Mr. Peabody’s Mermaid

May 8, 2010

For my birthday Ted got for me this great vintage Pocket Book, Peabody’s Mermaid, by Guy and Constance Jones–and it came today in the mail.  The book, this version of which was published in 1948 (it was also serialized in Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1945!), is a movie tie-in. I think I’ve mentioned it before but I’ve been collecting vintage paperbacks–especially movie tie-ins for a while now. One of these days I’ll post my whole collection–they’re really pretty remarkable.

The film, “Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid,” starred William Powell and Ann Blyth and looks quite similar to the Ron Howard-directed “Splash.” The reviews aren’t very kind, Halliwell’s Film Guide calls it “a boneheaded quick cash-in…”

And IMDB states that one of the goofs includes: In the underwater fight scene, one shot shows that the fishtail costume had clearly separated from Lenore’s (the mermaid’s) back.

Nice.

Click to read the excerpt on the back cover.

“It was incredible but there it was: his catch, from the waist up, was a woman! Her little breasts were pointed and rosy tipped. On a small scale, she was maturely voluptuous!”

Hmm, rather, erm, titillating for 1945, eh?