*A Wave, A Wac And A Marine (1945) Script and 20 similar items

Vintage original script from the classic 1940's war-themed musical comedy/romance, A WAVE, A WAC AND A MARINE, released in 1944 by Monogram Pictures and directed by Phil Karlstein. Less the wartime comedy promised by the title than an inside-Hollywood story interrupted by musical numbers, Sally Eilers runs a talent agency and sets out to put a couple of Broadway stars under contract. Her bumbling employee (Henny Youngman) signs their understudies instead. The cast includes Elyse Knox, Ann Gillis, Sally Eilers, Richard Lane, Marjorie Woodworth, Ramsay Aames, Henny Youngman, Charles "Red" Marshall, and Alan Dinehart. This vintage original script belonged to cast member Marjorie Woodworth, who portrayed "Eileen." Written by Hal Fimberg and dated March 24, 1944, it has the number "25" handwritten in blue pencil (the number of this particular script from the film). It consists of 113 pages on off-white stock which have been 2-hole punched and bound with two metal grommets between a medium blue cardstock front and back cover. To the best of our knowledge, this script is complete in overall fine condition. There is a water stain along the right third of the front cover with a similar size on the left third of the back cover. Some of the pages are lightly dog-earred on the top right corner; pages 95-96 have been dog-earred and held together by a vintage small and rusted paperclip which we've left as found which left an identical shaped stain on the preceding one and following two pages; and a light vertical crease to the right of the grommets. The film's executive producer was comedian Lou Costello. Phil Karlson got to know Costello when he worked on the Abbott and Costello films at Universal as an assistant. Costello tracked down Karlson and told him he wanted to produce a film with Karlson directing. According to Karlson, Costello asked him what did he want to make, and replied, "I said I don't know. By this time, I'm so flabbergasted that I had no idea what I wanted to do. But he put up the money and we decided on the crazy story A Wave, a WAC and a Marine. As a gesture to his father, Costello – a diehard movie fan, who used the family's actual last name – Costello was credited as Sebastian Cristillo (his father's name), so the latter could see his own name onscreen. The other listed producer, Edward Sherman, was Costello's manager. Karlson later called the film "probably the worst picture ever made.... It was a nothing picture, but I was lucky because it was for Monogram and they didn't understand how bad it was because they had never made anything that was any good." However, it did launch Karlson's directing career.