The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets, reported last week that Vintage Books’ “Movie Classics” imprint is releasing a new line of reprints of “the source material that inspired a number of iconic Hollywood films.” The first grouping of four novels in the series includes Show Boat, Cimarron, and Back Street.

Last but not least is Booth Tarkington’s 1921 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel Alice Adams, which details the life of the daughter of an impoverished family living in the aftermath of World War I in a Midwestern town. When a higher-class suitor pursues her, she must find ways to keep her status concealed. George Stevens’ 1935 film, starring Katharine Hepburn, garnered best picture and best actress nominations, re-launching Hepburn’s career. Similarly, the new cover — a black-and-white portrait of a porch with a rocking chair on it, surrounded by nature — breathes new life into the old story, as does the new foreword by film writer and Hepburn biographer Anne Edwards.

Check it out on Amazon.

Clearly this is just press-release “advertorial” content, not real reporting. I can’t imagine anyone seriously believing that a stock photograph of someone’s porch could “breathe new life” into Tarkington’s tale of upward mobility gone south.