporary bookplate to front flyleaf. In the color-printed original dust jacket (a bit of creasing and a chip missing from back panel very good). A strip of toning to front pastedown. Otherwise, a fine copy in the scarce dust jacket. Publisher’s red cloth binding titled in teal on spine. Octavo. viii, 180 pp. Item #17539
In the film version of Four Jills in a Jeep, actors Kay Francis, Carole Landis (1919 – 1948), Martha Raye, and Mitzi Mayfair reenact the events of their 1942 USO tour through England, Ireland, and North Africa with the Feminine Theatrical Task Force. Their tour of North Africa was the first conducted by the USO in the area. Landis and the publisher Edwin Seaver (1900 – 1987) wrote the present work about Landis’ experience on the tour. Landis began her career as a singer and actor with an appearance as an extra in A Star is Born. She later appeared in One Million BC (1940), Moon Over Miami (1941) and the crime films Behind Green Lights (1946) and Noose (1948). She also wrote several newspaper and magazine articles about her USO tour and contributed a foreword to Victor Herman’s cartoon book Winnie the WAC. Before the end of the war, she appeared as Winnie in the film version of Herman’s cartoon, which was released under the same title.
Harvey, R.C. “Winnie the WAC.” The Comics Journal (March 4, 2015).
Price: $300.00