Screen Romances #210 - November 1946

Now here's an unusual version of The Razor's Edge!

Screen Romances was not your standard movie/gossip mag of the 1940s, which usually were a series of commercials for different movies, with some articles on the stars giving the reader some tiny glimpse into their "real" lives.

No, Screen Romances surprised me, and here's why: on page 37, there's an article on The Razor's Edge movie.

What's odd about this magazine's movie articles is that they're not about the movies, exactly: they're more novel-like summations of the plot, written in prose style. So in the couple of pages on The Razor's Edge, you've got a prose version of a movie adaptation of an original novel. Weird!

I love that I found this very obscure piece of Razor's Edge arcana; and for only a few bucks. I wonder what other movie magazines with RE content might be out there...

Penguin Movie Tie-In Edition - 1984

 

Since The Razor's Edge was re-released as a movie tie-in on the occasion of the 1946 film, it only makes sense that it would be published again to mark the release of the 1984 film version, this time with star Bill Murray on the cover.

The back features a pretty decent description of the book's plot, with the emphasis being on the film, of course.

I never knew this edition existed until, while on a short trip to Maine, I saw it on the bookshelf in the childhood home of a friend of mine. From that point on, my #1 goal for when I got back was to go on eBay and get a copy for myself, which I did almost immediately.

Triangle Books Movie Tie-In - 1946

Like a lot of books made into movies during this time, a new version of The Razor's Edge was released with a movie-centric cover--in this case, a still featuring Tyrone Power as Larry and Gene Tierney as Isabel.

This version must have sold like gangbusters as well, since its relatively easily found on eBay for not a lot of money, which is unusual for one of these movie tie-in books with the dustcover included.

I'm utterly charmed by these movie tie-in editions; if I had a lot of money to burn I'd make an effort to collect them (I have a similar movie tie-in edition for Lost Horizon, my second favorite book of all time). I'm not sure how many of them there were; but the inside flap lists this book as #81 in the series!