Sex sells…
Elinor Glyn published perhaps the most amateurish
and smutty little novel of all time (up ‘till 1907 at least). It’s the precursor to the “Harlequin Romance”
genre…and even those rate better in all probability. But here’s the thing…instead of letting a bad
book die a lonely, unread and dusty death, the powers that be decided it was
lude and lascivious, and had to be banned from innocent eyes…for the public
good of course…from then on…Three Weeks
became a bestseller and everyone wanted a piece of this controversy. Millions of copies sold, both before and
after Three Weeks was banned. It’s funny…had
the do-gooders simply ignored Glyn’s “masterpiece” …it would have likely gone
the way of the dodo bird.
The hype (and the hypocrisy) around Three Weeks went so far as to affect Mickey Mouse. The 1930 Walt Disney cartoon The Shindig was banned at one point because
Clarabelle Cow was surreptitiously reading a copy…silly, isn’t it?
Three Weeks…the
first edition…in all its seedy glory
And…for your entertainment… Walt Disney’s The Shindig