ONE DAY, WHEN I WAS LOST: A Scenario based on 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X'.

First UK edition, first printing, preceding the US edition published the following year. Original blue cloth lettered in silver to the spine, in the dustwrapper with Mark Gerson's photographic portrait of James Baldwin to the rear panel. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. In the clean, bright dustwrapper, fine except for a little toning to the inner flap tips. Not price-clipped (£2.25 net to the front flap). An attractive copy of the true first edition of Baldwin's Malcolm X screenplay. Scarce.

In 1968, the producer Marvin Worth, who a year before had bought the film rights to Alex Haley's 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X', commissioned a screenplay from James Baldwin. Work on the project took longer than anticipated and the film project was eventually shelved. Baldwin, who later declared of the experience that "I would rather be horsewhipped, or incarcerated in the forthright bedlam of Bellevue, than repeat the adventure", nevertheless developed the work for this book. Although Spike Lee later used the book as the basis for his own screenplay for 'Malcolm X' in 1992 (five years after Baldwin's death), the writer's family requested that Baldwin's name be removed from the film's credits.