orson welles

No Sale For Marie Antoinette's Pearls or Orson's Oscar

Filed under: Auctions

Both Christie's and Sotheby's had auctions this week with some very important items that failed to sell. Perhaps the last few weeks before the Christmas holiday is not the best time to hold big auctions, although certainly either one of these items could have made a once-on-a-lifetime present.

The only Oscar given to Orson Welles, the one for writing Citizen Kane, did not receive a suitable bid and Sotheby's pulled it off the auction block. All offers were well below the minimum price set by the seller. It was hoped that the Oscar would sell for between $800,000 and $1.2 million, raising money for the Dax Foundation, a Los Angeles-based charitable group. The statuette may now be sold privately. A screenplay of Citizen Kane did bring in $97,000.

For Christie's it was a set of historic pearls that turned out not to sell. The pearls which had been given by Marie Antoinette to a British countess for safekeeping after she was imprisoned during the French Revolution, did not sell during the Christie's Magnificent Jewels sale on Wednesday. The pearls, which were later set into a necklace containing rubies and diamonds, were estimated to sell for up to $815,000.

Tags: auction, christies, marie antoinette, orson welles, oscar, pearls, sothebys

Get Orson's Screenplay Too

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions

When I wrote about Orson Welles' Oscar last month I neglected to mention that you can also buy Orson Welles' personal working copy of the script for titizen Kane on the same day, December 11, from Sotheby's New York. The 156-page script is the last revised draft before the final shooting script and contains notes and revisions. The majority of the Welles' archive is held by the Lilly Library at Indiana University, so only a few pieces of Citizen Kane memorabilia of this kind are left in private hands. The script is expected to bring $80,000-$120,000.

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Tags: hollywood memorabilia, orson welles, OrsonWelles, oscar, script

Own Orson's Oscar

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Auctions

We've seen Oscars auctioned off before and one thing is for certain, who the Oscar went to, and for what movie, has a great impact on the price of the statue. The Oscar that went to Orson Welles for the 1941 epic "Citizen Kane" is being auctioned off by Sotheby's on December 11. Welles won the Oscar for screenwriting with Herman Mankiewicz. The Oscar has quite a past. It was believed to be lost for a while but turned up in 1994 in the hands of a cinematographer who had worked with Welles tried to sell it at Sotheby's. Welles' youngest daughter, Beatrice, sued Sotheby's and the cinematographer and then tried to sell it only to be sued by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences which likes to keep Oscars off the market. In fact, since 1950, the academy has required Oscar winners to give it the first right of refusal to buy back an Oscar for $1. This Oscar was given before then and so is outside the rules. In 2003, Welles sold the Oscar to the Dax Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports various educational, health and other causes. The Dax Foundation is selling the Oscar. It is estimated that it will sell for $800,000 and $1.2 million. It has a ways to beat the number set by the best picture Oscar for "Gone With The Wind" which sold in 1999 for more than $1.5 million.

[Thanks, Lana]

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Tags: auction, charity, citizen kane, dax foundation, expire-images:2008-10-16, orson welles, OrsonWelles, oscar