[nice tight clean copy, slight fading to black cloth at top of spine; jacket shows light handling wear only]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED (in the year of publication) by the author on the half-title page. Novel about a nightclub that's a "pocket of nonconformity" in the conformist 1950s, by the novelist and blacklisted screenwriter, one of the original Hollywood Ten. The club in the novel is modeled in large part after San Francisco's "hungry i," where Bessie worked for many years as a stage manager and lighting technician following his release from prison in 1951. Signed by Author