MAILER, Norman | The Deer Park playscript

Mailer, Norman. Playscript. The Deer Park. New York: Supreme Pix [Leo Garen, Norman Mailer, and James Walsh], 1954. 

4to.; mimeographed sheets, screw-bound into black plasticized wrappers with title in gilt; cover chipped; edgewear; torn along binding; spine rubbed. 

Marked “Draft” and numbered in hand as “No. 83” on title page. 

The Deer Park [New York: Putnam’s, 1955] came into the world first as a novel, Norman Mailer’s third, and not without some controversy. The manuscript was rejected by Mailer's publisher, Rinehart & Company, for obscenity. Despite having already typeset the book, Rinehart claimed that the manuscript’s obscenity voided its contract with Mailer. Mailer retained his cousin, the attorney Charles Rembar, who became a noted defense attorney for publishers involved in censorship trials. Rinehart settled with Mailer, allowing him to keep his advance. After rejections from six other publishers, the novel was accepted without revision at G. P. Putnam. 

A roman à clef, the metaphorical Deer Park is Desert D'Or, California, a fictionalized Palm Springs where Hollywood’s elite converge there for fun and games and relaxation. The novel's protagonist, Sergius O'Shaughnessy (a recently discharged Air Force officer), is a would-be novelist who experiences the moral depravity of the Hollywood community first hand. The title refers to the Parc-aux-Cerfs (“Deer Park”), a resort Louis XV of France kept stocked with young women for his personal pleasure.

Some 12 years after initial publication, Mailer revisited the novel and adapted it into a play. It opened Off-Broadway at the Theatre de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theatre) on Christopher St. in Greenwich Village on January 31, 1967. The play closed on May 21, 1967, after 128 performances. The Deer Park was directed by Leo Garen and starred Rip Torn, Marsha Mason, Mailer's former brother-in-law Mickey Knox, and Mailer's third wife, Beverly Bentley. It had mixed, mostly negative, reviews, although Torn won an Obie Award for his performance. An edition was published by Dial Press the same year. This preproduction script is labeled “Draft” and numbered “83.”