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March 3rd 1959 letter from Roger Price to Ray Russell
Humorous and friendly letter sent by humorist Roger Price to Ray Russell, fiction editor at Playboy. Price would like to publish the work ‘Names’ as a little book and is enclosing a separate contract letter to document this. Included in this letter are snippets of what the content of the work looks like. The work was eventually published in 1960 as ‘The Price Theory on Nomenclatures’. Nice little drawing beside his signature.
Typewritten on thin carbon copy paper, authentic signatures.
Toning around edges, folded horizontally, staple.
Letter from Roger Price to Ray Russell
Aforementioned letter sent by Price to Russell for magazine rights of ‘The Price Theory of Names’ and allow Price to publish it as a book. Payment received in the amount of $1000. Signed by both men.
On thick paper with Price-Stern Publishers NYC letterhead, pencil signature and drawing.
Toning bottom and edges, folded horizontally, staple hole, some light creases.
Roger Price (1918 – 1990) was an American humorist, author and publisher, who created Droodles in the 1950s, followed by his collaborations with Leonard Stern on the Mad Libs series. Price and Stern, who met when they were writers on the Tonight show, became partners with Larry Sloan in the publishing firm Price Stern Sloan.
Price was born in Charleston, West Virginia. During the 1940s, he wrote for The Bob Hope Show and worked with Hope on a newspaper humor column. On Broadway he performed in Arthur Klein's musical revue, Tickets, Please! (1950), and he contributed sketch material to Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952. Price hosted the television panel show How To (1951), and he was a panelist on other game shows of the early 1950s: Who's There?, What Happened?, That Reminds Me, The Name's the Same and What's My Line? He was the co-creator with Stanley Ralph Ross of the 1977 NBC situation comedy The Kallikaks, and he also wrote for the show.
Ray Russell (1924 – 1999) was a Chicago-born American writer of short stories, novels, and screenplays. Russell is best-known for his horror fiction, although he also wrote mystery and science fiction stories.
His most famous short fiction is "Sardonicus", which appeared in the January 1961 issue of Playboy magazine, and was subsequently adapted by Russell into a screenplay for William Castle's film version, titled Mr. Sardonicus. American writer Stephen King called "Sardonicus" "perhaps the finest example of the modern gothic ever written".
In the 1950s, Russell began working for Playboy magazine as a fiction editor. In this capacity Russell published a large amount of science fiction, fantasy and horror in the magazine; Russell also encouraged and promoted the fiction of Charles Beaumont.
In 1991 Russell received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
WIKIPEDIA
