Invaders from Mars. Screenplay by Richard Blake

Beverly Hills, CA: National Pictures Corp, n.d. Original 109 page shooting script with color rewrite pages for the classic 1953 science fiction film Invaders from Mars written by Richard Blake, directed by William Cameron Menzies, starring Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Jimmy Hunt, and Leif Erickson. Bradbound in printed studio covers. Very good lightly used copy with some minor spotting to the front cover and minor edge wear. Enclosed in a handsome custom red morocco and cloth clamshell box. Due in large part to Menzies’ innovative techniques, Invaders from Mars was the first feature science fiction film to show aliens and their spacecraft in color and was rushed into production to premiere before the much-anticipated George Pal film of H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds. William Cameron Menzies (1896 - 1957) worked to great acclaim primarily as a production and set designer, notably for The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), David O. Selznik’s Gone With the Wind (1939), and Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). Mr. Menzies won two Oscars at the very first Academy Awards in 1929 for Best Art Direction for The Dove and Tempest and in 1940 at the 12th Academy Awards won an Academy Honorary Award for “outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood” for Gone With the Wind. Some of his other films include The Iron Mask (1929), Our Town (1940), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), and Duel in the Sun (1946).