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SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front pastedown as follows: "For my old friend | George E. Stone | with every good wish | of the author | Earl Rossman | Hollywood | November 1928." 8vo. (20 cm.) xi, 1-231p. Introduction by Wilhjalmur Stefansson. Frontispiece black and white photo of the author on the trail, plus 17 other clack and white captioned photos throughout and one folding map entitled "The Arctic Showing Pt. Barrow and the North." Orange cloth with black letters on the front cover and the spine. Some wear to extremities with a couple of corners just barely rubbed through, top and bottom of spine just beginning to fray, all photos present and in fine condition, couple of small spots on front cover, p. 117 is torn with nothing missing and is archivally repaired with heat set tape, else very good to near fine with no internal markings. No dust jacket. Earl Rossman, a photographer, was part of the first Wilkinson Arctic Expedition in 1926, which was led by Captain George Hubert Wilkinson and set out to determine whether there was a continent under the Arctic ice. It failed to do so. This book is the author's log of that expedition and more. "When you come back from your first trip to Rossman's part of arctic Alaska, you will tell a story much like his. BLACK SUNLIGHT is the impressions of a first visit, in that respect something like Borup's A TENDERFOOT WITH PEARY. It is the newcomer's truth about the Arctic." [from the Introduction by Stefansson] Earl Rossman also directed the movie Kivalina la esquimal [Kivalina the Eskimo] (1925) Shot in Alaska with an Inuit cast, of the American film Kivalina of the Ice Lands survives only in this Spanish-language edition. Although the copy is apparently complete, Kivalina remains ?lost? in another sense. In the voluminous writings about Nanook of the North over the past ninety years, there is barely mention of this feature-length production, which had a major distributor behind its theatrical release. Earl Rossman, like Flaherty, was a genuine Arctic explorer, photographer, and cinematographer. He too lost all of the footage he shot on his first expedition. Like Flaherty, Rossman cast indigenous people as themselves, directing them to recreate hunts, build igloos, and the like. (Kivalina is pictured in BLACK SUNLIGHT.) Kivalina of the Ice Lands is not a documentary but an archetypal narrative: a great hunter must overcome harsh elements to secure the pelt of a rare silver fox, which a shaman requires of him before allowing his marriage to Kivalina. Rossman also directed the movie "Dangers of the Arctic" (1932). The person to whom this book is inscribed was George E. Stone (born Gerschon Lichtenstein, 1903 ? 1967), a Polish-born American character actor in movies, radio, and television. This book is a rare find, a find made even rarer by having Rossman's signature and gift inscription on the front pastedown!
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